The Phaistos Disk Friedrich, Horst

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M igration & Diffusion, V ol .l , IssueNumber 5, 2001

THE PHAISTOS DISK: ABILINGUAL IBERIAN DOCUMENT?

by

Dr . Horst Friedrich

Summary

I t is the author's thesis that the two texts on the sides of the as yet undecipheredPhaistos disk are written in two different bu t somehow related languages, by meansof two different but related, probably syllabic "alphabets". Only a tittle more thanhalf of the characters occur on both sides. The frequency, with which charactersoccur, is highly dissimilar for both sides. The distribution of word lengths is alsodissimilar. Only one word occurs on both sides. After rejecting, as highly improbable,an origin of the Phaistos disk from Mediterranean or Near Eastern countries to theeast of Sardinia, the thesis is proposed that our object might possibly hail from thegreater Iberian West, and that onJy there can we hope to unearth similarly inscribedartefacts.

TO LIST THE eharaeters, or probablysyllabie "Ietters", of both sides of the famousdisk-shaped Cretan artefaet together in asingle listing, as done e.g. by Doblhofer(l)(see figure 1), is misleading. It takes taeitlyfor granted, or presupposes, that whiehshould have been eonc\usively establishedbeforehand: namely that the inseriptions onboth sides have been written in the samelanguage.I am not at all eonvineed that this assumptionean be regarded as valid, i.e. based on soundreasoning. Because, as a simple listing of theeharaeters shows, the frequeney with whiehthey oceur is highly dissimilar for both sides.I will abstain from troubling my readers witha rather long, and possibly boring,comparative list. A simple, short visualinspection of both sides of the disk willsuffice to see the differenee.

Only 24 eharaeters of 45, i.e. only a littlemore than half of the total, oeeur on bothsides. That would be extremely strange if theinseriptions on both sides were in the samelanguage, independently of the quest ion if wehave here an alphabetic or, more probably, asyllabic seript.

WE FIND A similar diserepancy, ordissimilarity, between the sides of the diskwhen we eonsider recurring groups of two ormore eharaeters, or of wh at I willprovisionally eall words(2), whieh are elearlyseparated by stokes.

The accompanying word ending is anextreme example: on one side it oeeurs 12times, on the other only onee. Only one wordoeeurs on both sides. (see figure 2)

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Both sides of the Phaistos disk

ON THE OTHER hand there are the obviousaffmities, or similarities, between the texts onboth sides. As aJready mentioned, 24characters of 45 occur on both sides.Frequencies of word lengths (number ofcharacters per word) are roughly similar. Theexceptions will be commented u on m a

moment. The number of words per each side(31 against 30) is nearly the same.The exceptions, i.e. dissimilarities withrespect to frequency of word 1engths are thewords of 6 and 7 characters. These (a total of5) occur only on the so-called front side, i.e.where the eight-petalled flower is the firstcharacter in the middle of the disk. Generallyone can say that for this side we find a moreevenly distributed spectrum of word length,whereas on the so-called reverse side thereoccur (with only one exception) only wordsof 3, 4 and 5 characters.There must be a plausible explanation for thisunusual coincidence of similarities anddissimilarities. How to account for them?When we compare two pages of any book,written in whatever language, we wouldnever find comparable dissimilarities.THEREFORE, as a tentative explanation forthis unusual coincidence of similarities anddissimilarities, the author proposes the thesisthat we have here, with the inscriptions onboth sides of the Phaistos disk, two te"h1:s intwo different, albeit related languages,written in two different but related, probablysyllabic "alphabets".On doser inspection, however, we can easilysee that the texts on both si des of the diskcannot possibly constitute only two, more orless identical versions in two differentlanguages. This can be inferred e.g . from thefact that the word sequence (see figure 3)occurs two tim es on the so-called front side,whereas in the text on the so-called reverseside we do not find such a configuration.Other considerations with respect tofrequency (reappearance) and place, in thetexts, of certain words confirm tbiscondusion.

