A computer-aided translation of the Phaistos Disk

Full text

Abstract—This paper presents a novel semi-automatic translation
method for the Phaistos Disk that had no convincing translation for
over a century. The method uses for a recently discovered connection
between the Phaistos Disk symbols and other ancient scripts,
including the Old Hungarian alphabet. The connection between the
Phaistos Disk script and the Old Hungarian alphabet suggested the
possibility that the Phaistos Disk language may be related to
Proto-Finno-Ugric, Proto-Ugric, or Proto-Hungarian. Using words
and suffixes from those languages, it is possible to translate the
Phaistos Disk text as an ancient sun hymns that are connected to a
winter solstice ceremony and a mythological explanation of the
perceived daily route of the Sun in the sky.
Keywords—Acrophonic principle, Cretan Hieroglyph, Linear A,
Linear B, Phaistos Disk, Proto-Finno-Ugric, Proto-Hungarian
I. INTRODUCTION
uigi Pernier discovered a fired clay flat round object with
an archaic form of writing at the Phaistos palace on the
island of Crete in 1908. The object called the Phaistos Disk
(also spelled Phaistos Disc) was the subject of several
decipherment or translation attempts that did not yield any
convincing results. For example, in their decipherment
attempts, Faucounau [8] and Fisher [9] assume an archaic
form of Greek, Aartun [1] assumes a Semitic language,
Achterberg et al. [2] assume Luwian, Kovar [14] uses
Proto-Slavic, Kvashilava [10] assumes Georgian, and Owens
[15] assumes some Indo-European language. Duhoux [5] is a
critique of previous decipherment attempts.
Not only does the language of the Phaistos Disk remain
unknown, but even its authenticity was questioned by some
reserchers [5]. However, most researchers agree with Duhoux
[4] that the Phaistos Disk is a Bronze Age Minoan artifact
created between 1850 B.C. and 1600 B.C. on the island of
Crete. The symbols on the disk have numerous connections to
other native Cretan writings, which were first classified by
Arthur Evans, the explorer of Knossos Palace, as Cretan
Hieroglyph, the Linear A and the Linear B scripts [7]. In 1952
Michael Ventris gave a decipherment of Linear B as described
in Chadwick [3]. Hooker [12] gives a good introduction to
Linear B. The Cretan Hieroglyph [24] and the Linear A
scripts are also not deciphered.
Peter Z. Revesz is with the Department of Computer Science and
Engineering, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE 68588, USA
(revesz@cse.unl.edu). A preliminary version of this paper was presented at
the AMCSE conference in Agios Nikolaos, Crete, Greece in October 2015
[19].
Most decipherment attempts relied heavily on the
acrophonic principle, which is the taking of the first sound of a
word referred to by an object. The acrophonic principle has
several problems. First, a symbol may be interpreted as
denoting many different objects. Second, the depicted object
could have many synonyms in the native language. Third,
each of the synonym words may have gone through a
linguistic development where the initial sound changed. The
combination of these three problems almost guarantees that
we can derive by the acrophonic principle numerous
beginning sounds for each symbol.
In this paper we give a translation of the Phaistos Disk.
Unlike previous decipherment attempts, our decipherment
relies only minimally on the acrophonic principle. Instead, we
use the already established correspondences between Cretan
writing symbols and other ancient scripts with known sound
values [18]. These other ancient scripts include the Phoenician
[22], the South Arabic [23], the Greek and the Old Hungarian
(see Forrai [11] and Varga [21]) alphabets.
Our approach to the translation of the Phaistos Disk is
guided by our previous study of biological evolution [16], [17],
[20]. The sound changes within a word are similar to genetic
mutations. While many mispronunciations of words are
possible, certain mispronunciations are easier to produce than
others spread more easily. Similarly, while many types of
mutations could occur on a genome, only the beneficial
mutations are likely to spread to successive generations of
descendants.
