New York Times features the upcoming International Phaistos Disk Conference sponsored by Minerva Magazine at Burlington House - LexiLine Journal 504

The New York Times has featured the upcoming International Phaistos Disk Conference in London at which I will be giving the first paper on October 31. John Tierney's TierneyLab at Why Not Test the Phaistos Disc? features an article from which I link the photograph below showing both sides of this enigmatic ancient CD and DVD precursor (info recorded on a disc), and which holds the clue to the origins of writing in Western Europe and thus also the development of our own Western Civilization in subsequent eras.


On October 31 I will present my sensational historic paper at Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, deciphering Old Elamite Script using Greek syllables from mz decipherment of the Phaistos Disk thirty years ago and in the process I will view an Elamite statue that is either Helen of Troy or Clymene, also named Asia, who gave Asia its geographic name.

Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD
Home of the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Academy of Arts
and their current exhibitions:

1. in the Main Galleries, Byyzantium 330-1453
25 October 2008 to 22 March 2009
supported by The J.F. Costopoulos Foundation
the A.G. Leventis Foundation
and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation

"This ground-breaking exhibition,
a collaboration between the Royal Academy of Arts and the Benaki Museum in Athens,
provides a grand-scale survey of 1,000 years of history.
Highlighting the splendours of the Byzantine Empire,
'Byzantium 330–1453' incorporates over 300 objects.
Some of the works have never been displayed in public before."

2. in the Sackler Wing of Galleries
Miró, Calder, Giacometti, Braque: Aimé Maeght and His Artists
4 October 2008 to 2 January 2009
sponsored by BNP Paribas

"The exhibition presents Aimé Maeght's outstanding contributions
to art in the mid-twentieth century as an art dealer, exhibition maker and publisher.
It features work by the major artists he exhibited - Miró, Calder, Giacometti and Braque -
as well as works by Bonnard and Matisse."

To repeat, on Saturday, October 31, 2008, I will be presenting my paper at the Phaistos Disk Conference in the rooms of the Society of Antiquaries, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London. The program (UK "programme") is given below in my excerpted version (I have added all the links and commentary and have removed text not relating to the papers as such).

The conference registration fee was £35 but as far as we know, registration is now sold out and closed. I presume that we have a full house, but perhaps not a royal flush? I personally herewith invite members of the Royal Family to attend our presentation and see history being made but it might be SRO (standing room only).

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE PHAISTOS DISK
On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of its discovery, Friday, 31 October – Saturday, 1 November 2008,
At the Society of Antiquaries of London, Burlington House, Piccadilly,
Organised and sponsored by Minerva, the International Review of Ancient Art & Archaeology

CONFERENCE PROGRAMME

FRIDAY, 31 OCTOBER

10:30 Opening remarks by Jerome M. Eisenberg, Ph.D., New York, USA

10:40 Keynote speaker Louis Godart, D.Ph., D.ès L., Hon.C.B.E., Rome, Italy
The Phaistos Disk and the Aegean Civilizations

11:40 Introduction by Peter Clayton, F.S.A., Hemel Hempstead, UK
Arthur Evans and Plato Have Much to Answer For
[LawPundit: Peter A. Clayton is the author of Chronicle of the Pharaohs, in German Die Pharaonen, generally regarded to be one of the best books ever written about Ancient Egypt.]

11:50 1st paper Andis Kaulins, J.D., Traben-Trarbach, Germany
The Phaistos Disk: An Ancient Enigma Solved: Two Corroborative
Old Elamite Scripts Deciphered Using the Greek Syllabic Values
Obtained for the Phaistos Disk
[Proof of alleged decipherments of the Phaistos Disk have thus far suffered from the lack of corroborative texts. I have identified two such texts in Elam and have deciphered them using my decipherment of the Phaistos Disk as Greek, with spectacular historical results.]

