Cambridge Lecture to Shine New Light on Phaistos Disk

The disk dating to the Minoan period remained undeciphered for decades, but following ten years of work, two researchers claim to have cracked the code.


The results of a 10-year study by British linguist Gareth Owens and Oxford University phonetics professor John Coleman to decipher the famously enigmatic Phaistos Disk of Crete will be presented at Cambridge University on February 3 in a lecture titled “From Linear B to the Phaistos Disk.”

The disk was discovered during excavations at the site of the palace of Phaistos in 1908 and is dated to 1700 BC – the end of the middle period of the Minoan Bronze Age civilization.

 

The effort to decipher the script eluded experts for decades, but according to Owens, an expert on Minoan scripts, and Coleman they can now read “99 percent” of the text, which is a Minoan lyrical hymn to a goddess.

Owens has described the hymn as “the bible of Minoan Crete.”

This article was first published on ekathimerini.com



Read More

CULTURE & LIFESTYLE

Picasso Exhibition Brings “The Joy of Life” to Crete

A new exhibition at the Museum of Ancient Eleutherna explores...


Archaeology

New Exhibition Space Opens at the Acropolis Museum in Athens

The Acropolis Museum unveils its pioneering new exhibition space "Excavation...