MYSTERIES OF HISTORY

!!SOLVED!!
by The Massey Twins
Rev. Kevin Massey
Dr. Keith Massey

Copyright © 2000, by Kevin Massey and Keith Massey

Massey Electronic Publishing

Two American Linguists offer solutions to some of Ancient History's most

perplexing puzzles:

1) The Phaistos Disk Cracked!

2) A Secret Religion Rediscovered: The Balaam Cult
3) Proverbs in Common!
4) God of the Udder: A New Look at El Shaddai
5) The Kensington Stone is Genuine!
6) The Daughters of Allah Identified.
 THE PHAISTOS DISK CRACKED!

Chapter One: Introduction

"A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step."
- Chinese Proverb1

We intend in telling the story of how we cracked the Phaistos Disk to be

both interesting and entertaining. Our efforts were full of twists, turns, and wrong
directions but arrived in the end at an exciting conclusion. We will here
demonstrate that in the greatest likelihood the first chink in the Disk's armor has
appeared.
Numerous attempts to crack the Disk have been published. Indeed, many
readers, especially scholars, will react viscerally and negatively to our claim. We
propose at the outset two questions through which to consider our work:

1) Is what we did based on reasonable methodology?

2) Is our finding possibly the result merely of chance?

We will show that the means whereby we arrived at our findings are that of a
careful scientific method. More importantly, we will demonstrate that what we
found in the Phaistos Disk is well beyond the random, presenting a pattern of
cohesive and coherent data pointing toward the language underneath.

1
Chapter heading quotations are taken from Menahem Mansoor's Wisdom From the Ancients:
Proverbs, Maxims, and Quotations, Madison, WI, 1994.

2
 Our cracking of the Phaistos Disk revealed itself incrementally, often in
avenues we ourselves did not favor. We must say clearly at the outset, it is not our
work alone. Rather, other scholars contributed suggestions and expertise without
which the Disk would not have been cracked. We will name these scholars as they
enter the story in their particular way. However, it is a story that we have to tell.
We will inform and educate on the necessary issues of orthography, historical
linguistics, and ancient Aegean scholarship, but only to provide a useful
background. It is the story of the cracking that we will chiefly tell, told so that the
reader can experience as close to first-hand the excitement of the journey that led
finally to this first credible decipherment of the Phaistos Disk.
This story began long before we first set eyes on the Disk. Our backgrounds
and education made this work possible by giving us the tools of insight,
imagination, and instinct. Therefore, all of our teachers deserve credit in this work.
We especially credit our eventual drive toward decipherment to a speech given by
Dr. Herbert Howe, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin. Howe was
speaking to the high school Latin class in Madison Wisconsin in 1984. He gave an
account of the decipherment of Linear B by Michael Ventris, and credited the
contribution of his colleague at the UW, Dr. Emmett Bennett, in the decipherment.
Bennett had published the complete texts of the material in his book, The Pylos
Tablets.2
Further, Bennett had remained in correspondence with Ventris, Chadwick,
and Kober, the essential decipherers, during the decipherment. We were enraptured
by the story of the decipherment, and by the fact that someone who had played a
role in it was teaching at the University of Wisconsin.

2
Bennett, The Pylos Tablets: A Preliminary Transcript. Princeton, 1951.

3
 We both decided that day to study languages, ancient and modern, and to
one day accomplish a decipherment of our own. The coming years saw us study
Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, and other Semitic languages. Our love for
languages of all kinds led us further to study the many alphabets and writing
systems of history. Languages are the windows to people's souls. We study them
chiefly to learn of other cultures and peoples, and to provide hospitality and
sociability to as many people as possible. An old Arabic proverb teaches, lisaan
jadeed, insaan jadeed. "A new language is a new person." This goes both ways, a
new language allows one to speak with new people, and learning a new language
also transforms the learner, giving a fuller richer view of the world.
These interests led us to study, work, and explore the ancient world and its
languages. Keith obtained a Ph.D. in Hebrew and Semitic Studies. Kevin studied
and worked in the Middle East. Our passion in language and mystery led us to
publish a flurry of articles in the field of Semitic linguistics each of which in some
way displays a deep yearning to crack secret mysteries behind the words on the
page.3 However the greatest mystery of our lives, one that will certainly consume
and distract us unto our deathbeds was still waiting--the Phaistos Disk.

3
1993 "Dialogue of Creeds" in ISLAMOCHRISTIANA by Keith Massey and Kevin Massey; 1994
"A new approach to Basic Hebrew Color Terms" in Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages by
Kevin Massey; 1995 "Semitic Quadriliteral Animal Terms: An Explanation" in Journal of
Northwest Semitic Languages by Keith Massey and Kevin Massey; 1996 "Mystery Letters of the
Quran" in ARABICA by Keith Massey;
2000 "AVM fraelse af illy: Authentic medieval elements in the Kensington Stone," forthcoming in
Epigraphic Society Occasional Publications by Keith Massey and Kevin Massey;

4
The Phaistos Disk

In 1908 a circular artifact dating to the Bronze Age was found by the Italian
archaeologist Pernier at the site of ancient Phaistos in Crete. This find, dubbed the
Phaistos Disk, was an enigma in many ways. The formation of the characters was
done through stamping pre-made characters into clay. While this suggested mass
production, the Phaistos Disk was then and still is the only artifact of its kind ever
discovered4. The appearance of the disk has delighted thousands of observers.
Numerous attempts have been made to decipher the information encoded on the
disk. When no progress came quickly, classicists began to avoid any serious work
on the disk.
Sadly, the disk slowly came under the domination of less than scientific
attempts to crack the riddle, such that today few researchers dare to forward any
new theories, lest they too be grouped with a discredited fringe.5 Indeed, many
scholars, when approached to comment on the Phaistos Disk react as though it
were leprous. Thus, a legitimate artifact of obvious importance to the orthographic
history of the Mediterranean has been largely abandoned. This development is
completely unacceptable. The abandonment of the Phaistos Disk is clearly due to

4
The short inscription on the artifact known as the Archelochori Axe could possibly be an
example of a related script. Its short inscription however makes it of little comparative help in
attempting decipherment of the Phaistos Disk.
5
An example of the bizarre suggestions surrounding the disk is the theory proposed in a web site
by Claire Watson which describes that the disk was created "by initiates into the Isis-Osiris
mystery-myth sect. The images on the disk are a symbol language representing the various parts of
the Isis-Osiris mystery-myth sect, in which good-doing Osiris is opposed by Typhon. The disk
records the activities of the Isis-Osiris sect as the convened inside the Great Pyramid of Cheops
and worked to establish their group consciousness using the tools of sacred geometry. They
participated in higher levels of group activity at the astral level and beyond through
interdimensional travel. This information is recorded on the disk."
(http://www.danwinter.comiportaidis )

5
the simple fact that solving it has proven extremely difficult. In addition, the
corpses of would-be decipherers which liter the path toward eventual success deter
further scholars who seem more content with the safety of the underbrush. That a
field of scholarship should avoid further attempts to solve an important problem is
cowardly. This book defies the prevailing tendency to ignore the Phaistos Disk. To
present the story of the decipherment as a scholarly inquiry, we will proceed
describing the events and processes from a third person voice.

6
Side A or "Recto"

Side B or "Verso"

7
 Chart of Phaistos Disk Characters

19 28
1 10 37
20 29
2 11
38

21 30
3 12
39
31
4 13
22
40
32
5 14 23
41
33

6 15 42
24
34
7
16 25 43
35
8 17 44
26
36
9 18 45
27

The Phaistos Disk is approximately six inches in diameter. It is made of clay,

stamped on both sides in a spiral. In all, 45 different symbols appear on the disk,
prompting the widely accepted theory that the script of the Phaistos disk is a
syllabary, with a presumed inventory of characters totally around 60. An alphabet,

8
which represents only individual sounds, such as consonants and vowels, is able to
employ fewer characters. A syllabary, however, which represents a consonant and a
vowel, needs more. The characters on the Phaistos Disk are divided into what
appear to be separate words, with 31 panels occurring on one side, 30 on the other.
Another notable feature is the incidence of slashes accompanying several of the
panels, about eight on each side, usually jutting from the bottom of the first
character of a word (if one reads from the center). For example:

None of the numerous theories put forward attempting to decipher the disk
has yet to gain any widespread acceptance. We will not specifically disparage any
of the published attempts. We honor their courage and ingenuity and footnote for
the reader as full an inventory of these attempts as we could compile.6
Interestingly, while Linear B was deciphered, that is, without comparison to
related scripts, few of the published attempts at decipherment follow this route.
The majority of attempts, including this present study, largely attempt to farm
phonetic values from other Aegean scripts, such as Linear B. Some have looked
further afield, such as exploring Hittite, or even Indic comparisons. It has not been

6
Best, J and Woudhuizen, Ancient Scripts of Crete and Cyprus, E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1980.

Davis, S, The Decipherment of the Minoan Linear A and the Pictographic Scripts, Witwatersand
University Press, Johannesburg, 1967.

Duhoux, Y. Le Disque du Phaestos. Archeologie. Epigraphie. Edition Critique, Louvian, 1977.

Fischer, S. Evidence for the Hellenic Dialect in the Phaistos Disk, Peter Lang, Berne, 1988.