12:20 2nd paper Torsten Timm, Dresden, Germany
The Two Sides of the Phaistos Disk

12:50 3rd paper Dieter A. Rumpel, Dr.-Ing., Dusseldorf, Germany
Facts and Probabilities Regarding the Phaistos Disk and the Axe of Arkalokhori

2:40 4th paper John Coleman, D.Phil., M.A., Oxford, UK
Epigraphic Continuity of the Phaistos Disk Signary
With Cretan Hieroglyphic and Linear Scripts

3:40 5th paper Richard Sproat, Ph.D., Urbana, Illinois, USA
How to Forge the Phaistos Disk Text

4:10 6th paper Jerome M. Eisenberg, Ph.D., New York, USA
Some Unique Decipherments of the Phaistos Disk

SATURDAY, 1 NOVEMBER

10:15 7th paper Tom Palaima, Ph.D., Austin, Texas, USA
Emmett L. Bennett, Jr., Cryptoanalysis, Decipherment, and the Phaistos Disc

10:45 8th paper Gareth Owens, Ph.D., Heraklion, Crete, Greece
The Phaistos Disk: The Enigma of the Minoan Script

11:45 9th paper Mark Newbrook, Ph.D., Heswall, Wirral, UK
Diskomania! Some Highly Non-Mainstream `Decipherments' Of the Phaistos Disk

12:15 10th paper Nicholas Reed, M.A., M.Phil., Folkestone, Kent, UK
Why the Phaistos Disc is Unlikely to be a Forgery

2:15 11th paper Gia Kvashilava, Ph.D., Tbilisi, Georgia
On Deciphering the Phaistos Disk as a Sample of Colchian Goldscript

2:45 12th paper Panagiotes D. Gregoriades, Athens, Greece
The Phaistos Disk: The Oldest Portable Calendar
in Use by the Minoan Navy

Poster presentations

- Jan Bigaj, Ph.D., Ustrzyki Dolne, Poland
Phonetic Values of the Signs on the Phaistos Disc in Relation to the Cypriot Syllabary

- William H. Considine, B.Sc., Albourne, West Essex, UK
The Phaistos Disk from a Trading Perspective.

- Edmund Marriage, Cirencester, Gloucestershire, UK
The Phaistos Disk: The Story of a Pastoral Disaster

Submitted papers and comments on view at the conference
-Stephen Chrysomalis, Ph.D., Detroit, Michigan, USA
Phaistos Phakery Redux

-Jean Faucounau, Bascharage, Luxembourg
1. Official Statement from the G.L.I.F. [Arguments against the Phaistos Disk being a hoax]
(Several copies are available to registrants)
2. Complementary Note from Mr. Faucounau [On the Proto-Ionian Theory]

-Herbert Ferguson, Redland, Bristol, UK
In Search of the World's First Printers

-Franz Gnaedinger, Zurich, Switzerland
A Concise Interpretation of the Elaia Disc and Tiryns Disc…
[as relating to the Phaistos Disc]

-Werner Wagner, Oslo, Norway
Is the Phaistos Disc Genuine?

- Morris M. Weiss, M.D., Louisville, Kentucky, USA
The Phaistos Disc and Rogem Hiri – Is There a Connection?

- Hermann W. Zebisch, Dipl.-Ing., Schaerding, Austria
A Summary of the Work of Herbert R. Zebisch

Origin of the Word "chick" (baby bird) - LexiLine Journal 503

William Glyn-Jones wrote:

Here's a question. When in English we use "chick" for a baby bird,
which of these two roots do you think more likely to be the source:

1) words for small, such as Aragonese: chicote
and Turan: kiçik, Turkish: küçük tr(tr),Turkmen: kiçi
or
2) Words related to birds such as in Greek and Latin, eg for swans and
storks, cycnus and cicones.

Or are these also connected?