This paper is organized as follows. Section II outlines a
semi-automatic translation method. Section III describes a
transliteration of the Phaistos Disk text. Section IV describes a
basic dictionary of Proto-Finno-Ugric and Proto-Hungarian
words and suffixes and their consonant base representation.
Section V presents the translation of the Phaistos Disk using
the dictionary. Finally Section VI gives some conclusions and
directions for future work.
II. THE TRANSLATION METHOD
We outline below a five-step translation method for the
Phaistos disk.
1. Transliterate the symbols on the Phaistos disk using
the sound correspondences recently identified in [18].
Some symbols with unknown sound values are not
transliterated but are denoted by numbers.
A Computer-Aided Translation of the Phaistos
Disk
Peter Z. Revesz
L
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ISSN: 1998-4308
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Watch associated YouTube video “Breakthrough Decipherment of Minoan Linear A and Cretan Hieroglyphs”

2. Set up a Proto-Finno-Ugric and Proto-Hungarian
dictionary. The dictionary needs to include the most
common and oldest prefixes and suffixes.
3. For each word in the dictionary find its consonant
base.
4. Find matches between the transliterated text and the
words in the dictionary. In the match only the
consonant bases are used and vowels are ignored.
Each symbol with an unknown sound value can be
matched to any consonant or vowel sound, but it has
to take the same (or similar) sound value at each of
its occurrence. Choose between alternatives based on
grammatical correctness.
5. Form sentences and translate them into a modern
form.
In the above method, Step 1 can be computerized because it
is a simple symbol substitution problem. Step 4 can be also
partially computerized because the matching between the
Phaistos Disk text and the dictionary requires string searching.
We can simply take each word in the dictionary and search for
all of its occurrences in the text. We used a simple string
searching computer program facilitate this matching process.
However, the selection of the best-fit word to each location of
the text requires some human judgment and grammatical
understanding. Some grammatical knowledge can be built into
computer software, like grammar checkers, but we did not
have anything available for Proto-Finno-Ugric and
Proto-Hungarian, which we presumed to be close relatives to
the Phaistos Disk language because of the connection between
the Phaistos Disk symbols and the letters of the Old Hungarian
alphabet [18].
III. A TRANSLITERATION OF THE PHAISTOS DISK
Arthur Evans [7] gave an enumeration of the forty-five
Phaistos Disk symbols, which are listed according to his order
in Figure 1. Below his enumeration, we added the putative
sound values based on a recent study of the similarities
between the Phaistos Disk symbols and some ancient script
symbols whose sound values are already known [18]. That
study did not include the sound value of symbol 28. We
assume that symbol 28 has a sound value of /l/ because it
shows a leg, which would be in Proto-Finno-Ugric *lu, from
which derives both Finnish luu (bone) and Hungarian láb (leg).
In addition, [18] assumed /r/ for symbol 9 in analogy with
Phoenician and South Arabic. However, the rhotacism /n/ à
/r/ occurs in many languages such as Aramaic. Hence we
assume that symbol 9 was /n/ originally.
