The Phaistos Disk Revisited - LexiLine Journal 289

Steve Burdic has sent me the following link
http://www.boardgamesindex.htm

writing his comment as follows,

>Andis;
>
>This is an interesting treatment of the Phaistos Disk. It compares
>the disk to some ancient (and modern) board games and says the
>meaning is astronomical.
>
>Thank you for posting your work-up on the Phaistos Disk. It pulled
many things together for me.
>
>Best Regards,
>
>Steve Burdic

Here is my reply,

Dear Steve,

As you have referred to the posting, my entire decipherment of the Phaistos Disk is available online at http://www.andiskaulins.com/publications/phaistos/phaistos.htm
http://snipurl.com/78zt as a scan of my book: The Phaistos Disc: Hieroglyphic Greek with Euclidean Dimensions - The "Lost Proof" of Parallel Lines" - by Andis Kaulins, Copyright © 1980

You can be sure that if the symbols were astronomical in nature, I would have been the first to have found that out. I look for astronomy first in all ancient sources.

However, the symbols are nothing more than the precursors of later Linear A (a language similar to Turkish) and Linear B (ancient Greek).

Of course, as you have discovered, Steve, the mathematical lemma on the disk was surely used for astronomical calculations, but that is a different matter. The SYMBOLS are syllabic hieroglyphs.

I probably should spend some time and do a write-up showing how the symbols on the Phaistos Disk precede Linear B and Linear A. For example, Michael Ventris in his decipherment of Linear B occasionally has several "variants" for the same syllabic value, but has left out the diphthongs altogether, which account for numerous "extra" symbols, for example, not just ra- but also rai- are symbols in Linear B, according to my research. Ventris also ignored some affricates.

There is no question that my decipherment of the Phaistos Disk is correct - but once I decipher something, I pretty much lose interest in it. Others spend their time marketing their erroneous solutions and are thereby often successful since the mass of men are not competent to decide who is right and who is wrong. However, my life is too valuable to spend my time hawking my work. Rather, in that time I can be doing new things.

The link you sent me is a good example - lots of marketing and sales, but no substance. You see, if the symbols on the disk were astronomical, then we would have similar precursor symbols on megaliths etc. of this nature, but there is nothing.

On the contrary, we have numerous symbols in the most ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs which are identical or nearly identical to those found on the Phaistos Disk. They are language hieroglyphs.

Perhaps the Phaistos Disk is the oldest surviving remnant of the days in which Cadmos brought "letters" from Egypt to Greece, as related in ancient legend. Obviously, such letters would not have been the alphabet of today, but would have been Egyptian-like hieroglyphs, subsequently adapted to the Greek language - and that is what the Phaistos Disk represents.

Unfortunately, the ancient Greeks did not write in stone but on the bark of trees and in beeswax - which would suggest that at the time of Cadmos, paper (papyrus) would not have been invented yet - otherwise the invention would have been copied, but it was not. These bark and beeswax sources are long destroyed. Even the Phaistos Disk survives only because it was "baked" by the fires that destroyed Minoan Civilization.

In any case, until corroborating material is found on Crete, i.e. more samples of writing using these hieroglyphs, no decipherment will nor can be accepted, because there is simply no way to prove who is right. When we have more texts of this nature, then proof will be easy. Until then, each year brings new "decipherments" of the Phaistos Disk, one more improbable than the next.

Enjoy, Andis