Also, in connection with the "pu-" words I note that in languages such as Spanish use "piu, piu, piu" as the sounds of small birds, the equivalent of English "tweet, tweet, tweet."
The words sound like the quality, just as "gar" is a big sound, a gargantuan sound.
______________

Andis Kaulins replied:

Take a look at the Bantu words for chicken or fowl at
http://language.psy.auckland.ac.nz/bantu/word.php?v=160

ID	Language	Nominal Prefix	Radical	Gram.	Genre	Cognacy	Annotation
01929.	Asu G.22	ŋ	kúkú	N	9
01494.	Basaa A.43a	∅/∅	kóp	N	9, 10
01075.	Bemba M.42	íŋ	kókó	N
00641.	Bukusu E.31c	éèŋ-	gòxò	N	9, 10
00164.	Kinyamwezi F22	ŋ/ŋ	 gɔ̀kɔ́	N	9, 10
02373.	Koyo C.24		tsótsó	N	1a-2
03197.	Lega D.25	ŋ-	kókó	N	9, 10
02789.	Rumanyo (Gciriku) K.38	ŋ	kûkù	N	9, 10
03590.	Tswana S.30		 kʊ́kʊ́	N	9
04017.	Yao P.21	dì-	wìíwì	N	5

It is very clear, based on the Bantu evidence above, that the base word for chicken must belong to the very oldest of human terms, as it is virtually near to identical everywhere in the Bantu languages.

Compare the Bantu with the German Küken viz. Kücken for chicken viz. chick.
The Koyo tsotso might compare to our own tweet-tweet, and an onomopoetic sound origin for chick is not excluded in view of German put, put meaning "chuck, chuck" in English.

As for your second question about pu- words for the birds,
in Latvian, birds are putni, whence German Pute "turkey-hen" or Puter "turkey-cock".

The root here is I think the original root for "flight", as suggested by the Bantu words for "to fly (to)" (palido means "to fly about" in Latvian and par- means "up, above"), to which compare aero//*aelo in Ancient Greek meaning "to fly". Here are the Bantu terms for "to fly":

01923.	Asu G.22		pàràrìkà	V
01488.	Basaa A.43a		pùùɛ̀	V
01071.	Bemba M.42		pàlààl	V
00157.	Kinyamwezi F22		làlá	V
03191.	Lega D.25		léŋgà	V
02781.	Rumanyo (Gciriku) K.38		tûkà	V
03584.	Tswana S.30		fʊ̀fà	V
04012.	Yao P.21		guluka	V

Terms for flight in my opinion are related to the concept of "air" or "outside", in Latvian (g)aiss, gaisā and ārā, to which some of the Bantu terms below for "outside" are similar

02055.	Asu G.22	n	zè	N	9
01595.	Basaa A.43a		tán
01182.	Bemba M.42	ín	sé	N
00761.	Bukusu E.31c	é- ßù-	làfù	N	23, 14
00283.	Kinyamwezi F22	hààn	zɛ̀ɛ́	N	16+9
00284.	Kinyamwezi F22	hììb	ààlà	N	16+5		lit. at the clearing
02468.	Koyo C.24		nʤ̑éè	N	9
03297.	Lega D.25		gà mbʊ́gà	Loc			open space : mbʊ́gà 9, 10
02903.	Rumanyo (Gciriku) K.38		pàmbânʤ̑è	Adv
02904.	Rumanyo (Gciriku) K.38		pànʤ̑è	Adv
03699.	Tswana S.30		ǹtɬɛ́	N	9
04125.	Yao P.21		pààsá	Adv
04126.	Yao P.21		kùùsá	Adv

Origins of the Words "fig" and "boy" in the Concept of Half-Grown - LexiLine Journal 502

The terms for "fig" in Afro-Asiatic are pretty much all variants of the completely different word "tin" - see those terms at the databases of the Tower of Babel site of Sergei Starostin.

In Latvian "tin" means "to twine", i.e. hence this in our opinion originally refers to a "vine" of sorts, whence, perhaps, the Biblical phrase:

"But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the LORD of hosts hath spoken it."

