The announcement of an Internal Conference on the Phaistos Disk in
London has had an unexpected consequence. I learned for the first
time
that eight years ago J.Faucounau had sent a reply to Y. Duhoux’
paper,
published in this journal and largely publicized since. One of the
Editors, John Younger, a vey good friend of Y. Duhoux, opposed to the
publication of this reply. This is history, and I believe it is worth
to be known.
And here is the "censored reply", of which I could get a copy.
PHAISTOS DISK : A REPLY TO YVES DUHOUX
In the July 2000 issue of the A. J.A. ., Yves Duhoux made a review of
my book on the decipherment of the Phaistos Disk, which is so full of
inaccuracies and biased statements that a reply is necessary.
1)- "Faucounau’s book is the latest of many attempts to decipher the
Phaistos Disc". Wrong : the decipherment has been published in 1975
in
the R.E.A. The book is just a justification of it. Why such a long
delay ? Because any decipherment of such a short text HAS TO BE
PROVED, and it took me some 25 years to find, one by one, some 30
pieces of evidence. NONE HAS BEEN EXAMINED by the reviewer.
2)- "On this criterion (of the direction of reading)..the attempts by
numerous authors are suspect". They are not "suspect". They are
plainly wrong. Ten pages of my book are dedicated to this question.
Not a word about that by the reviewer!
3)- "Any grid that assigns a consonantal value to signs has.. a good
chance of being wrong". What is "a good chance"? Where are Duhoux’
calculations supporting this statement ?
4)- "Greek is probably the language most often proposed". For a good
reason : a long series of statistical calculations shows that it has
more than 80% chance to be correct !
5)- "Faucounau rejects this important parallel (with the Arkalokhori
Axe)". Wrong. I did not ! I have even explained it in a (still
unpublished) paper, that Y. Duhoux prefered to ignore.
6)- "Faucounau gives no edition of the disc of his own, but
regrettably reproduces Evans’facsimile"… One has to add : with some
modifications… But why "regrettably" ? Are later designs more
accurate? I suggest the reader to compare the design of Sign 17 in
the
L.Godart’s publication, recommended by Y.Duhoux in his Bibliography
(an alleged "pot lid" with a rounded shape) with the original to be
fully enlightened !
7)- "The script of the disc should total about 60 different signs,
not
Faucounau’s 88 or 95". Any mathematician will tell Y. Duhoux that,
concerning such a prevision, it is incorrect to treat the same way
variables following a "Poisson’s Law" and variables following a
"Gauss
Repartition". But Y. Duhoux has, may-be, some trouble with
mathematics, as it can be seen when one compares the statistical
conclusions of his 1979 paper on the Disk (The language must be Indo-
European and possibly Greek) with those of his 1983 study on the same
topic ("the Disk’s language cannot be Indo-European")?..
8)- "Such observable facts prove Faucounau wrong". The so-called
"facts" are experimental statistics made with an implicit HYPOTHESIS,
which is, in fact, wrong.
9)- "The structure of Faucounau’s syllabary is aberrant". Compared to
the Cretan/Cypriote Syllabaries, yes !.. But why the Disk’s script
should be Minoan ?.. Just because Y. Duhoux’ "intimate
conviction" ?…
10)- "Decipherers should be completely confident that, if their
decipherment is correct, it will triumph in the end"… Surely ! But
with reviewers like Y. Duhoux, who don’t pay attention to the proofs
brought in, one has just to wait half-a-century, like A. Wegener did
with his theory !.. As for me, I am certainly waiting with full
confidence the time when Y.Duhoux’review will rejoin the
A.J.Beattie’s
paper on Linear B decipherment in the J.H.S. 1956…
END of the quote.
Any comments would be unnecessary.
grapheus