Schwartz, B. "The Phaistos Disk" in Journal of Near Eastern Studies 18/1959, pp. 105-112.

9
this stage of the methodology that fails to convince other scholars that this or that
attempt may have succeeded. As we will argue later, such a comparative
methodology is quite sound.
The reason previous attempts at decipherment have failed to convince lies in
the nature of the disk itself. It is not difficult for a researcher to make a claim
about a reading of part of the disk and proceed to offer a creative interpretation of
parts that do not fit the theory. Any claims made about a small corpus of data like
the Phaistos Disk are not refutable, therefore they are not compelling. Even where
the applied values seem soundly derived from a presumably related script, the text
produced is so small that any meaning in it could usually just as well be a creative
reading of random letters. Presumably, it is possible to succeed in this manner, but
the decipherer would have to count on a high degree of luck or likely even
clairvoyance.
A decipherment needs to satisfy certain criteria to gain acceptance.
Principally, the decipherment must demonstrate a consistency and a coherence that
goes beyond that which mere chance would generate. So, for example, one could
select a word on the Phaistos disk and hypothesize a word which it represents in
some assumed target language. Theoretically, there would be no way to refute the
initial claim. However, since the values of the initially hypothesized word occur in
other places on the disk, we could then apply them to the rest of the disk. If the
extended values do not produce a consistent and coherent text in other places
where they occur, then the initial hypothesis would not be compelling.
Perhaps the reader has attempted the cryptoquotes puzzles in the
Newspapers. The task of the decipherer is quite similar. One looks for common
words that can be established to provide clues for the rest of the puzzle. There are
two three letter words that occur commonly in English, "the" and "and." While

10
attempting a decipherment of a cryptoquote, one may hypothesize either of these
for a three-letter word occurring frequently. If the clues provided by the guess
produce parts of words that seem to reflect other words in the language,
confidence in the initial guess begins to grow. However, if the guess produces
ridiculous combinations, then one can conclude that the initial guess was
incorrect. It was always a matter of probability and chance how accurate the guess
would be. If continual hypotheses bear fruit into a clear and sensible text, the
puzzle solver reaches a point in which the probability of an alternate reading of the
text making as much sense as the one produced becomes completely negligible. It
is this second stage of decipherment, producing a statistically compelling result,
that all previous attempts on the Phaistos Disk have failed to achieve.
In the summer of 1996, Kevin first saw a picture of the Phaistos Disk in a
tourist guidebook that a relative had taken back from a trip to Greece. He found the
Disk aesthetically pleasing, and was intrigued by the simple caption under the photo
in the guidebook, "never confidently deciphered." Loving a puzzle, he decided to
give it a try.
Kevin emptied his local library of manuals and books providing ancient
scripts with which to compare this exciting challenge.

11
 Chapter 2: The Aegean Scripts
"The power of imagination makes us infinite"
- John Muir (1838-1914)

Kevin dumped onto his table numerous manuals of orthographic history and
reference. Learning the scanty details of the disk's discovery and history, and
acquainted with the basic historical and geographic topography, he decided to
review his past study of the scripts of the Ancient Near East, especially those of the
Aegean Sea, Greece and Crete. These included undeciphered Hieroglyphic
writings, a linear form of writing, the undeciphered Linear A, Linear B, which was
deciphered in a fascinating tale we will recount, and Cypriotic. A review and
understanding of these scripts Kevin considered vital in deciphering the disk.

Cretan Hieroglyphics
The oldest orthographic system of Crete is an undeciphered old
hieroglyphic. This form of writing was probably the parent of later orthographic
systems. It was in use before the second millennium BCE and continued up to the
period of Linear A and the Phaistos Disk. A few examples of these hieroglyphic
forms are provided here.7

7
For a fuller treatment of these hieroglyphs, see Arthur Evans, The Palace of Minos (London,
1921), 282.

12
 Cretan Hieroglyphic Writing

It has easily recognizable animal and human figures, body parts, tools, and
plants. Several of the Cretan hieroglyphic symbols have nearly identical
counterparts on the Phaistos Disk, which suggests that the Phaistos Disk writing
developed in some way from it.

Cypriotic
Into the Classical ancient period, the people of Cyprus used a writing system
different from the prevailing alphabets of the eastern Mediterranean. This Linear
system was an offspring as well from the earlier Cretan hieroglyphics, which we
will see later were in currency outside Crete as well.
Inscriptions in this script became known in the mid 1800's, and scholars
attempted unsuccessfully to decipher them. Finally a bilingual text, written in both
Cypriotic and Phoenician became known. It was displayed and commented upon in
1872 by R.H. Lang in his Phoenician and Cypriote bilingual inscription [sic].8
Just as Champollion would later use names of places and persons in a bilingual text
to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics, so Lang made reference to which Cypriotic
words were likely displaying the known Phoenician text. Lang studied the text
assuming a right-to-left direction for the Cypriotic, as Phoenician is written right-
to-left. This assumption would prove to be correct, though it would have been a

8
Lang, self published work.

13
more difficult guess had Linear B, which reads left-to-right, already been
deciphered. Lang further identified the bilingual words that were likely portraying
the word "King."
George Smith took the decipherment process, perhaps by luck or accident, a
great distance when he suggested that two words that were the same except in
ending were in fact the Greek word for "King," differing because of inflection.9
The following line of Cypriotic, taken from the bilingual text, begins with this
word.

The syllabic writing presents the word /pa-si-le-vo-se/, akin to Greek

basileus "king." From this word, and from the names on the inscription, Smith
uncovered the phonetic values of many characters. Smith's own knowledge of
Greek was too poor to allow him to proceed much further. The decipherment was
completed by a number of scholars including Wilhelm Deecke and Justus
Siegismund.10
Though Cypriotic was deciphered, later scholars attempting to decipher
Linear B tried to avoid making comparisons with its shapes and values, a decision
we will show probably delayed Linear B's decipherment substantially.

9
Smith, On the Reading of the Cypriote Inscriptions, p. 129. London, 1872.
10
Deecke and Siegismund, "Die Wichtigsten Kyprischen Inschriften umschrieben und Erlautert"
in Curtius' Studien, pp. 217-264, 1874; Deecke, Der Ursprung der Kyprischen Sylbenschrift.
Strassbourg, 1877.

14
 Linear A

A Linear A Tablet

Excavations in Crete at the beginning of this century uncovered several

different types of writing systems in use in the Ancient Aegean. Sir Arthur Evans
was the leader in these excavations. In the course of the excavations, three distinct
types of inscriptions were discovered. Evans gave the names to these types of
writing. The names he gave, hieroglyphic, Linear type A, and Linear type B are
still in use today.11 The Linear A tablets remain undeciphered. This may be due to
the relative scarcity of tablets bearing this script, compared to the number
discovered for Linear B. Most scholars today believe further that the decipherment
is hindered by the probability that the language recorded in Linear A is a pre-
Greek non-Indo-European language. Even if the values of Linear A can be
reconstructed based on other known scripts, still it could not be translated. In cases
where an unknown language has been deciphered, it has usually been due to the
discovery of some bilingual text, such as happened with Champollion's
decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics from comparison to the Greek and
Phoenician sections of the Rosetta Stone.

11
Evans, Scripta Minoa, p. 18, Oxford, 1909.

15
Linear B

A Linear B text

Perhaps no story has captivated the imaginations and admiration of

scholarship in our century more than the story of the decipherment of Linear B. In
the first half of this century, largely through the efforts of Evans, the Linear B
tablets, discovered in Crete, and then in Greece as well, were the subject of intense
study by a hive of busy scholars. The material was numerous enough to make an
internal decipherment possible. Several different methods were attempted. Some,
noting similarities between Linear B characters and those of the already deciphered
Cypriotic, attempted to apply the Cypriotic values and read the texts. Most,
however, avoided a comparative method assuming that even if the scripts were
somehow related differences between the two would be more liability than help.
The possibility of decipherment was particularly aided by the publication of The
Pylos Tablets in 1951 by Dr. Emmett Bennett. In this book, a useable catalogue of
the tablets and their forms was provided for the would-be decipherers.
In the midst of the study of Linear B, no real progress presented itself, with
one startling exception. In 1927, Cowley published an article in which he
proposed a reading for two Linear B words.12 Through either sheer luck or

12
Cowley, "A Note on Minoan Writing," p. 6, Essays in Aegean Archaeology presented to Sir
Arthur Evans, Oxford, 1927.

16
astounding insight, Cowley's guess on these two words would later be shown
correct. Nevertheless, Cowley failed to advance in the decipherment effort.
As work proceeded consensus grew that the language represented by the
Linear B tablets was inflected, possibly Indo-European. Alice Kober in particular
noted several probable inflectional differences.13 Nevertheless, real progress
remained elusive. The real decipherment would wait several years for an
exceptional scholar, and an amateur at that.
The breakthrough in deciphering Linear B was accomplished by Michael
Ventris in the few years following the publication of Bennett'sThe Pylos Tablets.
One may wonder what personal qualities and characteristics allowed Ventris to
make this advancement. No finer description of Ventris can be found than that by
his friend and co-decipherer, John Chadwick:

If we ask what were the special qualities that made possible his achievement, we can point
to his capacity for infinite pains, his powers of concentration, his meticulous accuracy, his
beautiful draughtsmanship. All these were necessary; but there was much more that is hard
to define. His brain worked with astonishing rapidity, so that he could think out all the
implications of a suggestion almost before it was out of your mouth. Ventris was able to
discern among the bewildering variety of the mysterious signs, patterns and regularities
which betrayed the underlying structure. It is this quality, the power of seeing order in
apparent confusion, that has marked the work of all great men."14

Using his developed analytical mind, Ventris created a grid in which he

hypothesized, based on the order in which he observed the characters appearing,

13
Knossos," p. 143-151 American
Kober, "Evidence of Inflection in the 'Chariot' tablets from
Journal of Archaeology, 1945.
14
Chadwick, T'he Decipherment of Linear B, p. 4. Cambridge, 1960.