As we read at at the Israel government site for tourism :

"Figs can be seen ripening under the summer sun throughout Israel, their distinctive aroma perfuming the air around springs and streams from Caesarea Philippi in the north to Ein Gedi in the south. The word fig is one of several in English that probably comes from Hebrew: paga means an unripe fig. The fruit gave its name to two villages on the Mount of Olives. One is Bethphage, Beit Pagi, which means "house of unripe figs," through which Jesus passed before the triumphal entry into Jerusalem (Matt. 21:1, Mark 11:1, Luke 19:29). The other is Bethany, Beit Te'enah, which means `house of the fig." ... Summer visitors to Israel can recall that "each man sitting under his own vine and fig tree" ... is a biblical symbol of peace." [emphasis added by LexiLine]

That alleged word origin makes sense if we examine the similar term puika in Latvian, meaning "boy", i.e. "an unripe male, a young male (in this sense)", also in the Latvian variant term puisis, with similar terms found in the following languages: Swedish: pojke sv(sv) c, Estonian poiss-, Hebrew `חור (bakhúr) m, Irish: buachaill ga(ga) m., Portuguese pequerrucho m., Sicilian: picciriddu m. (child); picciottu m. (teenager), or Welsh: bachgen cy(cy) m. - or, as noted at MacBain's Dictionary, bucach means a boy (dial.): "growing one".

At some point the guttural sound at the end was lost and we got the English word boy.

The oldest conceptual meaning however will be given to us by the Latvain variant of puika "boy" which is puisis. Since puse in Latvian means "half", and in Latvian pusaudzis (literally "half-grown, from pus-aug") means "adolescent" or pusaudze (g//dz permutation) means "youngster", we see that the Hebrew term and all the other Indo-European terms derive from the basic concept of "unripe" in the sense of "half-grown".

The analysis is eminently clear. What the mainstream linguists and etymologists have written about these terms is confused, incompetent babble.
______________

Marchidan21 replied:

In romanian:
cuţit = knife/dagger
pici = young boy
pitic = small one, dwarf
(Piticot = name of a dwarf from romanian old story)
pui = young bird/animal/children
puică = young female bird / young girl
puiet = small tree/plant
fag = name of a tree
http://dexonline.ro/
Marchidan21
______________

William Glyn-Jones replied:

Latvian puisis for boy reminds me of Latin puer, boy.

The logic of what you suggest makes sense in as much as figs have long been connected symbolically, for obvious reasons with gonads, and because on a fig tree two years’ fruit are present at once, divided distinctly in to the two categories of big, mature, and those small, and half the age. If the Hebrew Pagi are the unripe figs, this would make sense. All the same, not convinced, especially about “half-grown” as original origin for the non-Latvian words for boy, when there are other explanations. “Small” seems likely in at least two of the cases sited:-

Sicilian: picciriddu m. (child); picciottu m. (teenager) – these must be related to Italian for small, piccolo.

Welsh: bachgen cy(cy) m. –boy. In Welsh, bach means small.

_____________

Andis Kaulins wrote:

Here is an interesting list of Bantu words for "unripe" which in my opinion support my analysis of the word for "fig" as being rooted in the concept of being "half ripe".
source - http://language.psy.auckland.ac.nz/bantu/word.php?v=410:

ID	Language	Nominal Prefix	Radical	Gram.	Genre	Cognacy	Annotation
02209.	Asu G.22		vísì	A	multiclasse
01724.	Basaa A.43a	∅/bì-	sùá	N	7, 8
01299.	Bemba M.42	íʧ̑ì	pòmpò	N			unripe fruit
01300.	Bemba M.42	ì	ßòòßò	N			unripe groundnuts
00900.	Bukusu E.31c		-ßìsì	Ad
00423.	Kinyamwezi F22		βɩ̀sɩ́	A
02581.	Koyo C.24	è	bìsì	N	7-8
03410.	Lega D.25		bɩ́sɩ̀	A
03035.	Rumanyo (Gciriku) K.38		ßîʃù	A	multiclasse
04269.	Yao P.21		vísí	A