Evidence for Hellenic Dialect in the Phaistos Disk

Crete's celebrated Phaistos Disk, discovered in 1908 and dated to ca. 1600 B.C., will seemingly forever be that 'permanent thorn in the flesh of Minoan epigraphists.' Yet a comprehensive internal analysis of its 241 pictographic characters in the 61 inward-spiraling 'fields' or sign groupings reveals an unmistakable and describable linguistic structure, which, in conjunction with cognate script comparisons, prevails a retrieval of the pictograms' underlying sound values. The present study concentrates on this intricate step-by-step process of internal analysis and phonetic retrieval.