17
probable vowels for the Linear B script. Finally, just as one cracks a cryptoquote,
he needed to test consonantal hypotheses by applying these guesses to the texts.
Kevin reviewed the scripts and texts of the Aegean Linear family as the first
and likely best starting place for comparing the Phaistos Disk. He felt that a
comparative methodology, applying values to the Phaistos Disk based on
similarities to other known scripts, was a sensible approach. While this method had
not been used to decipher Linear B, indeed had even been avoided because of the
fear that it would produce a wrong result, a review of the Linear B system
compared to Cypriotic shows that if the decipherers had assumed that even some of
the similar characters had the same values, the decipherment would have been
hastened. In keeping with the fears of those decipherers, there are characters which
are attested in Linear B and a closely similar character in Cypriotic has a
consonantal value different than what was concluded for Linear B. Nevertheless
numerous characters point to some genetic relationship between the two scripts
which could have helped the decipherment.
Kevin felt that owing to the small corpus of data attested for the Phaistos
script, the only method that could produce an objective result was that of
comparison to known scripts. He therefore searched for close connections between
Phaistos characters and those of Linear B and Cypriotic. Kevin experimented with
applying consonantal values to the Phaistos Disk based on some of the following
comparisons:

18
Phaistos Disk Linear B Cypriotic

/ ra2/ /zo/

/wi/

/ku/

/no/ /ke/

/se/ /se/

/pi/

/ni/

/i/

/qe/ /ja/

/da/ /ta/

19
 Kevin noted that the Linear B and Cypriotic scripts are highly abstract.
While certain recognizable objects can be seen, such as a hand or a branch, most of
the characters have become symmetrical, possibly to aid boulestepheron reading, a
method in which text is written both from right to left and then from left to right,
alternating line by line. Kevin compared the Phaistos characters with the Linear B
and Cypriotic and found that some close matches appear. In some cases, a
comparison can be made with characters from both Cypriotic and Linear B, though
sometimes the phonetic value is different between the two systems.
Without knowing the language that the disk could record, or even the
direction in which the Disk should be read, Kevin attempted to understand the few
words emerging from this preliminary assignment as Indo-European or Semitic, in
both directions. He experimented with different possible phonetic values presented
where Linear B and Cypriotic disagreed. Nothing of any certainty appeared.
Imagination and ingenuity are capable of producing temporary results from any
random group of letters. It was in this realization that Kevin sadly concluded that
the Phaistos Disk, without some means whereby to obtain further values, could not
be confidently deciphered. Even if every character in this preliminary attempt were
correct, there would be no way to prove that the reading was right.
Kevin decided to pursue another direction of attack. He attempted the risky
yet time-honored alphabetic principle of acrophony. This principle comes from the
fact that Semitic scripts, in their oldest forms, employed simple pictograms of
objects for which the first sound of the object was the sound of the pictogram. For

example the Semitic character which represented an Ox, alpu, in Semitic,

becomes the character for the sound 'a. This character was borrowed into the Greek

alphabet to represent the letter a. Likewise, the character which represented a

20
house, bayt in Semitic becomes the character for the sound b, later borrowed into
Greek for the letter b. Thus the alphabetic systems all originally come from this
simple concept.
Deciding that this concept could be at work on the script of the Phaistos
Disk, Kevin began closely examining the different characters to determine what
they were trying to represent. Some of the images the characters represent are easy
to identify, others are not. The next step after this would be to decide upon a
language, whether Indo-European or Semitic, and assign sounds to the characters

from the most basic words possible. For example, one Phaistos Disk character

is a head of a man. In the Semitic scripts, the character was originally

intended to represent a human head, rosh, in Hebrew for example. Therefore, this
character carded the sound /r/. Likewise Kevin experimented with assigning the
sound /r/ to the head character on the Phaistos Disk, if it were a Semitic language,
and the sound k from Greek kephala, (as well Latin Caput) if it were an Indo-
European language. Kevin was in the midst of this experiment when he decided to
employ another risky yet time-honored principle, seeking collaboration.

21
 Chapter 3: Byblic
"Truth and oil always come to the surface."
- Spanish Proverb

Kevin had examined the disk extensively, comparing the characters to the
scripts which he supposed most closely matched it, Cypriotic and Linear B. Just as
many characters between Linear B and Cypriotic seem to obviously compare, so
also many forms of the Phaistos disk resembled the Aegean scripts. The basic
comparative method, and the acrophonic principle had failed to produce any
credible progress. Kevin decided to consult his twin brother, Dr. Keith A.J. Massey
for help in determining what the various characters represented pictorially, to make
a better attempt at the acrophonic principle.
For Kevin to collaborate with his brother Keith was finally inevitable, like
dancing with your mad aunt at a wedding reception. The two brothers have always
been deeply competitive, especially in their studies and scholarship. They prod
each other on their knowledge of languages, Keith boasting a greater knowledge of
Hebrew, Kevin claiming a deeper knowledge of Arabic. Kevin found revenge for
this by publishing an article on Hebrew historical linguistics, Keith retaliated with
an article on Quranic Arabic. They reached a kind of Lennon-McCartney
agreement to do all future publications together. Therefore, Kevin sought Keith's
assistance at this point in helping to establish the identity of the Phaistos Disk
characters
Kevin showed his brother Keith the work he had done on the Phaistos Disk.

While discussing a particular character, Kevin told Keith that he

supposed it to be a grain of corn. Keith disagreed, indicating that to him it seemed
to be representing a human breast, but more importantly, that he had seen a

22
different script with a character nearly identical to it. While pursuing his doctorate
in Hebrew and Semitic Languages, Keith had studied the full range of cognate
languages. During this time Keith had independently researched a syllabic script
found at Byblos. Keith had concluded that it was deciphered, despite some
disagreement amongst scholars of the field. The proximity and cultural connections
between Byblos and the Aegean raised the tantalizing possibility that in some way
this Byblic script was also a relative of Linear B, Cypriotic and, most excitingly,
the Phaistos Disk. If this were true, the consideration of Byblic as a source for
phonological values on the Phaistos Disk could shed more light on the disk than
had previously been possible.
That there is a deep historical connection between Crete and Byblos can be
seen by some surprising finds in Lebanon and Turkey. Specimens of the Cretan
hieroglyphic system have been found in Byblos, as Victor Kenna has noted. "The
orthographic systems of the Aegean area obviously enjoyed some currency in the
Ancient Near East, possibly beginning with the Cretan hieroglyphics. This Cretan
hieroglyphic system likely gave rise to the later syllabic scripts, Linear A, Linear
B, Cypriotic, and the form which developed in Byblos. Even as these hieroglyphics
are found in both Crete and Byblos, so too this other syllabic script, called Proto-
Byblic seems to have connections with Crete."15 Gelb considered Proto-Byblic to
have Aegean affinities:

Another system which may very well belong to the Aegean group of syllabic writings was
discovered recently in Syrian Byblos, where so many important archaeological discoveries
have been made in the last few years. All these texts have now been published by Maurice
Dunand. The writing has only recently been discussed by the distinguished French
orientalist Edouard Dhorme.16
15
Victor Kenna, "The Stamp Seal, Byblos 6593" in KADMOS 9 (1970) 93-96.
16
J. Gelb, A Story of Writing (London: Routledge, 1952) 157-158.

23
 Dunand as well noted similarities between the Proto-Byblic and both the
17
Phaistos Disk and Cretan scripts. In order to analyze the Proto-Byblic script's
relationship with the Aegean family, it is first necessary to provide a background of
its discovery and decipherment.

Proto Byblic
Excavations in Lebanon earlier in this century uncovered this orthographic
material at Byblos that predated by hundreds of years the later records using the
alphabetic script. They consist of nine total samples which were given by Dunand
letter designations, on copper and stone, ranging in size from texts of 41 lines (D)
to quite small spatulae (BE,F,I). They were published in 1945 in Byblia
Grammata.18

17
Maurice Dunand, Byblia Grammata (Beirut, 1945) 90.
18
Dunand, Byblia Grammata, 123-126.

24
 One of the larger texts, a copper tablet identified as Text C.19

A year later, Edouard Dhorme published a proposed decipherment of the

texts.20 He reported that his key to decipherment was a series of symbols repeated
seven times at the end of Tablet C, which he took to be the numeral 7. Positing a
Semitic language, he gave values to the characters which preceded the numeral,

, theorizing /b-šnt/, 'in the year.' Though the number of symbols in

Byblic suggested a syllabary (76), he did not concern himself with determining
vowels for his decipherment. From there, Dhorme supplied the values he
theoretically obtained from his discovery throughout this text. He found, at the

beginning of this copper tablet, a group /n?š/ He guessed that the

19
Dunand, Byblia Grammata, 71-139.
20
"Déchiffrement des Inscriptions Pseudo-Hiéroglyphic de Byblos" in Syria XXV (1946), 1-35.

