Replies

from deep in the hard drive, an old omnibus, I'd guess that a good many are discontinued links:

The Bronze Age Computer Disc by Alan Butler
website
Nobody knows for sure where the Minoan culture came from, or how it fitted into the pattern of European cultures that surrounded it. The Phaistos Disc gave me sufficient evidence to recognise the Minoans as an offshoot of the great Bronze Age megalithic cultures of Britain and France. These people were the builders of Stonehenge and Avebury, and you can learn more about them on the 'Megalithic' Page.
The Millennium Foundation
Various languages have been suggested, some of which are rather improbable, such as Basque or Finnish. According to one scholar, the text is a list of soldiers; to another it is a hymn to the "rain lord"; another believes that here the king speaks about the construction of the palace at Phaistos.
The Phaistos Disc: Hieroglyphic Greek with Euclidean Dimensions
However, some symbols, such as the central flower on Side A, and the "two-container" symbol are found in Pharaonic Egypt in the Old Kingdom, but not later. For example, the Palette of Narmer has the flower pictograph, and a cartouche attributed originally to Cheops by the Egyptologists has the two-container symbol... The site Phaistos on Crete was a geodetic point in antiquity and the Disc shows how pre-Pythagorean geodetics were calculated. As a matter of information technology, the Phaistos Disk is also unique in that it unknowingly "anticipates" storage of information on CDs or DVDs, i.e. circular data storage. The deciphered content of the Phaistos Disc is mathematical in nature. It is a pre-Euclidean proof viz. lemma regarding the paradox of Parallel Lines, very similar in approach to that used by the great mathematician Lobachevsky, more than 3500 years later.
The Phaistos Disk
by Jorn Barger
Grapheus says Faucounau's translation reveals "a kind of psalm, psalmodied during the corresponding mortuary ceremony describing the history and the death of a king named Arion... Face A relates the king Arion's achievements, Face B the circumstances of his death and the details concerning his burial... The Disk is Cycladic and has been brought to Crete as a trophy, then discarded when the 'Temple Depository' at Phaistos was cleaned up after an earthquake..."
Findings from Phaistos
Interkriti
Some hieroglyphic sequences recur like refrains, suggesting a religious hymn, and Pernier regards the content of the text as ritual. Others have suggested that the text is a list of soldiers, and lately Davis has interpreted it as a document in the Hittic language in which a king discusses the erection of the Palace of Phaistos.
Still undeciphered? Deniart Systems
[this is a font set for either Mac or PC]
What is the Phaistos disk?
(ask Yahoo)
This is the earliest known example of a printed inscription -- some scholars suggest that it's an isolated work of solitary genius, a religious poem or incantation. Although theories abound, no one has definitively identified the meaning of the pictograms or confirmed its origins. Some believe that the object is of Anatolian origin, despite being found on Crete.
The Phaistos Disk Cracked?
by Rev. Kevin Massey-Gillespie and Dr. Keith Massey
Eduard Dhorme, one of the decipherers of Hittite, published the first consonantal values for the Proto-Byblic script in SYRIA XXV 1946 in an article, "Dechiffrement des Inscriptions Pseudo-Hieroglyphicques de Byblos." A comparison of these values with the symbols of the Phaistos Disk yielded consonantal assignments for a surprising amount of the writing on the disk. It should be noted here that all previous attempts to decipher the Phaistos Disk have been subjective attempts, assigning phonetic values to the characters with no true objective criteria. This is therefore the first effort at cracking the disk by OBJECTIVE determinations. When these consonantal values are examined, elements of an Hellenic language emerge in the text of the disk. Scholars had never known what the significence of a mysterious "slash" on 16 of the words of the Phaistos Disk. We observed, based on our values, that each of these 16 words are numerals counting commodities on the disk, similar to the majority of Linear B texts.
Decipherment Update
by svoronan@otenet.gr
The original intention for this page was to limit the contents to web links. However as time goes by visitors to this page kept volunteering book references and I felt obliged to add the references that were sent to me.
Philippe PLAGNOL supports the hypothesis that the symbols are ideograms and attempts to explain them. His site also includes important information about the finding of a disk fragment in Vladikavkaz, Ossetia that is in many ways similar to the phaistos Disk. He also requests help from interested scholars in discussing the interpretation of the text.
Info on Dr. Howard Barraclough Fell, with comments by Dr. Norman Totten and Dr. Reul Lochlore.
discussion includes "The text on the Phaistos disk was cracked by Best & Woudhuizen by comparing the glyphs on the disk with Luwian hieroglyphics." [SC sez: Luwian is one of the Anatolian tongues]
Ancient Cretan Languages by Glenn Johnson, who claims to have deduced the Southwestern Anatolian-Syrian origin of the disc, it's linguistic relationship with a complexly differentiated spectrum of Anatolian and Ancient Indo-Aryan variety, as well as its utility as a record of nobilities in that area which may most probably represent a funerary record of some sort.
cave engravings in North Africa [SC sez: it's worth noting that Fell also published translations of the Numidian characters, and concluded that there was a connection from time to time, as the writing system was adapted for use in other languages]
decipherment by Edgar Bowden, who claims that the text describes a religious culta and that the language is Greek.
The Phaistos Disk Unravelled by W. A. G. Westerlaken
Glyphbreaker and Evidence of Hellenic Dialect in the Phaistos Disk by Dr. Steven Fischer
In a recent book (in Greek) The Phaistos disk speaks Greek Efi Poligiannaki claims to have solved the mystery of the disk and that the text is a prayer and the language is Greek. Her method is based on a combination of acronymic expanations and similarities between the disk symbols and the symbols from other linear scripts.
Reinier J. van Meerten looks for disk signs in the list of Linear B signs.
Yamashiro [Japanese]
Hemsida
Phaistos Disk by Craig Welch, no translation, frequency study.
Massimo Imperiali
Kjell Aartun [German]
Hedwig Roolvink claims that she has translated the disk and that it describes an expedition of mountain people seeking flat land in order to settle. (mirror site)
Ancient Scripts
Le Decifrement Du Disque De Phaistos,Preuves & Consequences by Jean Faucounau
Adam Martin claims that side A is an early Greek text for a funeral service meant to console a bereaved person and that side B is the Minoan version of the same text.
Phoinic by Nikos Stylos, who claims to have translated both the Phaistos disk and the Magliana disk. He claims that the text was used for teaching reading and that the language is "arbanetic".
Stanislaw Hansel claims that the disk is probably written in a Semitic language, Keftian.
Davlos, a Greek magazine, published Basilios Katsiadramis' article, "The Phaistos Disk Was Read By Women" (year 17 number 195 page 12105, March 1998).
Linear A and the Phaistos Disk are Slavonic by Sergei V. Rjabchikov (article)
La scrittura -- Disco di Festo by the Focherini State Junior Middle School, Carpi, Italy (in Italian). Phaistos Disk photo only.
Phaistos Disk -- Crete (picture)
painting by Werner Horvath
calendar hypothesis by Steve Whittet (picture 1 picture 2).
Peter Aleff claims that the Phaistos Disk is not a text but the surface of a gameboard. [SC sez: this idea was actually mentioned in the book I linked in a previous message]
Efforts of L. Pomerance and Kenneth Franklin described (calendar hypothesis).
The Phaistos Disc Alias The Minoan Calendar (book)
Il disco di Festo -- L'enigma di una scrittura by Luis Godart, [Italian]
Bernd Schomburg claims the disk is a Minoan calendar -- Der Jahrtausend-Kalender der Minoer [German page]
Herman Wenzel
Phaistos-skiven en strukturanalyse by Ole Hagen [Danish] claims it was a calendar.