Given the enumeration and the known sound values in
Figure 1, side A of the Phaistos Disk can be converted into the
following sequence when reading from the center to the edge
of the disk:
f-3-t
͡s m-13 u*-k-n-ʃ-ʃ-j*-k
f-3-t
͡s n-t-d m-13-j*-k
j*-p-ɲ t-17-s-ɒ ʃ-s-l-m-ʃ-j*-k
p-ɲ-j*-k m-l s-d-t
͡s-o-ʃ-k
p-ɲ-j*-k d-h u*-k-n-ʃ-ʃ-j*-k
p-ɲ-j*-k m-l s-d-t
͡s-o-ʃ-k
i-ʒ f-d-l-j*-k v-40-ɟ
͡ʝ-m n-t-ɟ
͡ʝ-j*-k
n-p-ɲ s-ɒ-j*-k ɛ-44-ʃ
j*-v-c
͡ç-ʃ h-40-4-j*-k m-j-j
v-c
͡ç-j j*-40-z s-m-13-j*-k
Similarly, side B can be converted into the following:
v-c
͡ç o-d-m-j v-d-n-ɒ-k
v-s-ʒ-b-n ɛ-v-r-j-g z-s-d-v
v-c
͡ç-v n-s-v o-d-m-ʃ ɛ-v-r-j-g
v-c
͡ç -j 13-ɛ-j
ɛ-v-r-j m-ʃ-n-k h-ʒ-l-n-ɒ
m-h-j s-m-16 n-20-z-z-j
m-f-o-ʃ 40-r-p-k n-40-z-v o-42-k-g
s-m-13-v-s h-ʒ-m-13
43-s-d-16 j*-20-z-h ʃ-o-g
5-d-k-k n-v-c
͡ç-ʃ v-40-g-j*-k
In the above, we highlighted in gray the words or phrases
that are repetitions of earlier words or phrases. These
highlighted parts of the text do not need a separate translation.
We also highlighted in bold the first letter of the words that
have below them a slash mark on the disk. The slash seems to
be added to the symbols by hand. When we break the text up
into lines such that the new lines start with the bold letters,
then we get in most lines three words or phrases, assuming
that each block of the disk is a word or short phrase. The
repetitions highlighted in gray tend to be exactly below their
earlier occurrences. Some of the repetitions may be refrains.
The structured gray repetitions and the relatively equal lengths
of the lines suggest that the text may be a poem or a song.
1
!
/m/
2
!
/k/
3
!
4
!
5
!
6
!
/ɒ/
7
!
/v/
8
!
/ɛ/
9
!
/n/
10
!
/t
͡s/
11
/i/
12
j*
13
14
/m/
15
/s/
16
17
18
/s/
19
/t/
20
21!
!
u*
22!
!
/g/
23!
!
/d/
24!
!
/z/
25!
!
/o/
26!
!
/p/
27!
!
/ʃ/
28!
!
/l/
29!
!
/j/
30!
!
/b/
31!
!
/ɲ/
32!
!
/l/
33!
!
/h/
34!
!
/m/
35!
!
/n/
36!
!
/r/
37!
!
/k/
38!
!
/f/
39!
!
/ʒ/
40!
!
/u/
41
/ɟ
͡ʝ/
42
43!
!
44!
!
45!
!
/c
͡ç/
Fig. 1 Each element in this matrix lists from top to bottom the
following corresponding triplet: A. Evan’s numbering, Phaistos
disk symbol, and IPA sound symbol. These associations are from
[18] except for symbol 28, which is new. Here j* means /j/, /jom/ or
/jon/, and u* means /u/ or /uz/.
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ISSN: 1998-4308
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IV. A PROTO-FINNO-UGRIC AND PROTO-HUNGARIAN WORD
AND SUFFIX DICTIONARY
We collected a set of Proto-Finno-Ugric, Proto-Ugric and
Proto-Hungarian words using the etymological dictionary
[25]. Each word was represented by a consonant base, which
was obtained by omitting the vowels. We also use the
convention of putting a star symbol before any word that is a
hypothetical proto word in any language. When it is necessary,
we indicate the source of each word by adding to the word the
name of the language in a superscript. For example, the
Proto-Ugric word *mälɛ (warm) was represented by the
consonant base m-l. The following table gives some examples
from the dictionary.
