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• Talk:Phaistos Disc/Archive1: discussion of unicity distance, minimal length for decipherment
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dispute over notability of J. Faucounau's reading

Phaistos Disc received a peer review by Misplaced Pages editors, which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.

text in glyphs

unsure how to represent the rtl reading. Maybe we should mirror the glyphs after all, since rtl reading seems to be general consensus? At the moment I'm trying breaking the text into lines, but small browser windows will mess it up. dab (ᛏ) 11:22, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Would it be asking too much of the readers, especially since we list the numerical form rtl, simply to read backward? Septentrionalis 21:45, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

what do you mean? The numerical transcription runs ltr. The problem with rtl is not the reader, but the rendition in the browser, since things tend to get messed up at linebreaks. The above sample now has three words per line to avoid this, but if you make your browser window narrow enough, you will see what I mean. dab (ᛏ) 21:53, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

The numerical form has words beginning with 02/Mohican; here you end with it. Have I got r and l mized up? Septentrionalis

The reading direction has changed. On the article the nummers are written left to right. Here the glyphs are written form right to left. Here also the words start with the Mohican. Kadmos 03:52, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

the numbers are ltr, like English. The glyhps are rtl like Hebrew. Your 02 top left of the numbers is the Mohican top right: This is what I'm talking about, if we keep the original glyph orientation, they read rtl. Timm on kereti.de has mirrored them so he can present the text ltr. I uploaded them in the original orientation because it could be conceived as "pov" to favour inwards reading direction. But since the scholarly consensus is "inwards" anyway, it may be better to mirror the glyphs after all. If somebody re-uploads all glyphs mirrored I won't mind, but I can't be bothered to do it. dab (ᛏ) 07:38, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

voices of the scholary world, 20 years ago

John Chadwick: "A few decipherments have been proposed using known languages, including a few based upon Greek, despite the obvious improbability of such a solution at this date. What is worse, their authors are rarely aware of what Greek would look like at this period, at least four hundred years before Mycenaean." Linear B and Releated Scripts, 1987, p. 61.

John Chadwick: "My own view, shared by all serious scholars, is that the Disk is undecipherable so long as it remains an isolated document. Only a large increase in the number of inscriptions will permit real progress towards a decipherment. Meanwhile, we must curb our impatience, and admit that if King Minos himself were to reveal to someone in a dream the true interpretation, it woul be quite impossible for him to convince anyone else that his was the one and only possible solution." Linear B and Releated Scripts, 1987, p. 61. -- (Kadmos 07:15, 4 March 2006 (UTC))

should be quoted. At least the "dream Minos" bit is proverbial :) dab (ᛏ) 07:52, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

What Evans actually said

A. Evans: "That there is a general parallelism in appeareance between the signs on the Disk and those on the Cretan seal-stones is evident. So too they divide themselves into much the same categories, such as human and animal figures or their parts, arms and implements, domestic utensils and vegetable signs. But when we come to compare the figures in detail with those of the Minoan hieroglyhic signary a very great discrepancy is observable." Scripta Minoa p. 24

A. Evans: "The humean figures in their outline and costume are non-Minoan. We miss the pinched-in waist, and the female figure especially is marked by an extraordinary breadth of body." Scripta Minoa p. 25

A. Evans: "Still more divergent from all known examples of Minoan dress is that of the woman. It differs not only in its general broad outline, already noticed, but in almost every detail." Scripta Minoa p. 25

A. Evans: "The represantation of the ship also differs from all similar designs that occur either among the hieroglyphic or the linear documents of Crete." Scripta Minoa p. 25

A. Evans: "According to this view the Disk should rather be regarded as a record of a peaceful connection between the Minoan lords of Phaestos and some neighbouring race enjoying a parallel form of civilisation than as an evidence of hostile occupation. As to the direction in which this race is to be sought, the indications at our disposal may be thought to point to the Western coastlands of Asia Minor." Scripta Minoa p. 27 Kadmos 09:32, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks to you, Kadmos for these quotes. I greet our honesty, and apologize for having included you in the pack of wolves, with Latinus and the 80.237.152.53 anon. (User 80.90.57.154 O9: 35, 24 March)

Phaistos in Unicode?