25
common Semitic word /nhš/ could be represented here and thus uncovered a fourth

value. With this new value he was able to find the word /mzbh/
'temple,' in the text.
Again, with mounting values, he concluded that the year designation was

itself preceded by a month, /btmz/, - 'in the month ofTammuz.' With

this he was able to complete the reading of the last two lines of the text by positing

/šdš ym/, 'the sixth day.' By means of similar deductions,

Dhorme completed the decipherment of the texts.
In 1985 George Mendenhall published a decipherment of the texts which he
had been working on for thirty-seven years.21 His decipherment was completely
different from Dhorme's, using phonetic values which agreed withDhorme's in
only six cases.22
Mendenhall does not record the exact progression of his decipherment as
Dhorme does (in fact, he inexcusably does not even mention the efforts of
Dhorme), but he relies heavily upon comparison of the Byblic characters with
Egyptian hieroglyphics and later Northwest Semitic alphabetic characters.23
To assess the comparative strengths of the two competing "decipherments"
we will examine each one's reading of Tablet C.

Mendenhall
Mendenhall views this tablet as a marriage contract. He sees the seven

21
George Mendenhall, The Syllabic Inscriptions from Byblos (Beirut: The American University,
1985).
22
Mendenhall, Syllabic Inscriptions, 19.
23
Mendenhall, Syllabic Inscriptions, 21-31.

26
slashes at the end as marks left by seven witnesses to the marriage contract.
Mendenhall failed to forward a definite translation for 7 of the 15 lines of this
24
tablet, noting that "Translation is not yet possible." He does offer a loose
translation of even these, incorporating some possible meanings to even those seven
lines:

Habula, my offspring, is the legitimate betrothed of Thutun.

Conscientiously you shall clothe her in perpetuity.
I guarantee that there is no defect in her and
with beautiful offspring [sic] she shall establish his house.
Furthermore, when they have become numerous in progeny,
(may?) well-being be assured them in perpetuity.
Abundant mutual benefit will be beneficial to them.
Furthermore, (??)...beloved, you shall benefit each other, and
(building?) a pure house, they are 'shining' hereto.
(?)...well-being between them perpetually.
Furthermore, an act of corruption in ...(?);
anyone who does violence to the young lady I will assail.
I will destroy the one who acts corruptly (?)
Furthermore, life is granted him, I will honor who
25
[. . .] conscientiously. (Marks of 7 witnesses)

Dhorme sees this text as a dedicatory tablet commemorating the contributions

of various individuals toward the decoration of a temple:

24
Eg., Mendenhall, Syllabic Inscriptions, 103.
25
Mendenhall, Syllabic Inscriptions, 112.

27
 Thus said Lil: the copper (tablet) of Tophet I have laminated;
with an iron point I carved
these objects. The key of
the house, Ikarrenou carved with signs and he wrote its name:
Aton-yahaki.
The golden top of the temple I carved.
Lil did this work for the honor of his family.
And the swarm of bees, they made it
the son of Lahabat-Nabou [and] the brother of Hou-il.
The crescents of the temple I carved
and I succeeded in the tasks, one as well as another, to perfection.
May the Great One grant them first place here.
I made this during the time of governor Ipoush,
26
the sixth day of Tammuz in the year 7.

It is a difficult thing to judge that one or the other of these decipherments is

valid. Inevitably, subjective judgments about what is sensible will enter into the
verdict. The amount of time both men poured into this project is impressive, and
such effort and devotion to illuminating this mystery of Semitic studies must be
commended for both. But these decipherments are diametrically opposed to each
other and cannot both be correct. To assess the relative strengths of them, we will
examine the language underlying them for a representative series of lines in each.

Mendenhall is not confident about an interpretation of lines 7 through 14 of

the text with his values. Dhorme's interpretation has a natural break after line 7, so
we will examine each for the first seven lines.

26
Dhorme, "Déchiffrement," 6-12; English translation of Byblic material is our own.

28
 Mendenhall
(1) ha-bu-la ni-ni-ti ru-hi-ma-tu tu-tu-ni ba-ti-mi-m
Habula my daughter beloved of Thutun in legitimacy

(2) ba-hi-ti-ma ta-la-[bi]-sa-ni ka-yi-na-tu+m

in fear you will clothe her in perpetuity

(3) ma-'i-ma wi-tu+ni bi+hu-'i 'a-ka-yi-na-ma

defect existing in her I establish

(4) ba+yi-li ha-ra-ra-ti ta-ka-yi-na-ma ba-yi-ta+hu

with offspring desirable she shall establish his house

(5) pa+ma-ta ba-hi-mu hu-li-ta-ti bi+ma-li-ha-m

and when they are numerous in progeny in their fullness

(6) tu-tu-sa-ru bi-ni+hu sa-ba-ru ka-yi-na-tu-m

is forwarded among them well being in perpetuity

(7) 'u-bu-du-wu+ma du-ga-wi-ma (?)ya-ta-sa-'u-bu-du-ma+ni-ni

obedience with humility (?) 'be numerous' benefit in abundance shall be beneficial
to them (?)

Mendenhall's decipherment has failed to gain widespread acceptance. It has

been noted that the decipherments "conform too closely to Mendenhall's
27
idiosyncratic views of Levantine history." Mendenhall's decipherment displays

27
The World's Writing Systems, Daniels and Bright, eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996),
30.

29
few common Semitic roots. For instance, the word /ni-ni-ti/ is based on a survival in
a-ka-yi-na-ma/ have
a solitary idiom. Many of his words, such as /wi-tu-ni/ and /'
enclitics which he can not explain. Further, his identification of vocabulary items at
times does not maintain a strict methodology. For example, he derives /ba-hi-mu/,
28
'they are numerous, from Arabicfahuma, 'be great',ignoring the difference in
voicing. His interpretation of /sa-ba-ru/ as 'well-being' makes use of tenuous
29
arguments of conjecture.

28
Mendenhall, Syllabic Inscriptions, 100.
29
"The translation 'well-being' is the reflection of a complex process of semantic as well as
phonetic reconstruction that is necessary in order to identify the word here and its continuity into
much later Semitic languages," Mendenhall, Syllabic Inscriptions, 102-103. He eventually derives
it from either Arabic spr, 'to shine' sbr,
or 'goodly form', theorizing additionally a semantic shift.

30
 Dhorme
(1) k1 [d]b1r ll nhš h-tpt lbnty2
thus said Lil copper of Topheth I laminated
(2) b-šn h-p1rzl pt1hty2
with a point of iron I carved
(3) hm3 1-klyy1m1
h' m1pt1h1
them the implements key
(4) h-bt 'k
1r1r1nw pt1h1-h b-t1wy2
the house Ikarrenou carved it with signs
(5) w1 k2t2b šmw 't
2nyh'k
1y2

and wrote its name Aton-yahaki

(6) kt zhyly1 mzbh pt1h1ty2
crown of Zuhalu temple I carved
(7) '
b1d l2-hdr1 '
1hl1w z '
b1d-h ll
work for the honor of his family this did it Lil

Dhorme's decipherment has enjoyed a more enduring acceptance among

some semitists. Gelb, writing a few years after the publication of Dhorme's work,
tacitly accepts it in the main, but critiques a few discrepancies in the syllabic versus
30
alphabetic nature of the script, which Dhorme at times seems unsure of. In
contrast to Mendenhall's work,Dhorme's decipherment relies on common and basic
Semitic stock and presents a lucid text which discusses matters which would be
expected in this medium.
Another line of reasoning that supports Dhorme's decipherment which
has not been considered is the similarity of shape and phonetic value many of
Dhorme'sProto-Byblic characters share with characters from the other deciphered

30
Gelb, Story of Writing, 158.

31
Aegean scripts, Linear B and Cypriotic. The following chart shows some of these
comparisons where Byblic and Aegean characters match in shape and phonetic
value:

Dhorme's Aegean Dhorme's Aegean

Byblic Byblic

Cyp. /ra/ /r/

/r/ Cyp. /ra/

/k/ LB /ku/ /r/ LB /ra/

LB /mi/ /t/ LB /ti/

/m/

/glottal stop/ Cyp. /i/ /se/

/š/

/p/ /k/
/pa/ Cyp. /ki/

The significance of these comparisons is that Dhorme's work pre-dated the

decipherment of Linear B. He could not have used Ventris/Chadwick's work as
any guide, neither did Ventris/Chadwick use Dhorme's work in any way. The
agreements found lend weight to the validity of Dhorme's decipherment.
A contextual piece of evidence for the validity of Dhorme's work lies in the
line from the tablet provided above, "And the swarm of bees, they made it, the son
of Lahabat-Nabou [and] the brother of Hou-il." The text, according to Dhorme, is
describing a list of temple decorations, among which are the "swarm of bees."
Such a nonsensical phrase would surely cause a problem for a decipherer, yet
Dhorme did not tinker with the phonetic values to produce a more satisfying