Base
Cognate or
Proto Word
Hungarian
Word
Meaning
-t
͡s
-ci
diminutive suffix
d-h
düh
anger
d-s
*ipsɛ
édes
sweet, dear
d-t
͡ʃ
dicső
glorious
f-j
*päŋɛ
fej > fő
head > chief
h-l
*kalɛ
hálo
fishing net
h-j
hajó
ship
h-j
*kajɛ
haj-ol
to bend
h-s
*kojćɛ
húsz
twenty
h-z
hätistääFinn
űz
chase
h-z
*kupɛ-tɛ
húz
pull
j
*eje
éj
night
j-n
*jäŋɛ
jön
come
j-n-k
-junk
1st person plural verb
suffix, present tense
j-v-t
*jomɛ
jó, javít
good, improve, help
k-g
*kućɛ
húgy
star
k-n-d
k-n-z
kende
kenėz
ruler
judge
l-n
lány
girl
m
m-t
maaFinnish
mataaFinnish
mászik
earth
crawl
m-l
*mälɛ
meleg
warm
m-l
*melɛ
mély
deep
m-n-d
mind
all
m-ʃ
*mu
más
other
m-ʃ-t
most
now
n-v-s
nousu
*növ > nő
ascentFinnish, grow
n-p
nap
sun
n-t
*jomɛ
indít
make sm start > plead
n-t
ümetölMansi
ünöt
int
protect
caution
n-z
*näke
néz
watch
ŋ
anya
mother
ŋ-l
*ŋele
nyel
swallow
ŋ-l
*ŋōle
nyíl
arrow
p-d-l
*pentɛlɛ
fedél
cover, protector
p-j
*päjɛ
fejér,
light, white
p-ŋ
fény
r-p
rop-og
crackle
r-p
r-p
räpyttäFinnish
rep-ūl
röp-ke
to fly
flying
ʃ
és, s
and
ʃ!
*ićä!
ős!
ancestor!
ʃ-b
seb-es
fast
ʃ-d-r
sodor
drift
ʃ-t
šitMansi
süt
bake, shine
ʃ-t
est
evening
s-k
*śakkɛ
szak
part, piece
s-l
*śalkɛ
szál
rod, thread
s-m
*śomɛrɛ
szomorú
sad
t-m
tuupataFinnish
tomb-ol
push, jump
t-v-s
!
tūjeMansi
tulisPermi!
tavasz!
spring!
v-l-g
*βalkɛ
villog
virrad
világ
to shine
to rise (Sun)
light, world
v-s!
*βiγe
visz
to take!
v-s
vissza
back, backward
v-t
*βete
wiťMansi
víz
water
v-t!
wootMansi
veivataFinnish!
!
wind!
z
izzó
hot
z
az
that, the
-z
*-t
-z
verb forming suffix
Unfortunately, the symbols used to describe the word
pronunciations in [25] do not follow the standard IPA
(International Phonetic Alphabet). Hence we changed some of
the vowel symbols in [25] to the corresponding IPA symbol.
Since the consonant symbols in [25] correspond much better
to the IPA, we left them intact in the table.
V. A TRANSLATION OF THE PHAISTOS DISK
A. Sound Changes
The Proto-Finno-Ugric language is assumed to have
undergone several sound changes in reaching the Proto-Ugric
and the Proto-Hungarian stage of language development. We
presume that the language of the Phaistos Disk is close to
Proto-Hungarian. Therefore, the language of the Phaistos Disk
shares some of the common sound changes that have been
identified between Proto-Finno-Ugric and Hungarian. Some of
the common sound changes include the following:
p > f
ŋ > j > i
t
͡ʃ > t
͡s
z > ʒ
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k > g > ɟ
͡ʝ
t > c
͡ç or t > z
Sometimes adjacent pairs of consonants change together in
predictable way. For example, the following is a relatively
common sound rule change:
*nt > nd > d > l
B. Matches between the Text and the Dictionary
The sound changes slightly influence the way we do string
searches. We need to search the Phaistos Disk text to find
both the exactly matches and the approximate matches where
some of the consonant sound were changed using the sound
change rules.
We also need to search for both root words and suffixes.