In other words: the Phaistos disk could not,then, be a true bilingual document in thesense ofthe famous Rosetta stone.

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OUR UNIQUE, disk-shaped burnt cIaytablet, which bad been found 1908 in theruined Minoan fortress of Phaistos, on thesouth coast of Crete, has so far remained asolitary fmd. But quite obviously it cannot bewithout companions. The characters havebeen imprinted, into the then still soft cIay,by means of a set of stamps. Nobody takesthe trouble to make 45 (or perhaps 46, sinceone additional character is illegible) "letter"stamps, when he wants only to inscribe twolittle texts on a solitary cIay tablet. We haveto take it for granted that many moresimilarly inscribed objects have beenproduced by the civilisation which left for usthis enigmatic disko

BUT WHERE are these many more, as yetunlocated companions or counterparts of thePhaistos disk?According to experts(3) the fme-grained c1ay,from which our disk-shaped tablet was made,cannot possibly be of Cretan origin. Neithercan our object hail from somewhere in theeastern Mediterranean or Near East, or fromsouthem Italy, Sicily, Sardinia or Corsica,because the many excavations in theseregions would have long aga unearthed atleast some more artefacts with similarinscriptions.THE ONLY remammg, viable propositionseerns, then, to be the thesis that we will haveto look for the country of origin of thePhaistos disk farther to the West, beyond theItalian peninsula and Sardinia. First candidatethere would be the Iberian Peninsula.The pictorial inventory, which we fmd on thePhaistos disk, seems to be compatible withsuch a thesis for its geographical origin.It goes without saying that there was noproblem, during Mycenaean-Minoan times,for ships from the Iberian Peninsula to reachCrete. The geographical distribution of acertain type of very ancient steppedpyramids, from the Canary Islands throughthe Mediterranean to the Peloponnese, which

has recently come to our knowledge(4), isproof that the nautical and shipbuildingabilities of the ancient Mediterranean peopleshave been grossly underestimated.

BESIDES TI-IERE has been presented byDayton(5) and Touchet(6) good evidence fora scenario, in wruch a more or lesscontinuous West-East spread or dispersion ofpeoples, languages (especially of HamitoSemitic character), and teclmologies in theancient Mediterranean has been the normrather than the exception. This scenario hasnot received the favourable reception itdeserves, because it contradicts that versionof the ex-oriente-lux paradigm whicb is stillthe credo of the mainstream. It is, however,corroborated by the view of the weIl-knownMunich linguist Vennemann who statesexplicitly that, from linguistic considerations,he sees no other choice than to place theoriginal homeland of the Semites, and theircenter of diffusion, in the Iberian West(7). Inhis view they had a rather advanced,seafaring civilization there.IN SUCH A scenario it wou Id, then, be nogreat miracIe how the Phaistos disk, if indeedof Iberian origin, could have arrived at thatCretan fortress-cum-harbour town. A skepticmight of course, and understandably, ask:But why the Iberian Peninsula, where therehave not been found similarly inscribedartefacts either? Isn't that highly speculative?

To this could be answered: Speculative, in asense, yes. But not highly. The situation inthe central or eastern Mediterranean or NearEastern regions is quite another than that forthe Iberian Peninsula. In the former caseinnumerable archaeological excavationswould have unearthed at least somecompanions or counterparts of the Phaistosdisk, if there had been any. On the Europeanand African mainlands to the north and southof Crete we know of no culture which couldhave produced the disk, with its typicalpictorial inventory. The only remaining

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possibility seems to IberianWest.But why should then similarly objects nothave found