32
reading, instead simply translating and interpreting the text that his decipherment
had yielded. Yet, an oblique reference from the Hebrew Bible elucidates this
curious phrase.
"So I went in and saw; and there, portrayed upon the wall round about, were
all kinds of creeping things, and loathsome beasts, and all the idols of the house of
Israel. Ezekiel 8: 1 0
Ezekiel reports a sight of pagan worship inside the temple, and among the
decorations on the walls were "all kinds of creeping things." This implies that such
things were known to him, but are certainly not generally known to scholars today.
Thus, Dhorme's decipherment unwittingly satisfies an important criterion for
validity, it produces a coherent text even against the understanding of the
decipherer.
Given the ease with which Dhorme's work satisfies the criteria of a
successful decipherment, one wonders why it has not been more generally
accepted. A somewhat cynical yet probably defensible explanation is seen in the
later competing decipherments. In order for a decipherment to gain widespread
acceptance, it needs to give a reason to accept it. The Linear B decipherment
offers continuing industry for philological and paleographical work. The tiny
corpus of Proto-Byblic material did not leave room for any colleagues to join the
field.
We have displayed the issues surrounding the Proto-Byblic decipherments
and finally one must choose whether either to accept Mendenhall's orDhorme's
decipherment or to reject both. We believe that Dhorme's decipherment is a clear
success and therefore is used for comparison with possibly related scripts. For
these reasons we undertook a detailed comparison of Byblic with the other Aegean
scripts.

33
 Keith and Kevin were both intrigued by the possibility that this additional
member of the Aegean orthographic family could supply another witness, and thus
a more nuanced and sophisticated comparative method. the two met to examine
and compare the various scripts and see what new potential presented itself.

34
 Chapter Four: The Aegean Orthographic Family
"The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it."
- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

In looking at the interrelatedness of linguistic items, one observes that

members of an established linguistic family can present sometimes inconsistent
results. The relationships between scripts are the same for that of languages.
Closely related languages, such as German, Norwegian, and English, will
frequently share the same word for basic concepts. For example, the word for
mother (English) is mor in Norwegian and muder in German. As well, the word
winter, while pronounced differently, is spelled the same and means the same thing
in all three languages. Nevertheless, some basic words found in all the languages
have different meanings. This is the case for the word deer, which in English
denotes a specific wild animal, yet in Norwegian dyr, refers generally to livestock,
while for the Germans, a tyr is the word for any animal. In other cases, two of these
closely related languages share a word while the third does not. For example,
English "now" is matched by Norwegian nå, while the common German word for
"now" is an unrelated word '
jetz'.
These kinds of agreements and disagreements occur among related scripts,
including the scripts of the Ancient Aegean. The relatedness of Byblic, Linear B,
and Cypriotic is proven by the existence of numerous characters that are nearly
identical in form as well as phonological value. How these scripts developed out
of a common ancestor has been demonstrated by scholars of the Aegean
hieroglyphic script.
As demonstrated briefly in the chart above, the other scripts of the ancient
Aegean area compare with the Proto-Byblic in interesting ways. Certainly,

35
whenever orthographic systems are compared, more than chance similarity
between characters is required to constitute valid matches. Some deeper structural
connection should be found. It is in the old Cretan hieroglyphic system that we
find the basis for a reasonable comparison between the Linear Scripts and the
Proto-Byblic. Detailed comparisons between the Cretan hieroglyphs and the linear
scripts of Crete and Cyprus have been undertaken by both J. F. Daniel and Sir
Arthur Evans. Several of the comparisons show that more than a chance similarity
can be found between them.
Daniel displayed the development of one hieroglyphic character into the
Linears in this way.

became Linear A and Linear B and Cypriot .31

The hieroglyphic character is identical to a Proto-Byblic character

/t1/.The phonetic values of the compared Linear B and Cypriot characters
are /da/ and /ta/ respectively. The general agreement of shape and phonetic value
between the members of the orthographic family on this character suggests that
Byblic is indeed related to the Linears.
Another hieroglyphic character that displays family wide agreement is that of

the bird, in the hieroglyphic . In Linear A the character is and in

Linear B it appears as . This Linear B character has the value /ku/, which

corresponds nicely to Proto-Byblic /k/.

Evans demonstrated that the following hieroglyphic character developed into

31
Daniel, "Prolegomena to the Cypro-Minoan Script," p. 256 American Journal of Archaeology,
1941.

36
Linear characters.
32
became Linear A and finally Linear B .
That final Linear B character, with the value /mi/, thus developed from a
hieroglyphic fish character identical to the Phaistos Disk character , which

compares to the character in Proto-Byblic , which Dhorme gave the value /m3/.
This confluence of shape and phonetic value is exciting as it hints at a deep
connection between the systems. This hint is borne out by further comparisons.
Evans shows that a character for a human eye developed into Linear in the
following way.
33
became Linear A and Linear B .

The Linear B character here with the value /zu/ comes from a character much
like Proto-Byblic with the value /š1/ thus shows, while not an exact
confluence, still a general similarity. Any resonance between the two systems
should be taken as further powerful vindication of Dhorme's work.

A hieroglyphic character in the shape of a hand Daniel displayed as

developing in this way.

Linear A became Linear B which compares to a Cyprio-

34
Minoan character and a Cypriot Syllabic character .

32
Evans, The Palace of Minos, 643.
33
Evans, The Palace of Minos, 643.
34
J. F. Daniel "Prolegomena to the Cypro-Minoan Script" in American Journal of Archaeology xiv

37
 Here the comparisons show some dissonance. This Linear B character's
value is /no/ while the Cypriot character's value iske/.
/ But a favorable comparison

can be made with the Proto-Byblic character /q/ and the Cypriot , but there is
no Aegean wide agreement on the value of this shape. Another Byblic character

/k/ is probably abstractly portraying a human fist, a thought borne out by the
fact that in the later semitic scripts which were influenced by Byblic, the letter /k/
is named kaf, which means "the palm of the hand." The acrophonic principle seems
here to be at play, but one wonders why that shape would not then carry the sound
/y/ for the basic word for hand yad. Indeed the letter for lyl in the Semitic scripts is
named yad but that letter portrays not a hand but originally the head of a dog.
Perhaps the acrophonic principle was in the distant past more mnemonic than
acrophonic, that is finding ways to remember the sounds carried by characters
which it had received from other sources. At any rate, many circumstances could
have led to this state of affairs of dissonance between these particular characters.
Perhaps they do not derive from the same hieroglyphic character. Perhaps one or
more of the systems has changed the value of this character. Another suggestion
however has tremendous implications to the understanding of these scripts. Clearly
Linear B has aggressively mutated out of its earlier pictographic forms. This
aggressive mutation may well have been accompanied by an aggressive adjustment
in the phonetic values behind the characters. The Cypriotic system, while also
aggressively mutated, could nevertheless be more isolated than the Cretan Linear
systems, and therefore, in a manner similar to how Icelandic preserves archaic
Norse, preserves more conservative phonetic values. An examination of the scripts

(1941), 254.

38
shows that another similarity can be found between Proto- Byblic and Cypriot that
does not exist for Linear A and B.
35
Daniel noted that the following hieroglyphic form developed in this way.

36
Hieroglyphic became Linear A and B and Cypriot /ro/.

That final Cypriot form is identical in shape and value to Proto-Byblic

/r3/. This all implies that a wider Aegean family comparison proves Proto-
Byblic conservative in ways that the Linear Scripts are not.
The implications of this suggestion are important for how Linear A is
currently understood. There is another character from Cretan hieroglyphics which
Daniel displays developing in the following way.

became Linear A and Linear B /ni/.

A Proto-Byblic symbol with the value of /r2/ is found as and . It

is interesting how identical the two Linear forms are to the two variations of this
Proto-Byblic character. The difference in phonetic value however is significant.
This difference perhaps points to a new direction in the study of Linear A. The
phonetic values for the Linear A script have been assigned arbitrarily from the
values of Linear B. Yet if the phonetic values of Proto-Byblic are perhaps more
conservative than those of Linear B, experiment should be made with substituting

35
Daniel, "Prolegomena," 258.
36
J. F. Daniel "Prolegomena to the Cypro-Minoan Script" in American Journal of Archaeology xiv
(1941), 254.

39
Proto-Byblic values instead of Linear B values.
These comparisons, while not numerous, are intriguing for the affinity to
which they point, that in some ancient and probably unrecoverable way, a bond
existed between the Linear scripts of the Aegean and the Proto-Byblic. This bond
probably came from a common parent script, which may have been the Cretan
hieroglyphic system. The scripts springing out of this parent developed and
eventually diverged. One should suggest that the Linear scripts, which display a
faster trend to abstraction than the Byblic, probably were more commonly used.
More common use gave rise to more innovations. Therefore the Proto-Byblic may
deserve the term "conservative" when compared to Linear B. The Proto-Byblic
may thus be preserving the phonetic values and forms of that script more
faithfully.
Another issue concerning the relationship of Proto-Byblic with the Aegean
stems from its probable role in the development of later scripts. Some evidence can
be seen of this in the oldest forms of the Classical Greek alphabet. The simplest
version of this story is that it was borrowed from the Phoenicians. This must be on
some level true, yet some elements in that oldest Greek alphabet show that our
understanding of Phoenician writing may be lacking. An archaic letter of the

ancient Greek alphabet is the digamma . Its phonetic value was /w/. It
survived into modern alphabets as the Latin letter F. Interestingly, it was found
predominantly in the ancient Greek alphabet as used on Crete. It disappeared from
use along with the vanishing of initial /w/ in Greek. Yet this letter cannot be found
in any of the specimens of ancient Phoenician. It can be found in Proto-Byblic
/w3/.
Another Greek character which seems related to Proto-Byblic but not

40
Phoenician as we know it is pi π. The Proto-Byblic /p1/ is a close

comparison.

