Has the Mysterious Phaistos Disc Been Partially Deciphered?

I saw this a couple days ago and I completely forgot I was going to start a thread about it. I'm certain a great many of you reading this are familiar with the Phaistos Disk as it's been an object of considerable interest since its discovery over a hundred years ago. For those who are not, a brief introduction:

Side A of the Phaistos Disc, image from Wikipedia

The Phaistos Disc (or Disk) was discovered in 1908 by Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier in a basement chamber at the site of the Minoan palace of Phaistos, on the Greek island of Crete. It's a fired clay disc, about 6 inches (15 cm) in diameter with 241 characters, composed of 45 unique symbols, that appear to have been pressed into it as with a set of seals. On both faces of the disc, the symbols are arranged in a sequence that spirals clockwise to the center.

The precise date of its creation is unknown though most estimates range from about 1850 BC to 1400 BC. Though it is almost universally accepted as a genuine artifact, there have been scholars who questioned its authenticity in the past and as recently as 2008. In addition to years of rigorous study and Pernier's excavation records, the finds of two Minoan artifacts with similar features have supported both its authenticity and a Minoan origin: The Mavro Spilio ring (1926) and the Arkalochori Axe, which was discovered in a cave on Crete in the 1930's and shares a home with the Phaistos Disc at the Heraklion Archaeological Museum.

Several things make the Phaistos Disc unique: the pressing of the symbols resembling an ancient typesetting, the spiral arrangement of the symbols and most importantly, the script itself is completely unknown outside of this single specimen. Some scholars have associated it to Linear A and Linear B while others have linked it to Anatolian hieroglyphs.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, on to the current development! Dr. Gareth Owens, of the Technological Educational Institute of Crete, is claiming that he has determined the meaning of several of the symbols and has been able to extract the gist of the disc's message.

From Discovery News (find related at Obscuragator):

Owens argues that the disk -- about 6 inches in diameter -- contains a prayer to the mother goddess of the Minoan era.

"The most stable word and value is 'mother,' and in particular the mother goddess of the Minoan era," said Owens, according to Archaeology News Network.

Using specific groups of symbols Owens says one side of the disk contains the translated wording "great lady of importance" while the other uses the expression "pregnant mother." One side, Owens says, is dedicated to a pregnant woman and the other to a woman giving birth.

Owens spent six years working on the code with a colleague at Oxford University and says about 90 percent of one side of the disk can now be deciphered. In a talk, he jokingly referred to it as the first Minoan "CD-ROM" for its shape and hard-coded data.

and from The Archaeology News Network:

He says there is one complex of signs found in three parts of one side of the disk spelling I-QE-KU-RJA, with I-QE meaning “great lady of importance” while a key word appears to be AKKA, or “pregnant mother,” according to the researcher.

One final source of information for the really curious is the TEI website.

As a lay person, to me his findings seem roughly as likely to be valid as many of the others so I'll be keeping an eye out to see how his work is received by other experts.

a reply to: theantediluvian

Super cool man. Thanks fir posting.

a reply to: theantediluvian

It looks like instructions on how to make sugar cookies! ;-)

I think it was a gift to a parent or grand parent from a child, who pressed wooded stamps into the clay and had it fired because it was 'exceptional'.

originally posted by: Hanslune
I think it was a gift to a parent or grand parent from a child, who pressed wooded stamps into the clay and had it fired because it was 'exceptional'.

Based on the description of where it was found I'm not so sure. From Wikipedia:

It was found in the main cell of an underground "temple depository". These basement cells, only accessible from above, were neatly covered with a layer of fine plaster. Their content was poor in precious artifacts but rich in black earth and ashes, mixed with burnt bovine bones. In the northern part of the main cell, in the same black layer, a few inches south-east of the disc and about twenty inches above the floor, Linear A tablet PH 1 was also found. The site apparently collapsed as a result of an earthquake, possibly linked with the eruption of the Santorini volcano that affected large parts of the Mediterranean region during the mid second millennium BC.

Sounds like it may have even been among the bone and ash of a sacrificial bull?

Board game like The Game of Life? Darn I landed on "pregnant mother" now I have to go and get impregnated.... stop looking at me like that Fred!

originally posted by: Hanslune
I think it was a gift to a parent or grand parent from a child, who pressed wooded stamps into the clay and had it fired because it was 'exceptional'.