ANSWER could be: We wouldhave to lookbottom the seas. Because wehave a serious problem with the IberianPeninsula and of the ofGibraltar. The regions may havefrom geological of a tectonicnature as late as Minoan times. This is atleast postulated, impressive byTopper(8) and de Sarre(9). It wouldconstitute a parallel case to destruction ofthe original lndus civilization, by similargeological upheavals, conventionally to1900 after which the center ofIndic civilization lndus and""r,.."umn rivers to its new area inplain(lO). Similarly, de Sarreintermittent disturbanees,around this time, of the region the Strait ofGibraltar, which even a broadlandbridge for a limited period, and Toppertraces highly unusualdestructions which characterize many

of late prehistoric, ratheradvanced Iberian civilizations.non-Establishments scholars showthemselves so by the relevantevidence that they even seriously, though ofcourse possibility ofa local impact the Atlantic somewhere tothe west of Iberian as afor geological changes and destruction ofsuch

IF THJS should be so, we would have toreckon with the possibility that lands in theIberian West, were thrived localadvanced civilizations, ie now on the bottomof the seas, or may have beenaway or by and sand, e.g.alluvial plain around mouthof the Guadalquivir Sevi1la,

Vol. I, Issue Number 5,2001

and Huelva), the action of impacttriggered tsunamis.

IT IS IN nearly equ i lateralbetween Sevilla, Cadiz, and Huelva, where(buried under debris) Schulten andothers, theTarshish, asuspected.And it indeed, the author's opinlon itis absolutely to if notthe Phaistos disk might be a relict fromThe pictorial inventory of ourroughly disk-shaped clay tablet could fit thethesis it was made by ancivilization of Minoan times. 1 feel mostwho are knowledgeable in this

wou Id logicalof the twothe Phaistos of theSemitic family. At ourconventional scheme of things. inpeoplesthen

however, also theresearches and deci pherments ofSchildmann( 11) into our ofpossibilities, which have to be reckoned with,it cannot that colonizingSanskrit-speakers from lndia had alreadyvery arrived, on a routearound Africa, in the Iberian Peninsula,where they would possibly(by meansnatives overwhelming charisma) in givingbirth to Sanskrit-related, creolized ("IndoEuropean")All this is of course, speculative, but asit so to speak, qualifiedtext on the so-ca lIeddisk, where the words of


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6 and 7in an "Indo(though not related viaany "evolutionary tree" with any "Ianguagefamily", the text on so-ealled reverse sidepossibly in a or Hamito-Semitie

language. Via the substratum theywould, however, beis still

know Phaistos disk will, asa

of the matterwhieh should consideration.Such an objectas we aneientprobably have texts religious nature oni1.

SINCE WE HA VE seentexts on thebe identicalone being so toother, we have to that thosedifferent ethno-linguistic groups, wh ichthese languages, had also differentbelief systems, probablypantheons.

were so, wemight suspect to such aninternational, mUllIl-emll1lC center oftrade as Tarshish is described in the OldTestament. were not onlylanguages in use, but also differentpresent.Did pre-Columbian America also belong tothose distant with whiehor aneienttrade contacts?EVIDENCE pre-Columbiandiffusion between the Old and the New

has

the journal American" haspublished a comparative listing ofcharacters Phaistos diskvery similar ideograms(13),already reproducedPellech(14) 4), and ISalso reproducedIF THIS indeed so, we wouldthen have additional evidence of culturaldiffusionand

pre-Co lumbianpostulated by

comparativeAmerican" drisas willawing inrather clumsily orcarelesslyglven,is notIt is toa goodprecedingwill publish a moreand bett ercomparison of these

ideograms the characters on thePhaistos Only then will we in aposition to pronouncewriting "'I"" ...rn

l U L ' ~ U l l , " , 0 0 , orwith

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. ' .,' ,~

C o m p a r ~ t i v ~ ~ i B t L n g o f Aztec i d e o g r ~ m 5I od Miooan Cre t an c h ~ r ~ c t e r B . obv i u ~ ~ yt akea from tb e Pha i s t o s d i sk ( A N ~ I L N T',M..o:R.lCkN No .1 2 , 1996 )

Figure 4

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MAIN PUBLICATIONSSelection with to cultural diffusion1981: An Alphabet the 1 -


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Was the Language Atlanto-European Culture an Ancient Semitic? Or: The v,." , t"pn ' l theAtlanto-Semites. EPIGRAPfrrC Vol.! OlNo.l.1997: Wo sind geblieben? SYNESIS NO.21.Waren an manichisch-buddhistischeEFODONJahrhundert-Irrtum Hohenpeienberg (EFODON). 1998: Die alten Hochkulturen standen in KonL:'lkt! SYNESIS NO.26. European Non-Establishment Research in Prehistory Ancient Chronology. EPIGRAPIDCH VoI.101N0.2.

