143 



established beyond all doubt by Dr. McKenzie, the well-known 

 authority on remains of Minoan Crete. (2 ) 



It has been generally postulated in the past that our 

 Disk text contains a language akin to Lykian, but Professor 

 Hempl( 3 ) 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- 

 tion is actually to be read. With the exception of Macalister 

 and Hempl, scholars have asserted that the text was written 

 from the centre outwards, but the reason for their statements 

 is not at all clear, since the general rule to be followed in 

 translating hieroglyphical writings is to read towards the 

 direction in which the characters, such as men, animals, birds,, 

 etc., face. There is no evidence in the Disk to justify a 

 departure from this rule. 



In accordance with the procedure adopted by previous 7 

 writers on the subject, I first tried to decipher the inscription 

 with the aid of some Anatolian language, but made no head- 

 way. Knowing, of course, that the text was not Minoan, I 

 looked among various other early Mediterranean writings for' 

 help, with the result that when I came to examine the linear" 

 characters of Cyprus I was at once struck with the great 

 similarity which exists between certain of these and certain of 

 the Disk pictorial characters. 



I immediately followed up the clue thus afforded me, and 

 in the accompanying plates, as well as in my detailed descrip- 

 tions of certain signs to be given hereafter, will be seen 

 analogies which, I think it must be allowed, prove beyond all 

 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. 



Now as the object is said to have been found in the Cretan 

 Middle Minoan III.W strata, this means that if its date is the* 



(2) All remains of the pre-Homeric period of Crete (i.e., the era 

 before the advent of the iron-using Indo-Europeans in B.C. 1200) 

 are termed "Minoan," after the name of the mythical king Minos r 

 who is supposed to have once ruled in that island. The Minoan 

 Age is really the Bronze Age of Crete, and is divided into three 

 eras, viz., Early Minoan, Middle Minoan, and Late Minoan. See 

 Table A. 



(3) "The Solving of an Ancient Riddle — Ionic Greek before 

 Homer." Harper's Magazine, January, 1911. 



(4) See Table A. 