Well thats just as random, and equally as plausible i suppose, as anything...

So i assume when you say you think a child made it, that the "characters" are just random scrawlings and are in a random order? Just like today when a young child randomly scribbles on a piece of paper then brings it to their parents seeking a pat on the head and a place on the refrigerator?

It's a possibility, I'll give you that...

I lean more towards the fact that there are already many "lost" languages we know about today and the probability that there may be more lost languages, spoken and written, that we do not know about and have never heard of. In the history of mankind, there could be more lost languages that we have not heard of, that sprouted up and died in remote locales, or even secret languages invented to hide information from the public in populous locales, perhaps, than lost languages we do have some idea about. (Heck, children have made up their own languages before where only 2 of them even knew how to speak or write it, and it dies with them, or with their childhood, or when one of them dies and the other has nobody to converse with in it. This happens with twins a lot.)

The unknown unknowns, if you will. That's what i think this is. But apparently there may be enough of it there to partially translate... maybe.

I will say that, with the information given, your explanation is just as possible as mine.

Just like the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop, "the world may never know"

originally posted by: Cinrad
Board game like The Game of Life? Darn I landed on "pregnant mother" now I have to go and get impregnated.... stop looking at me like that Fred!

I like this one. Dang, i landed on "fight a lion using only a chopstick" well, so long fellas... Or "collect a raindrop from the top of death mountain. *returns after 40 years" I got the raindrop! Is it my turn again yet? No, we are waiting for Hanslune to return, he landed on "conquer the west wind" whatever that means... This game sucks. Let's go play real life Mario Brothers instead. You get to eat shrooms and rescue babes. Whaaat? Yeah, Bob invented it while you were away collecting your raindrop. Advancements in technology my friend. A lot can happen in 40 years. Wait'll you get a load of crazy Jimmys wild contraption. He calls it the "wheel". The grownups hate it, but the kids are cruisin all over the place on this crazy wheel thing.

Makes sense, considering they worshipped this:


In some ways we still do worship this

Quite not sensational for such an enigmatic object.

originally posted by: GnosticWay
Quite not sensational for such an enigmatic object.

Yes, apparently no mention of extraterrestrial contact, ritual sacrifice or the secret of eternal life!

a reply to: Cinrad

I'm with you on this one. I lean towards an ancient board game similar to Mehen.
Look at the resemblance. Both are spiraling inward like a snake and sectioned off into squares.

It is valuable to decipher what each individual symbol represents and or how it was played if it were a game because it will give us a little splice of life and culture during those times.



Mehen (game)

leolady

a reply to: leolady

Thanks for the link, I'd never heard of it before. There's no denying the resemblance. That would really be something else if did turn out to be the ancient version of the game of Life after all.

Venus Figurines anyone?

originally posted by: leolady
a reply to: Cinrad

I'm with you on this one. I lean towards an ancient board game similar to Mehen.
Look at the resemblance. Both are spiraling inward like a snake and sectioned off into squares.

It is valuable to decipher what each individual symbol represents and or how it was played if it were a game because it will give us a little splice of life and culture during those times.

Mehen (game)

leolady

Thanks

I might say that supports my contention that its was a piece made by or for a child and a version of said Egyptian game.

a reply to: theantediluvian

A stab at a theory for me would be a gift made and given to commemorate the birth of a royal child.

Like we give gifts today, i think the ancients also did similar things when babies were born.

I'd imagine the inclusion of the mother goddess is key, being that naturally a mother goddess would be especially significant and important in the birth of a royal.

Think royal Christening.

here is Gareth Owens at TEDxHeraklion talking about it you can skip to 14 min where he starts reading from the disc and then a recording played where a lady reads the whole thing

a reply to: theantediluvian

Great find I just posted a thread on this but was informed you beat me to it, hope the mods delete mine this is very exciting stuff not since the Rosetta stone I am just waiting gor them to crack the Meroitic script

Perhaps it was a game? There's the figure of a man, a biscuit (the circle with six dots), a strip of bacon, a "less than" sign, a beer glass, a Y shape, a bird shape.

The "Get up in the morning and make breakfast" game? Throw the dice and collect everything you need to start the day. Winner is the first person to have a complete breakfast and be dressed. Hit a "forgot something" square and go back to the start?

There's roughly 100 symbols, 42 on the outside, and 60 contained in the inner ring.