Egypt and on theCivilizations VoL 11.

REFERENCESI) Ernst Doblhofer: und Wunder. Die verschollener Schriften und

Sprachen. Munich 1 p.259.2) This is e.g. of Johannes Friedrich verschollenerund Sprachen. Berlin-Gttingen-Heidelberg 1954. p. 134.

According to cit.

4) Cf. Dominique Schilfboot Abora. den Wind unHamburg 2000. pp.5) lohn Dayton: Metals Glazing & Man. London 16) lacques Touchet: La Mystification. Published "h


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10) Georg Feuerstein. Subhash Kak & David Frawley: In Search of the Cradle of Civilisation.WheatonlIllinois (USA) 1995. pp. 87-97.

11) Kurt Schildmarm: InduslBurrows Cave (USA) Deciphering. Studia Orientalia et IndoAtlantica, F ascicle 1, Borm 1998. By the same author: Entzifferung der Burrows Cave textein USA und der Glozel-Texte in Frankreich als Indus-Sanskrit-Texte. Borm 1998.

12) Pierre Honore (a pseudonym): Ich fand den Weissen Gott. Frankfurt am Main. 1961.13) This comparative presentation has been added, by the editor of the ANCIENTAMERlCAN, to an article by James P. Grimes: They did Write it Down: Pro-CoJumbianWritten Records of America.14) Christine Pellech: Die ersten Entdecker Amerikas. Der Kulturdiffusionismus. Frankfurt amMain (etc.) 1997. p. 422.

ZusammenfassungDie These de s Autors ist es, dass die Texte auf den beiden Seiten de s berhmten Diskus vonPhaistos (ein bislang nicht entziffertes Unikat) in zwei unterschiedlichen aber irgendwieverwandten Sprachen abgefasst sind, und zwar unter Verwendung von zwei unterschiedlichenaber verwandten Silbenschrift-,,Alphabeten".Nur etwas mehr als die Hlfte de r Schriftzeichen kommt auf beiden Seiten vor. DieHufigkeit, mit der die Zeichen vorkommen, ist fr die beiden Seiten sehr unhnlich.Ebenfalls sehr unhnlich ist die Verteilung der Wortlngen. Nur ein einziges Wort kommt aufbeiden Seiten vor. Alles dies passt nicht zu der Annahme, dass die Texte aufbeiden Seiten inderselben Sprache und Schrift abgefasst seien.Eine Herkunft des Diskus aus mediterranen oder nahstlichen Lndern stlich von Sardinien(einschlielich Kreta) wird als hchst unwahrscheinlich verworfen, da bei den ungezhltenAusgrabungen dort dann schon lngst Parallelfunde htten gemacht werden mssen. Stattdessen wird aufgrund verschiedener Betrachtungen vermutet, dass das Herkunftsland de sDiskus nu r im iberischen Westen, im weiteren Sinne, liegen knne. Nur dort drften wir indieser Sicht der Dinge also hoffen, hnlich beschriftete Artefakte zu finden. Als eineMglichkeit wird auf die Alluvialebene zwischen Sevilla, Cadiz und Huelva an der Mndungde s Guadalquivir hingewiesen, unter der nach einigen Gelehrten die im Alten Testamenterwhnte Seehandelsmetropole T arshish-T artessos begraben sein soll.

Correspondence address: Dr. Horst Friedrich

Hauptstr.52 D-82237 W rthsee Gennany

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The Phaistos Disk Friedrich, Horst