Re: The Phaistos Disk

Dear Sirs,


Since I'm a new subscriber to this mailing list, I'm introducing myself
before giving my small contribute to the "Phaistos Disk" thread.
I'm a 24 y.o. student in Classics at the Universitas Studiorum Mediolenensis
in Milan, Italy. I'm taking my degee in Greek Literature in a few months
with a thesis about the image of the city in Pindar's odes. Although I'm
studying most of all Greek Philology and Literature, I've always been fond
of lingusitic studies, and I took three courses of Linguistics and two of
Greek Grammar in the last years.
I've read several posts to the Cyba mailing list and I'm aware my knowledge
in Lingusistics are much smaller than the ones of the scholars of this list,
so I think I'll be silent and hear most times... however I'd like to ask you
some questions about the "Phaistos Disk" topic.

The last book I read about the Disk is Louis Godart's "Il disco di Festo -
L'enigma di una scrittura", Turin, 1994.
In his interesting book Godart refuses to give any answer about the nature
of the language used for the inscriptions, and gives instead some
interesting and -according to him-almost irrefutable data about the matter
of the Disk and the inscription on it.

Godart states that:

1) the Disk is made of a very fine quality of clay, much better than the one
used for the Linear B tablets.

2) furthermore, the clay of the Disk was cooked and not sun-dried, like the
one of the tablets (Linear B tablets have usually been preserved from
distruction because they were fortuitously cooked by fires)

3) the matrixes used to impress the sign on the disk were very likely made
of GOLD, since the shape of the pictograms is very clear and no sign of
bevelling in the stancils can be found. The only materials able to provide
this are gold or mild stone, beeing however the latter definitely too hard
to be worked to give all the particulars the Disk's pictograms have.

4) the Disk was found in a kind of hiding-place very similar to those used
in Hagia-Triada palace to hide the treasure (bronze talents). Thus is is
possible that those "boxes" was conceived to keep precious items...

5) the alphabet used for the Disk should be syllabic.

6) it must be read from the border to the centre, i.e. from right to left.
The first side is the "side A", the second one is the "side B" (whose text
should be the continuation of the first one)

7) it was written in a period from 1550 B.C. and the XIIIth century B.C.

Have you any comments or corrections about these data given by Godart?

Yours sincerely

Nicola De Grandi