My friend was telling me about this ‘ancient disc’ with an inscribed ancient language on it which no one could understand or decode for ages. The translator, however, managed to decode the language by examining the languages in the surrounding region and looking at the similarities between the languages and the ancient language.
He mentioned it a long time ago - I wish to find out more but haven’t be able to contact him. All I know that it wasn’t in the recent past (perhaps even in the 19th century) and that at the point when the disc was found, no one could understand a single word of it nor were there any other references to the language. I believe that numerous discs were found but my memory may be playing tricks on me.
I did remember what the disc said though - it was a letter requesting for reinforcements. The kingdom which used the language was under attacked and dispatch several missives for aid. My friend told me that after the guy (whoever he was…) translated the message, he examined the history records and verified that there was indeed such a case where a kingdom was under attack and sent out numerous messages…
I’ve never heard of it, but I’m not an expert on ancient discs.
However, there is the Voynich Manuscript, which is hundreds of years old, and is written in some code that has yet to be deciphered. It’s had sort of a Maltese Falcon history, and you can find all about it by Googling.
This isn’t very close to your friend’s story, but I don’t think that there’s anything that’s close to your friend’s story. I don’t think he knew what he was talking about. Is your friend well read on this sort of thing, or did he pick up this story in conversation with someone else who picked it up in conversation with someone else, etc.?
Could your friend be thinking of the Linear A and Linear B scripts from Minoan Crete? A well-known sample of Linear A is the Festos Disk; AFAIK that script hasn’t yet been “officially” decoded, although a Google search on “Phaistos Disk” will bring up a number of sites that make claims of having completely or partially deciphered it. Linear B, on the other hand, was cracked in 1952 and shown to be an archaic form of Greek.
As far as I know, though, none of the surviving Linear B texts are letters requesting aid for the kingdom; I seem to recall reading that most of them are inventories or votive tablets (presented along with an offering of some kind).
We are talking about the Disc of Phaistos- an artifact found in Crete in archaeological layers associated with the Minoan Culture (but widely thought to be a trade item not associated with that culture.
Many linguists, cryptographers, philologists and archaeologists have examined it, and none have been able to convincingly decode it , although some have come up with elaborate speculation.
As this is the only sample of the script so far found in the world(if it is indeed a script, and not ritual decoration), confirmed decipherment is * not possible*.
Sounds to me like the Phaistos Disk which is a single 6 inch diameter disc with stamped (not written) symbols. There are a total of 241 characters. It dates from around 1700 BC. Plenty of people have tried to translate the disc, but no one has come up with anything that everyone else agrees on yet. It was discovered in 1903.
It’s the Phaistos Disk.
There was this supposed decipherment of the Phaistos Disk by Steve Fisher. I think this is the one (“call to arms”) that you recall.
Apparently he used the same method Evans used to decipher Linear B, ie matching consonants with vowels by comparing the signs on the Disk with known scripts like Linear B. He made this on the (probably correct) assumption that the script on the disk was a syllabary like Linear B.
The problem with Fisher’s method, which is the main reason why many have disputed his decipherment and why National Geographic decided not to publish his story (I can’t recall the book I read this in…), is that the script on Phaistos Disk can only be found on the Disk itself and nowhere else, unlike other scripts like Linear B where the script is written on thousands of records. This means that there could be dozens (or even hundreds) of other signs that Fisher wouldn’t have known and would have ignored in the process, and hence his process is flawed.
Furthermore, I seem to recall that Fisher’s decipherment is flawed also because the supposed language that comes out is not ancient Greek but mere words that sound like Greek without any inflections etc typical of ancient Greek; ie to an ancient Greek it wouldn’t have made much sense.
[nitpick]
Michael Ventris deciphered Linear B.
Arthur Evans - the guy who excavated Knossos - is usually credited as the first to discover/identify it as a script. But he couldn’t read it.
[/nitpick]