These Greek characters show that our understanding of the genesis of the
oldest Greek alphabet is inadequate. The best explanation of them is that scripts
exhibit phenomena of linguistics that language itself exhibits, namely, register of
contexts and dialect borrowings. Since Greek obviously borrowed these characters
along with the rest of the alphabet, then these characters must have been part of that
alphabet even if they are not attested in the inscriptions of Phoenicia. Probably they
were part of a register of writing that employed them while another register did not.
Register, here as a linguistic term, means a form of a language used in one context
but not another. Simply explained, one uses a different register of speech when
speaking to a child than one uses when speaking to the President. Elements from
the two registers may be quite specific to one or the other register. Similarly then,
Phoenician may have employed characters like the digamma and the sigma, but not
when doing the type of inscriptions that have survived. In any case, one sees
elements of Proto-Byblic lying behind later scripts. Several Phoenician letters seem

derived from Proto-Byblic, including /r/, and /t/, and /d/, each of which
compare closely to Proto-Byblic characters of like phonetic value.

Probably even the idea of orthographic "borrowing" is simplistic. Perhaps

scripts develop in ways that affect each other. Dialect borrowing may result in
elements prevailing in one script while disappearing in another, only to re-emerge
at a later time, perhaps preserved in a restricted register of writing. The close
examination of Proto-Byblic with the later scripts of the ancient eastern

41
Mediterranean thus suggests that more detailed study is needed to fully understand
the complexities of the development of Phoenician and Greek, from which, in one
way or another, came almost all writing used today.
Returning to the three scripts in question, in certain items they all share a
common character with a similar phonological value:

42
 Byblic Linear B Cypriotic

/t/ /da/ /ta/

/p/ /pa/
/pa/

/š/ /se/ /se/

In other cases, Byblic compares either to a Linear B or Cypriotic character,

but not to both.
Byblic Aegean Byblic Aegean

/k/ Cyp. /ki/ /t/ LB /ti/

Cyp. /ra/ /r/

/r/ Cyp. /ra/

/k/ LB /ku/ /glottal stop/ Cyp. /i/

LB /mi/ /r/ LB /pi/

/m/

/w/ Cyp. /o/ LB /ra/

/r/

Again, such interrelatedness coupled with divergence indicates that the best
model for considering the development of these scripts is that of descent from a
common ancestor. That ancestor is likely the Cretan hieroglyphics. The question of
applying the phonological values of these scripts to a previously undeciphered

43
member, such as the Phaistos Disk will require a great deal of sophistication and
nuance. In cases where all three known and deciphered scripts share both a form
and a phonological values, we can have certain confidence in applying the same
value if the Phaistos Disk presents a character of nearly identical shape. It is
understood that this comparative method will only be valid if indeed the Phaistos
Disk is somehow related to the common ancestor of the known scripts. However, if
the Phaistos Disk is in some way related to the ancestor of the known scripts, a
refusal to use a comparative method is foolish. If we had never known Syriac and
discovered it only this year, it would be a great waste of time and effort to attempt
to decipher it without first experimenting with values assumed on the basis of
apparently related scripts such as Arabic or Hebrew. We do not feel there is any
reason to seriously doubt that the Phaistos Disk is somehow related to the ancestor
of the known scripts. The Phaistos Disk was discovered in a stratus that contained
Linear A tablets. It does have characters nearly identical or very closely similar to
those found in the known Aegean syllabaries.
One impetus to compare the characters of the Phaistos Disk with the Proto-
Byblic script comes, as we noted above, from one of the script's earliest students,
Maurice Dunand. Dunand wrote of one of the bird shaped Proto-Byblic characters
in his 1945 Byblia Grammata that "Il est presque identique a celui du disque de
Phaestos qu'Evansavait identifie avec une colombe." (It is almost identical to that
from the Phaistos Disk which Evans identified with a dove.)
The comparative method, then, will give more confident phonological
assignments for Phaistos Disk characters which match characters that agree in
shape and phonological value. It will give somewhat guarded phonological
assignments where a Phaistos character is nearly identical to two of the
syllabaries, especially Byblic where it and one of the other syllabaries agree on

44
phonological value. It is entirely possible that a character on the Phaistos Disk
which is similar or identical to only one member of the Aegean syllabary family
nonetheless has the same phonological value as that one character of that member.
However for an initial exploration of the Phaistos Disk through this comparative
method, we could not include such tentative assignments.
Armed with this methodology, we approached the Disk, eager to see if it
would reveal its mysteries.

45
 Chapter Five: The Application of the Values
"Even the wisest of the wise may err."
Aeschylus (525-456 BCE)

With their comparative method, Keith and Kevin decided upon a set of
characters on the Phaistos Disk for which they were able to assign a phonological
value based on similarity with Linear B, Cypriotic, and Byblic. These Phaistos
characters, the value chosen, and the other Aegean scripts that justify that
assignment are as follows. Most assignments involved at least two members of the
family in agreement. In a few cases, assignment was made based on comparison
solely to Byblic because of overwhelming similarity bolstered by reflecting on the
potentially conservative nature of Byblic:

46
Phaistos Disk Provisional Byblic Linear B Cypriotic
Assignment
/m/
/m/ /mi/
/t/
/t/ /ti/
/r/
/r/ /ra/ /zo/
/k/ /k/ /q/ /no/ /ke/
/k/
/k/ /kh /ku/
/w/
/w/ /wi/

/s/
/s/ /qe/ /ja/
/w/
/w/ /o/
/r/
/r/ /ni/
/t/
/t/ /to/ /ti/
/p/ /p/ /pi/
/r/
/l/ /re/
vocalic
/'/ /i/ /a/
/n/
/n/
/p/
/p/ /pu/
/s/
/se/ /se/
/š/

47
 The decipherer must settle some issues at the outset when attempting a
project such as the Phaistos Disk. Foremost among these is to make a guess at the
direction in which the disk is to be read.
The direction in which the Phaistos Disk should be read has been a topic of
disagreement among students of the Disk for many years. Many of the published
decipherment attempts have understood a right-to-left reading direction. There is
one compelling reason to read the disk right-to-left, but this one reason fails in
comparison to the evidence for a left-to-right reading direction.
Best and Fischer employ the right-to-left direction chiefly by comparing the
Phaistos hieroglyphs to the conventions of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Egyptian
hieroglyphs can be written in a variety of directions, with the rule-of-thumb for
where to start reading being that the hieroglyphs face toward the beginning of the
text.
Were this rule-of-thumb employed on the Phaistos Disk, one must read the
disk from right-to-left, that is, from the outside of the disk toward the center.
Arnold Bradshaw has written on the subject of the direction of the Phaistos Disk
from the standpoint of examining the disk for physical signs such as overcuts. He
judges the evidence to suggest a right to left direction. Another researcher, R.J.
van Meerten37 has examined the question as well but judges a left to right
direction. Thus one can see that analyzing this data is highly subjective. We will
examine Bradshaw's evidence however as we argue for a left to right reading
direction.
Bradshaw has pointed to a set of characters that imply that the text of the
disk was stamped from right-to-left, which would give weight to that argument.

37
R.J. van Meerten, "On the Printing Direction of the Phaistos Disk," Statistical Methods in
Linguistics, 1975.

48
The characters he shows are these.

He says of them, "The least disputable example of an overlap is to be found

in Al 5 where the left hand hide overcuts the one to the right.38
In fact, a close examination of these characters shows that the left character
does not in fact impress over the right character. Rather, the character on the right
is impressed only partially, deepest on the lower right hand corner, and then less
deeply extending toward the upper left where it fades to nothing.
This habit of the person who stamped the characters implies that he or she
was more conscious of what was on the left than what was on the right, stamping
to avoid a pre-existing character on the left. Therefore, a left-to-right direction is
presumed.
Even in arguing for a right to left direction, Bradshaw quite gallantly
supplies some of the better evidence for a left to right direction. He writes:

In A28 as it now stands we have no clue to the order of stamping, but in A27 most
observers state positively that the shield overlaps the prisoner, and the crested head
overlaps the shield and is itself dented either by the divider or by the bee in A28. There
can be no doubt that in this sector the maker was proceeding from left to right. The
question is: did he normally go that way or did a special problem induce him to reverse

38
Arnold Bradshaw, "The Overcuts on the Phaistos Disk," KADMOS XVI:2 1977 p 106

49
direction at this point?39

Another Phaistos word has been observed to display a mistake of spacing.