The suffixes are restricted to the end of the blocks into which
the Phaistos Disk is divided. The blocks are clearly indicated
on the disk by the scribe. Each block can be assumed to be
either a single word or a phrase. Words do not run across
blocks.
f-3-t
͡s m-13 u* k-n-ʃ-ʃ-j*-k
fő-3-ci mind az kenes-s-jün-k
chief 3 all the ruler-1PL.POSS
f-3-t
͡s n-t-d m-13-j*-k
ünöt-öd mind-jun-k
chief 3 protect-2SG all 1PL
j* p-ɲ t-17-s-ɒ ʃ-s-l m-ʃ-j*-k
jő fény tavasz-a süssél másik
come light spring-POSS shine again
p-ɲ-j*-k m-l s d-t
͡s-o ʃ-k
fény-jenek meleg s dicső szál-ak
shine-3PL warm and glorious ray-PL
p-ɲ-j*-k d-h u*-k-n-ʃ-ʃ-j*-k
düh
shine-3PL anger the ruler-1PL.POSS
p-ɲ-j*-k m-l s-d-t
͡s-o-ʃ-k
i-ʒ f-d-l-j*-k v-40-ɟ
͡ʝ-m n-t-ɟ
͡ʝ-j*-k
izzó fedel-jünk villog-ni indít-jūnk
hot cover-3PL.POSS rise-INF plead-1PL
n-p-ɲ s ɒ-j*-k ɛ-44-ʃ
napfé-ny ős anyá-nk édes
sunlight ancestor mother-3PL.POSS dear
j*-v-c
͡ç-ʃ h-40-4-j*-k m-j-j
javi-ss/javitys hálóink / hajóink mély
help fishing net/ship-3PL.POSS deep
v-c
͡ç-j j*-40-z s m-13-j*-k
víz-i jön-
water-LOC go-VERBALIZER and all-1PL
Fig. 2 A translation of Side A showing the result of matching the
text with proto-words from the dictionary using the consonant bases
with allowance for the sound rule changes described in the text and
root changes due to voice assimilation. The root words are
highlighted in yellow, the suffixes in blue, the voice assimilations in
green, and repeated elements in gray.
In the following, we use the following color highlighting.
Yellow – root word.
Blue – suffix.
Gray – repetitions of earlier words or phrases.
Green – voice assimilation of the root due to suffix.
Fig. 2 shows the result of the string matches color-coded
according to the above legend. We added some extra
grammatical markers that are not listed in the above
dictionary.
For example, in the middle of the third row the –a suffix
describe a possessive relationship similar to the English
possessive ‘s, but while the English language marks the
possessor, the Hungarian language marks the possessed object.
Hence the possessive phrase “fény tavasz-a” can be translated
as “light’s spring.” That phrase is meaningful if we recall that
the word “tavasz” derives from a rising of lake water levels
[25]. The “light’s spring” may have referred to either any
sunrise or a lengthening of the days after a winter solstice.
Similarly, side B can be analyzed as shown in Fig. 3.
v-c
͡ç o-d-m-j v-d-n-ɒ-k
víz tomb-ja woot-nak
water push-3SG wind-LOC
v-s ʒ-b-n ɛ-v-r-j-g z s-d-v
visz sebes-en Iberia-ig az est-ve
take-3SG fast-ADV Iberia-LOC the eve-ADJ
v-c
͡ç-v n-s-v o-d-m-ʃ ɛ-v-r-j-g
víz-ve tomb-sz
water-ADJ … push-2SG Iberia- LOC
v-c
͡ç -j 13-ɛ-j
nede-j
water-3SG.POSS swallow-3SG
ɛ-v-r-j m-ʃ-n-k h-ʒ l-n-ɒ
mas-nak húsz lánya
Iberia .…-POSS twenty girl-3SG.POSS
m-h-j s-m-16 n-20-z-z-j m-f-o-ʃ
meg-haj-ol szomorú néz-zi ma-
bend sad watch-3SG earth-….