I'm curious to know whether you think a case can be made for formally encoding Phaistos in Unicode. Be specific yea or nay. Thanks Evertype 13:48, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

yea, I am sure a case can be made, unless they have an explicit policy against incorporating undeciphered writing systems. It's a clear set of 47 symbols (45 glyphs, the stroke and the "word" separator. 48 with Best's name marker). It is clearly notable (there are dozens of books and hundreds of journal articles dedicated to it). If such a proposal is made, however, it would be practical to submit it as part of a proposal to encode Cretan hieroglyphs. With the 1996 CHIC (see article), there is a clearly numbered glyph inventory of some 150 glyphs. If the Phaistos glyphs are included in the proposal as extra signs, it would amount to some 200 glyphs, all documented and numbered in academic literature, so that it would seem sensible to propose a 8-bit block of "Cretan hieroglyphics". Is there any proposal to include Luwian hieroglyphs btw? That's after all a deciphered script with a rather larger corpus than the Cretan stuff. dab (ᛏ) 14:50, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't have information on the other Cretan materials, but in view of its status, I think keeping Phaistos Disc characters on their own is the only way to get it through. I'm interested in building the case. Evertype 23:29, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Archived

If any other material needs to be retrieved from archive, please do so. Septentrionalis 23:41, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Back to the motives of the last editwar

In order to progress in the search of a solution, I believe it is important to come back to the motive which has lead lastly to an editwar and to the blocking of the article. The dispute began on March 23, at 04H40, when Pmanderson took as a pretext a small modification for deleting at the same time a sentence, existting in the paragraph "Original invention or derivation". Here is the said sentence :

J.Faucounau favours a non-Cretan, Aegean, acrophonic writing, which would be an original invention, but possibly inspired by the Egyptian Hieroglyphic script..

One may wonder : what is so shocking in this sentence to justify a deletion, if not to favour the adverse POV, i.e. that the Disk's script could not be the original invention of an Aegean, but not Minoan people, and therefore that it has to be Minoan (or possibly Luwian). It's to be noticed that Dbachmann has accepted the first part of the sentence, but deleted "possibly inspired by the Egyptian Hieroglyphic script". This is equivalent to disparage the said solution, making it appear "as coming from nothing", what is obviously absurd. Because, as G.Ipsen remarked, such an evoluted script cannot have been invented out of nothing.

The only motive given for this deletion is that the J.F.'s name would be sufficiently mentioned in the article. Well, I would be glad if another author could have been quoted, concerning the attribution of the Disk's script to a non-Minoan, Cycladic people, in close relationship with Crete and Anatolia. Unhappily, there is none but Faure, but in his review of J.F.'s book, what brings us back to square one. This is why the motive given for the deletion cannot be accepted in my opinion, and why the deletion appears as just a pretext to favour one POV at the detriment of another. This is not respecting the WP spirit and NPOV rule. I hope to be followed by a majority on this point.

Another motive of the warring has been the deletion of the following sentence :

Jean Faucounau has proposed a reconstruction of the scribe's movements, which would also require an inward direction.

Here again, what is so shocking with this sentence ? The mention of the J.F.'s name, I suppose. But here again, J.F. has been the only one to care about such a reconstruction of the scribe's moves taking into account all the epigraphical facts. It's not my fault if the other scholars have almost totally neglected this way to reach the truth concerning the Reading Direction... For very good reasons : the would-be decipherers who wanted to read the text left-to-right have surely noticed that there was no possible reconstruction of the scribe's moves in accordance with their hypothesis. As for the others, why caring about such a problem, when they were following the general consensus ? So, the fact is that J.F. has been the only one to examine the problem. Find somebody else who has dealt with the scribe's moves problem, and I'll not object putting his name in place of J.F.'s. one. But I strongly object deleting a useful information to the WP reader. This is against the WP spirit. (User 80.90.57.154, 16:22, March 25, 2006)

"J.Faucounau favours a non-Cretan, Aegean, acrophonic writing, which would be an original invention, but possibly inspired by the Egyptian Hieroglyphic script." This sentence deserves deletion because it is about J. Faucounau, not about the Phaistos Disc. Furthermore, for this to be interesting, there would need to be information as to why we should know that it is "acrophonic" and how there should be any relationship to Egyptian. Since there is no information about either of those things, it seems clear that this sentence is about J. Faucounau, and not about the Phaistos Disc, and that isn't very interesting. Evertype 19:16, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

You blaspheme in the name of JF - I admire your courage ;-) --Latinus 19:42, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

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