The word shows itself bunched up on one end and two characters placed in an
awkward manner.

Of this word Bradshaw gives the following explanation. "The maker's basic
error was, in all probability, the omission of these two signs."40Indeed, Bradshaw's
explanation is likely true, but it begs the question, to which end of a word is one
more likely to make such a mistake? Is one likely to write a word and then
suddenly observe that you forgot the first two characters of the word? Really such
a thing is ridiculous. Much more likely is that the person stamping the characters
came to a point where there was not going to be practical space to finish the word,
or possibly even had forgotten an ending to the word, and then had to squeeze that
in. The word A27 to which Bradshaw alluded shows this same phenomenon

39
Bradshaw p 107
40
Bradshaw p 106

50
 In both these cases, it is clear that the element was squeezed in either
after the thought, or because space had run scare. All that points to a left to right
reading direction.
Further evidence for a left-to-right direction comes from the presence of
characters that do show a character on the right partially stamped over one on the
left such as the instant in the graphic to which Bradshaw referred. This example of
the circle symbol impressing over this human figure is clearest.
This evidence secures the direction of the writing as being most probably
left-to- right. That alone does not prove that the reading also was done left-to-
right, but few instances appear in epigraphical studies of writing going in a
different direction than reading. There is a sense however that the spiral medium
of the disk suggests that it be read from left-to-right, from inside toward the
outside in that were one to begin writing a text from the outside in of a fixed size
disk of clay, one would encounter hazards of spacing. The stamper of the disk
could run out of space before the necessary information was completed. Were one
writing from inside out, the size of the disk could be determined after the message
was completed, and the edge of the disk trimmed off after both sides were
inscribed.

One question that presents itself on reflection from the element which
concludes many of the "words" on the disk, is "What element in a language is
likely to function in this way that could be included or omitted and not

51
significantly affect the meaning of the text?" The answer is, either a conjunctive
particle (and) or an article (the or a). Both Keith and Kevin suspected that the best
candidate for such a commonly occurring particle, especially given their
conviction that the disk be read from the inside out, was an enclitic conjunctive
such as Latin -que or Greek Nevertheless, they did not allow this suspicion to
affect their assignment of values to the Phaistos Disk. Their comparison with

Byblic led them to assign a value of /s/ to the character because there was no
agreement inside the Aegean orthographic family about the shape, and Byblic was
judged more conservative. This assignment would later be reconsidered.
Considering all of the above factors, they proceeded with a left-to-right
reading direction. Other Phaistos Disk students have also assumed this direction,
including Evans who wrote that the slash mark on the disk was "evidently
engraved by a hand accustomed to write from left to right.41
In what emerged, they believed they saw the first deciphered word:

/ t-r /

Kevin had discovered the element TR occurring four times in slightly forms
on the disk. He puzzled over this element, imagining the possible words that could
lie behind these sounds. Finally he settled with Ocham's Razor and guessed that the
word was trying to represent Indo-European "three" in Greek, treis/tria, Latin tres.
This seemed confirmed by a curious internal structure. On each side of the disk
there is a word which occurs three times:

41
Scripta Minoa p 288

52
 On one side:

KTR?(?)
On the other:

WKS?

Kevin began to assume that the medium of the disk was magical, as in
magic bowls for spells. Therefore he believed he could see in these repeated
katara, and in WKS?, some word related to ergo
words, KTR, 'curse,' like Greek
cognate to English 'work', which in both languages is the idiomatic verb for
"working magic." The archaic Greek form of this word had been pronounced
/wergo/. Kevin shared these guesses with Keith, who was intrigued by them. The
brothers scoured the rest of the disk for findings from these initial character
assignments, but nothing much more compelling emerged. They continued
studying the disk for months in this fashion, but the trail had grown cold.
They faced the reality that the most conservative application of values based
on their comparative method would never produce a decipherment that was
substantial enough to impress anyone. Unless some further corroborative evidence
confirmed the readings, the decipherment, even if true, would never be accepted.
Since this did not seem forthcoming, the project had reached a natural and
disappointing conclusion.
What they had found on the disk was interesting. They were still intrigued
and excited about it. The problem: it was wrong.

53
 Chapter 6: The Breakthrough
"Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error."
- Cicero (106-43 BCE)

The Massey Twins had attempted an application of values from a nuanced

comparative method based on the Aegean syllabaries to the Phaistos Disk. While
they felt that the returns were suggestive of some progress, they were faced with
the probability that any attempt to assert any meaning from the disk was never
going to be compelling. It was, afterall, no different from the other numerous
attempts. Recalling the two requirements of a successful decipherment, the
application of values and interpretation is but the first stage. Proving that the result
is statistically compelling is the stage at which countless attempts have met a
sudden death. Their claim to make sense of part of the disk could not be verified or
disproven. As such, it was not an important contribution to the decipherment of the
Phaistos Disk, even if it was true. Their attempt to decipher the Phaistos Disk had,
not surprisingly, run into the main deficiency of such attempts on the tiny corpus
represented here. A correctly deciphered disk could still be unable to convince
others of its rectitude because there would be no way to verify the results from
another angle. Unless something unexpected happened, such as the discovery of
many other artifacts using the script, it would not likely be able to gain widespread
acceptance. Even more unexpected would be the possibility that some aspect of the
one disk we do have could provide the verification sought by scholars.
Nevertheless, with just some minor adjustments and the collaboration of another
scholar, this most unexpected possibility was about to present itself.
One addition the Masseys made as part of their ongoing attempt to decipher
the disk was to analyze the endings of the Phaistos Disk words. It happens that 32

54
of the Phaistos Disk's 61 words end with one of only three characters the headdress

head , the cat or lion head , or the hide . This seemed simply too much of
a phenomenon to be random. The likely conclusion is that these three symbols
figure prominently into common endings of nouns or verbs. The Masseys decided
to make some provisional assignments to these characters based on this
assumption. Since the headdress head and the cat head occur the most frequently,

and each terminates one of the thrice repeating words, and

, the Masseys decided to understand these words for the time being as
plural nouns, and assign both the head and the cat head with the value /y/ following
the Greek plurals, masculine plural ending /oi/ and feminine plural ending /ai/.
Also, the Masseys kept in mind that many Indo-European languages simply mark
the plural with some form of /s/, therefore, that potential had to be kept close at
hand. Nevertheless, even with these additions to the theory, nothing encouraging
appeared in the attempt to decipher the disk.
Therefore, the Masseys sought collaboration from the world's scholars and
students for their project. The Masseys shared their findings including these
vocabulary items with several scholars from whom they desired responses. Among
these was Dr. Emmett Bennett, Professor Emeritus of the University of Wisconsin.
Dr. Bennett has become of late a sort of collector of Phaistos Disk decipherments.
He is probably among the world's foremost experts on the attempts made to
decipher the disk.
Dr. Bennett, as noted earlier, secured his rank among the leading scholars of
Aegean orthography by his publication of The Pylos Tablets. This book had put
forth in graphic representation the various Linear B texts. This allowed scholars

55
around the world to try their hands at deciphering that mysterious text. When
Ventris was deciphering Linear B, it was with these texts. In later years Bennett
was among the first proponents of the Linear B cracking and has contributed
copiously to the literature of that field.
The Masseys explained their theory to Professor Bennett in the fall of 1996.
He listened patiently, asked a few questions, but was not convinced. The twins did
not expect more. They knew that Dr. Bennett does not endorse any of the attempts
to decipher the Phaistos Disk. In particular, his reputation was once
unceremoniously mistreated by Stephen Fischer when Fischer used private
correspondence from Bennett, without his permission, as a foreword to his book
Evidence for Hellenic Dialect in the Phaistos Disk. Bennett has since then, and
will always, tread carefully with having his reputation linked with any attempt to
decipher the disk. Bennett encouraged the Masseys in their work as an interesting
exercise and admonished them to keep careful track of what they find, when, and
how. Indeed, this book is the product of the log they kept about that progress,
following Bennett's advice.
Even as they tried to elicit responses and feedback for their theory, The
Masseys themselves had a nagging doubt about whether it was producing anything
substantive. They nevertheless published the theory on the World Wide Web,
gaining a great deal of attention through that emerging medium. They placed the
page in February of 1997. The Phaistos Disk page receives thousands of visits a
year. They received hundreds of responses and suggestions because of the Web
Site. Each of these they took seriously and some made interesting observations.
They began sensing even more profoundly throughout the year that since no truly
corroborating findings had been produced by any of the scholars working with the
material had emerged, that perhaps they were missing something important about

56
the Phaistos Disk.
Around this time, Keith and Kevin began to feel that their application of
Byblic values to the disk, at the expense of some obvious linear b and Cypriotic

parallels, was indefensible. They adjusted only two of their values, reading as

/q/, compared to the Linear B /qwe/, and as /t/, compared to Linear B

/ta/. The earlier Byblic comparisons lacked the internal detail shared by the
linear characters. This realignment of values led them to a conclusion. The

common cluster , which occurs at the end of thirteen words, is too numerous

to be a morphological marker. The character they gave the linear b value of q.

