{"id":3633,"date":"2011-09-06T23:48:50","date_gmt":"2011-09-07T03:48:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=3633"},"modified":"2018-08-04T21:28:06","modified_gmt":"2018-08-05T01:28:06","slug":"monday-september-6-2011-phaestos-and-aghia-triada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=3633","title":{"rendered":"Monday, September 6, 2011 \u2014 The Mysterious Disk"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>

The Phaestos Disk<\/p><\/div>\n

We relaxed for a day, catch\u00ading up on sleep, then engag\u00ading in noth\u00ading more stren\u00adu\u00adous than writ\u00ading, sip\u00adping kafe hel\u00adlenikos<\/em>, and enjoy\u00ading the beach\u00ades. Aghios Pav\u00adlos can only be reached by a wind\u00ading moun\u00adtain road, and the coast here is rough, with only an occa\u00adsion\u00adal cove. There is per\u00adpet\u00adu\u00adal wind, a bless\u00ading in the Cre\u00adtan heat, but the hotel must keep bas\u00adkets of rocks even in the office, to hold down papers, and table\u00adcloths are clamped to tables. The beach\u00ades are civ\u00adi\u00adlized (i.e., cloth\u00ading option\u00adal) and have only a few bathers at a time. Coves are sep\u00ada\u00adrat\u00aded by geo\u00adlog\u00adi\u00adcal\u00adly inter\u00adest\u00ading and visu\u00adal\u00adly pleas\u00ading rock formations.<\/p>\n

The hotel\u2019s man\u00adag\u00ader made a few phone calls for us, and arranged for us to rent a car with\u00adout the usu\u00adal papers. If this is true, there will be no dif\u00adfi\u00adcul\u00adty reach\u00ading the remain\u00ading archae\u00ado\u00adlog\u00adi\u00adcal sites I want to see.<\/p>\n

The food is excel\u00adlent, but, with my late pet Stampy fresh in mem\u00ado\u00adry, I can\u2019t bring myself to eat any of the rab\u00adbit dish\u00ades. I stick to lamb. Hav\u00ading herd\u00aded, and been kicked by many a foul-tem\u00adpered sheep, I have no qualms about eat\u00ading them.<\/p>\n

In the local news\u00adpa\u00adper, there\u2019s an amaz\u00ading sto\u00adry. The Phaestos Disk has been trans\u00adlat\u00aded. This is a bronze disk, uncov\u00adered at Phaestos, bear\u00ading an inscrip\u00adtion in the unknown Minoan lan\u00adguage. It has defied deci\u00adpher\u00adment for near\u00adly a cen\u00adtu\u00adry. The two schol\u00adars respon\u00adsi\u00adble for solv\u00ading this are names known to me, and the arti\u00adcle seems gen\u00aduine, though of course not suf\u00adfi\u00adcient\u00adly tech\u00adni\u00adcal. But it appears that it is now proven that Minoan was an Indo-Euro\u00adpean lan\u00adguage. This has long been a the\u00ado\u00adry sup\u00adport\u00aded by a small minor\u00adi\u00adty of schol\u00adars, but nev\u00ader accept ed by the main\u00adstream. I pre\u00adsume that it places Minoan as a rel\u00ada\u00adtive of Luwian, and oth\u00ader Ana\u00adto\u00adlian lan\u00adguages. If this is the case, then the Minoans do not rep\u00adre\u00adsent an ancient \u201cpre-Indo-Euro\u00adpean\u201d stra\u00adtum in the region, but prob\u00ada\u00adbly were rel\u00ada\u00adtive\u00adly recent migrants to Crete before the flour\u00adish\u00ading of their urban civ\u00adi\u00adliza\u00adtion. The text on the disk is appar\u00adent\u00adly a prayer to the Moth\u00ader God\u00addess. [FALSE<\/span> ALARM<\/span>. The arti\u00adcle is not gen\u00aduine. I should have known bet\u00adter than to give cre\u00addence to a local Greek news\u00adpa\u00adper. The arti\u00adcle seems to be based on an April press release from Geor\u00adgia, and a dubi\u00adous trans\u00adla\u00adtion con\u00adnect\u00ading the disk\u2019s lan\u00adguage to West Kartwellian lan\u00adguages \u2014 which are not<\/em> Indo-Euro\u00adpean. The writ\u00aders of the arti\u00adcle con\u00adfuse \u201cCau\u00adca\u00adsic\u201d, \u201cCau\u00adcass\u00adian\u201d and \u201cIndo-Euro\u00adpean\u201d. This is jum\u00adbled up with ongo\u00ading work done by the British schol\u00adars, and they seem to be mis\u00adquot\u00aded, or flat\u00adly fal\u00adsi\u00adfied. The fact that the arti\u00adcle was trans\u00adlat\u00aded from Greek fur\u00adther mud\u00addies the whole thing.] <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The wild\u00adness and iso\u00adla\u00adtion of the south\u00adern coast suits our mood, espe\u00adcial\u00adly since we lack noth\u00ading in terms of comfort.<\/p>\n

\"Aghios<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We relaxed for a day, catch\u00ading up on sleep, then engag\u00ading in noth\u00ading more stren\u00adu\u00adous than writ\u00ading, sip\u00adping kafe hel\u00adlenikos, and enjoy\u00ading the beach\u00ades. Aghios Pav\u00adlos can only be reached by a wind\u00ading moun\u00adtain road, and the coast here is \u2026<\/p>\n

Read more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,927],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-blog","category-ap-blog-2011"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3633"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7673,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3633\/revisions\/7673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}