40-r-p-k n-40-z-v o-42-k-g
…röp-ke nyilazva húgy
fly-NOUNFORMER arrow-VERBALIZER-ADV star
s m-13 v-s h-ʒ m-13
és mind vissza húz/űz mind
and all back pull/chase all
43-s-d-16 j*-20-z-h ʃ-o-g
el-sodor éj-t-szaka Ázsiá-ig
away drift during night to Asia
5-d-k-k n-v-c
͡ç-ʃ v-40-g-j*-k
növ-ez-esz világ-unk
… ascent-VERBALIZER -2SG light-3PL.POSS
Fig. 3 A translation of side B with the same conditions and legend of
notation as in Fig. 2.
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ISSN: 1998-4308
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C. The Phaistos Disk as a Poem
Instead of a word-by-word rendering of the text, in this
section we give a translation of the text as a poem. From the
context, there is a suspicion that symbol 3 may refer to some
ancestor spirit or divinity, perhaps affectionately called with a
diminutive suffix if the ending -t
͡s is not part of the name.
Another possibility is that the name is a variant of Päike, the
name of the Sun in Estonian mythology.
In fact, the text seems to be a hymn to a solar divinity to
bring back (stronger) sunlight to the earth. This sun hymn on
side A of the Phaistos Disk may have been said at a winter
solstice ceremony. It can be translated into the following
poem:
A
Chief god of all, our ruler.
Chief god, you protect all of us.
Come light’s spring, shine again
Shine warm and glorious rays.
Light up strong, our ruler.
Shine warm and glorious rays.
For our hot cover, to rise we pray.
Sunlight, our dear ancestor mother,
Help our ships sailing on the seas
And all of us.
Side B is another poem about the Sun. There are a number
of observations that can be made before attempting a
translation.
In the first line, the “windward” direction probably means
“westward” because for a large part of Europe the prevailing
wind direction is from west to east.
In the second line, “Ibēr” is the native name of the Iberian
Peninsula, which is today’s Portugal and Spain.
In the fifth line, “mas” probably means some ruler and may
be translated as “king.” That name may be related to the
people names Magyar, the name by which Hungarians call
themselves, and Mansi, which both derive from an Ugric root
*maŋćɛ, which means “man, patriarch, tribe.”
In the sixth line, the meaning of “m-f-o-ʃ” can be guessed
from the context in which it occurs, namely, it is something
watched by the king’s daughters as the sun appears to be
swallowed by the sea. Hence the word’s likely meaning is
“horizon,” which is supported by the possible composition of
maaFinnish (earth) + päättyäFinnish (end)” with the plausible
sound changes p > f and tty > ʃ.
In the seventh line, the word “o-42-k-g” seems to refer to
some kind of star or star constellation. Since it is preceded by
the phrase “flying shooting arrows,” it seems to refer to
Sagittarius. The identification of “nyíl” (arrow) uses the same
“l” sound value for symbol 40 as was used on side A. The “l”
sound was the only surprise to us given our earlier established
sound values presented in [18]. This unexpected result may be
due to some conflation between symbol 28 and symbol 40.
Some authors describe symbol 40 as “ox back” because it
seems to show the behind of an ox. However, in that case, the
“ox back” is nothing more than two legs. Since symbol 28 is a
leg with sound value /l/, then symbol 40 would logically be a
doubling, that is /ll/ as occurs in “villog” in the seventh line of
side A.
In the last line, the word or phrase “5-d-k-k” is hard to
interpret because it starts with symbol 5, which occurs only
here. It may be related to Finnish “jatkua” (continue) with a t
> d change or to Hungarian “reggel” (morning) with a
plausible k > g change and an unlikely r > d change. Since the
sound value of symbol 5 is still unknown, we cannot decide
which word would be better in this place. Hence we indicate
this word or phrase as a “…” in the translation. We also could
not translate “n-s-v” in line three and dealt with it the same
way. We hope that further progress in the translation will fill
in these two gaps.
Given the above observations, side B of the Phaistos Disk
can be translated as the following poem:
B
Water flows westward.
