143 
established beyond all doubt by Dr. McKenzie, the well-known 
authority on remains of Minoan Crete. (2) 
t has been generally postulated in the past that our 
Disk text contains a language akin to Lykian, but Professor 
Hemp] ©) thinks it contains a form of early Greek. At the 
present stage of my investigations I am unable to prove whether 
or not the script is in either of these languages; but however, 
as we shall see presently, it seems more probable that the 
speech it represents was that of the autochthones of Cyprus, 
and that it may even possess a few Ionian or Assyrian words. 
There is another point on which agreement has not been 
reached, and that concerns the direction in which the inscrip- 
irection in which the characters, such as men, animals, birds, 
etc., face. There is nó evidence in the Disk to justify a 
departure from this rule. : 
1 accordance with the procedure adopted by previous 
writers on the subject, I first tried to decipher the inscription 
With the aid of some Anatolian language, but made no head- 
ay. Knowing, of course, that the text was not Minoan, I 
doubt that the home of the Phaestos Disk is in Cyprus, and 
also that the pictographs on it are but archetypes of not a few 
Characters of the later syllabary of the island. 
ow as the object is said to have been found in the Cretan 
Middle Minoan III.(9 strata, this means that if its date 1s the 
(2 All remains of the pre-Homeric period of Crete (i.e., the era 
before the advent of the nose ndo-Eur s im B.c. 1200) 
are termed “Mingan.” 1 
who is supposed to have once ruled in that island. 
Age 1s really the Bronze Age of Crete, a | 
Table i Early Minoan, Middle Minoan, and Late Minoan. 
G) “The Solving of an Ancient Riddle—lonic Greek before 
Homer" Ha Ps Monnia January, 1911. 
(9 See Table A. 
