The Phaistos Disc, probably dating back to the 17th century, gradually reveals its secrets. The linguist Dr. Gareth Owens, who has been living in Crete for the past 30 years (25 working in the Technical University of Crete and the last 10 as Erasmus + coordinator), has devoted his research to decipher the disc. In fact, in collaboration with Professor John Coleman, professor of phonetics at Oxford, he has managed to decipher the disc in a 99 percentage.
“We are reading the Phaistos disc with the vocal values of Linear B and with the help of comparative linguistics, ie comparing with other relative languages from the Indo-European language family. Reading something, however, does not mean understanding,” Owens said in an interview with the Athens-Macedonian News Agency on the occasion of his speech to the National Research Foundation on Wednesday, February 7.
“The Disc of Phaistos is written in the Minoan script that records the Minoan language. This is the best sample of ‘Cretan hieroglyphics’, always in quotes, because it is not the writing system of ancient Egypt. The name is wrong. The scripts of the Phaistos Disc is also Minoan Linear A,” he added.
Moreover, he noted that the sound syllables from the disc have been recorded “because I want people to hear them. Minoan is not a dead language. Knossos, Phaistos, Crete are Minoan words, as well as many still used today.”
Source: thegreekobserver