Takes you fast to Iberia by the evening.
With water you … flow to Iberia.
Its water swallows you.
The Iberian king’s twenty daughters
Bend over and sadly watch the horizon.
Flying while shooting arrows Sagittarius
And the other stars chase you back.
All drift away during the night to Asia,
Where you, our light, … ascend.
Side B of the poem gives a mythological answer to the
age-old question of what happens to the Sun at night.
According to the poem, the Sun travels west during the day
and in the evening falls into the water, probably meant here
the Atlantic Ocean. According to mythology, the Atlantic
Ocean was somehow connected with the heavens. The Sun
temporarily dwelt with the stars and with the stars made a
semicircle in the night sky to get back to the east, where it rose
again in the morning.
VI. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK
Based on recent advances in the comparative study of
ancient scripts [18], we could start our translation by having a
plausible sound value for the majority of the Phaistos Disk
symbols. The sound values presented in [18] seem
corroborated by being able to form words, phrases, and
sentences with proper grammar after finding matches between
the Phaistos Disk text and etymologically plausible proto
words from the Proto-Finno-Ugric and the Proto-Hungarian
languages [25]. Moreover, the translation yields two sun
hymns, which seem to fit in Bronze Age cultural context.
There are many Bronze Age cultures where the sun was
worshipped. For example, there are Babylonian hymns to
Shamash, their sun god, and in ancient Egypt, around 1350
B.C. Pharaoh Akhenaten also wrote several hymns to the sun.
The relationship between the newly translated text and other
ancient sun hymns may be an interesting direction for further
study.
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The Phaistos Disk can be assumed to be an example of the
Cretan Hieroglyph writing, and the language of the Phaistos
Disk can be assumed to be an example of the Minoan
language. Since the translation of the Phaistos Disk relied
mostly on Hungarian, the two languages had to have a
common original in the past, as was assumed in our earlier
work [18]. Fig. 4 shows for the traditional Uralic language
family tree a possible extension that accommodates this new
discovery. Recently, Mario Alinei proposed a linguistic
relationship between Etruscan and Hungarian. It is unclear,
however, where Etruscan may fit into the Uralic language
family tree if indeed it belongs there. We also suspect that
Linear A is just another way of writing the Minoan language
instead of the Cretan Hieroglyph writing. There would be a
parallel to that situation in ancient Egypt, where the Egyptian
Hieroglyphs provided a more esthetically pleasing picturesque
form of writing, while at the same time scribes used the faster
and simpler demonic script. In Crete, the Cretan Hieroglyph
would be the more esthetically pleasing writing reserved for
important occasions and text, while the common accounting
tablets used the Linear A writing. These hypotheses need
further investigations.
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Fig. 4 A proposed extension of the traditional Uralic language family tree. The extension assumes that the Phaistos Disk is
records the Minoan language, which is grouped together with Hungarian, into a West Ugric group within the Ugric branch.
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[11] S. Forrai, The Old Hungarian Writing from Ancient Times to the
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Peter Z. Revesz holds a Ph.D. degree in Computer
Science from Brown University. He was a postdoctoral
fellow at the University of Toronto before joining the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he is a
professor in the Department of Computer Science and
Engineering. Dr. Revesz is an expert in databases, data
mining, big data analytics and bioinformatics. He is the
author of Introduction to Databases: From Biological
to Spatio-Temporal (Springer, 2010) and Introduction
to Constraint Databases (Springer, 2002). Dr. Revesz
held visiting appointments at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, INRIA,
the Max Planck Institute for Computer Science, the University of Athens, the
University of Hasselt, the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the
U.S. Department of State. He is a recipient of an AAAS Science &
Technology Policy Fellowship, a J. William Fulbright Scholarship, an
Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship, a Jefferson Science
Fellowship, a National Science Foundation CAREER award, and a “Faculty
International Scholar of the Year” award by Phi Beta Delta, the Honor Society
for International Scholars.
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