Re: The Phaistos Disk, side A, according to Fischer

From: Jacques Guy (jguy_at_alphalink.com.au)
Date: 07/09/04 

Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2004 10:44:53 -0700

Qakare wrote:
>
> grapheus@www.com (grapheus) wrote in message news:<337ae51f.0407080403.1b91e296@posting.google.com>...

 
> > Here is, in contrast, what J. Faucounau wrote concerning his choice of
> > Greek (Translation from French and emphasis are mine) : "A first round
> > of Statistical Calculations, *which lasted more than four years*,
 
> What do you want to say with *which lasted more than four years*?

It means "assembling, disassembling and reassembling the puzzle
in a zillion different ways until most of the pieces fit" and then,
as wrote not long ago, plugging the remaining holes with
hapax legomena assigned ad hoc phonetic values. (I must lay my
hand on Chadwick's Japanese "decipherment" for I doubt that
_he_ wasted four years on his conundrum). In other words, it
is a typical case of overfitting the data, and since the
data are pretty scanty, it should not take 4 years.
>
> > convinced me that Greek was the language which seemed the most in
> > accordance with the statistical data of the Disk"...
> > Eloquent comparison, is it not ?..
 
> As long as Faucounau does not publish his calculations in detail such
> a statement is worth nothing.

All the more so that a syllabary is a rotten fit for languages
such as Greek ("pe-mo" for "spermon" for instance, as in Linear B).

> The problem with that is, that a "round shield" was unknown at the
> time of the Phaistos Disc. At this time only rectangular shields are
> known. Therefore sign 12 is for sure not a shield.

I have held here that it represented the drum of a revolver,
which proved that Samuel Colt also invented the Time Machine.
Less zanily, it could be a wheel.

> A sign with a
> circle and some dots can also be found in the luwian hieroglyphic
> script (sign 181). There it is used as a Ideogram for bread

Bread? Wow! Et pourquoi pas? it's not very far off from a
typical Australian meat pie either.

Now take sign 25 "boat". Faucounau's phonetic value is "re".
He says it is unexpected: you'd expect "na" (<naus). So he
makes up an unattested "rheu-naus", from "eresw" (to row).
A fine example of how you can cobble any acrophonic scheme
out of any "decipherment".

(Actually, I had started deciphering the Disk the other
day, and I took that "boat" to be an ass's jaw--the
fellow with the spiky hair was Samson of course, and
the "cat head" Delilah, obvious: she was both catty and
a piece of ***).