The character had been given a value of /y/ from the internal decipherment
effort of identifying words as plural marked. However, in retrospect, some tenuous
comparative data could support this assignment as well. Byblic presents a

character which is a /y/, and Cypriotic presents a character which carries

the value /ya/. This led them back to their initial suspicion that this common cluster
was an enclitic conjunctive. Indeed the comparative method had suggested now
phonological values that made this conjunctive particle match that which is known
from Latin and earlier Greek sources. A comparison, then, with the enclitic qwe,
'and', was compelling.
Byblic had shown a use of letters in a quasi Mater Lectionis
manner with both w and y. They therefore removed the enclitic from the panels in
which it occurred and considered the remaining characters as words in their own
right.
They continued into the autumn of 1997 studying their findings, vainly
trying to make progress, and responding to the various queries and suggestions
that came to them. They never found any suggestions that pointed toward any

57
useful direction, until October 10th, 1997, when a suggestion came from Miguel
Carrasquer Vidal of Belgium, which directed them toward their final result.
Mr. Vidal is a computer programmer and gifted amateur Indo-European
scholar. Mr. Vidal comments included the following.
He first comments in agreement with the production of
the word
"Step 3: read word B I as /t-r(i)/. I suppose there may be a connection
between PB [proto- Byblic] and the PhD [Phaistos Disk], but I prefer to look for
resemblances with the local Cretan scripts (hieroglyphic, Linear A, Linear B). In
this case, the "hat" is Linear B /ti/, and the "water" is Linear B /ra2/ (phonetically
/ri/). So using my method, I get /ti-ri/ as well. Could it be Greek? Obviously. It
might also be another IE [Indo-European) language of course."f42
With respect to /K-T-R-?/ with Greek "curse," Vidal gave the suggestion that
changed the direction of the Massey twins' study.
"As to /ktrs/, following so closely on /try/, my first thought would have been
of IE *kwet(w)ores "4". I see no indications that the Linear B q-series was used in
the Phaistos disk, so "4" might have been written /ke-tu-re-sV/"
Earlier in the year, the Massey twins' theory as it then stood had been
accepted to be presented in the Ugaritic and Northwest Semitic group of the
Society of Biblical Literature at their Annual Meeting in San Francisco in late
November 1997. In preparation for that presentation, the twins got together in late
October. They worked over the course of a weekend to deliver speeches on the
decipherment work, but instead worked following up on Vidal's suggestion. What
resulted was the breakthrough in cracking the disk.

42
Private Correspondence.

58
 The various forms of the words, /T-R/ and /K-T-R/ on the disk are among the
more numerous. They observed that, though there are so many occurrences of these
words, each and every occurrence bears the mysterious "slash." Since there are 61
distinct words on the disk, and only 17 have the slash, then the fact that these two
words occur repeatedly having the slash is obviously by design. Following are the
words that have the slash, as they appeared at this point in the decipherment
efforts:

59
Recto Side Provisional Verso Side Provisional
Slashed Words Assignment Slashed Words Assignment
?-?-T T-R

W-K-K-Y K-T-R-Y-?

Vowel-S T-R-T

W-K-K-Y T-R-Y

W-K-K-Y K-T-R-Y

Vowel-S K-T-R-Y-?

?-T-K-K-Y T-W-T-?

T-R-Y Vowel-T-?-Y

W-Vowel-N-K-Y

Clearly something about these words requires the slash, the Masseys began
to think. The two words T-R and K-T-R have in common only that they are both
numbers. The twins decided then that it would be worth pursuing whether perhaps
every word with the slash was a word for a numeral. The theory paid off instantly.
Mr. Vidal had sent a chart with Proto Indo-European (PIE) numbers and
possible syllabic representation. Looking at this chart, and removing the enclitic
conjunctive particle, K-Y, you can perhaps spot where the Twins found the other
thrice occurring Phaistos Disk word.

60
Vidal's chart
Poss. syllabic writing:
1. he:s (fem. mia) [PIE *sem-s, *smia:] E-S
2. duo: [PIE *duo:] D-W
3. treis [PIE *trei-es] T-R-(Y)-(S)
4. kwettares, kwettur-es [PIE *kwetwores] Q-T-R-(S)
5. penkwe [PIE *penkwe] P-(N)-Q
6. (h)weks [PIE *swek-s] W(K)-S
7. hepta [PIE *septm] E-(P)-T
8. okto: [PIE *okto:] O-(K)-T
9. ennewa [PIE *Hnewn] E-N-W
10. deka [PIE *dekm] D-K
11. hendeka [PIE *sem-dekm] E-(N)-D-K
12. do:deka [PIE *dwo:-deka] D-(W)-D-K
13. treis kai deka T-R-(Y)-(S)-K-(Y)-D-K

The Linear B word for six is /wek-/, and a form of this word is what ties
behind the Phaistos Disk word /w-k-/. It occurs three times, each occurrence with
the slash mark. This new interpretation of the old data was now beginning to
display coherence beyond what could be expected randomly. The twins continued
the hunt and found immediately the following words that could be matched with
archaic Indo-European numbers.

/T-R-Y/ akin to Greek tria "three"

61
 /W-K-(K-Y)/ akin to Linear B /wek/ "six"

/K-T-R-Y/ like Proto-Indo-European /kwettor/ "four"

/Vowel-S/ akin to Greek eis "one"

Keith and Kevin saw here a building body of evidence that the "slashed
words are numbered words" theory was true. A small of amount of guess work and
reconstruction was able to supply a few other words that could possibly be
portraying numbers.
One of the slashed words lacks only its final character for a full reading.

/T-W-T-?/
That final character, portraying a dagger, is nearly identical to a Linear B

character for a dagger, /ki/. Supplying the value /k/ to the Phaistos dagger, we
have /T-W-T-K/ for this word, exactly what would be expected in syllabic writing
for dwdeka "twelve."
These five number words account for 13 of the 17 slashed words, a
formidable percentage for mere randomness to be at play. Yet another Phaistos
slashed word can be reconstructed as a recognizable Indo-European number, though
not in a form clearly previously observed.

62
 /W-Vowel-N-(K-Y)/
The Indo-European word for "nine" is /ennewa/. This form seems to have
developed into the various languages differently. The Classical Greek word was
ennea. Latin "nine" was novem. It is not bizarre to imagine that some metathacized
form developed like /wenna/. Thus we suggest that this word is representing
"nine."
The other three slashed words cannot be as positively identified as numbers.

/?-T-K-(K-Y)/

/Vowel-T-?-Y/

/?-?-T/

Of the three, the form //?-T-K-(K-Y)/ is the most promising. It contains the
element T-K, for deka, "ten." Were the first character reconstructed as a vowel, it
could be linked with the number "eleven," though a good question would be why
the character from the word "one" wasn't used. The other forms could be trying to
portray some word akin to Greek okta for "eight," or archaic septa. In Linear B,
consonant clusters like /kt/ and /pt/ are sometimes written only as /t/. That would
leave a question of what the other characters are doing. It will not be finally
necessary to explain each and every slashed word as a number now. It is enough

63
that all but three of the 17 instances can be convincingly linked to recognizable
numbers.

There is a parallel to the slash mark giving the key to cracking the disk in the
history of decipherment. Champollion's decipherment of Ancient Egyptian
Hieroglyphics was also made possible by a characteristic that set some words off
from others. This is the cartouche, the stylized box that encloses names in
hieroglyphics. Before Champollion made the guess that the cartouche was
enclosing names, it was impossible to decipher the hieroglyphs, even with a multi-
lingual text like the Rosetta Stone.
Champollion guessed that cartouches enclose names, and was able to guess
from the multi-lingual references what those names were. The deciphering
occurred fairly quickly after this observation for cartouche after cartouche was
supplying new phonetic values for the different hieroglyphs.
The slash mark provides a similar key. The slash marks words that are
numbers, they are a discrete corpus, small and manageable. One can be more
confident about what the slashed words are and therefore phonetic values can be
more confidently established for symbols that appear in slashed words.
A strange irony emerges now in the likely content of the Phaistos Disk. The
various attempts to decipher the disk have usually tended toward the fantastic.
Indeed, the Masseys assumed a magical text at first as well, which affected their
expectations toward finding vocabulary of magic. The reality of the disk may be
much more mundane.
With the listing of number words the most likely conclusion is that the disk
is something very much like most of the Linear B tablets, a record of mercantile
exchange.

64
 What may have happened in the world of the Phaistos Disk is that farmers
and merchants brought commodities to a palace, temple, or treasury and deposited
them in this central location. For this deposit, they would be given a record,
somewhat like a receipt. This is what Linear B tablets tended to be, listings of
commodities and goods. The Phaistos Disk is the same thing. The disk represents a
possible attempt at efficiency in ushering through the depositors. Perhaps as a
farmer would come before the clerk, the goods would be deposited, and the clerk
would produce the record on a clay disk using the little stamps representing the
syllables of the language. This would be faster than the Linear writing, deposits
could be processed more quickly.
Perhaps the disk was made by someone depositing goods at a temple, from
which the deposit would be understood to secure some religious favor. It is
impossible to recreate the economic, political, or religious situation of the day, but
this scenario of the creation of the disk is consistent with what is already known
through the Linear B tablets.
Possibly, the exact type of deposit the Phaistos Disk represented differed
from that of the Linear B tablets. The large number of extant Linear B tablets
suggests that they were meant to be permanent records, kept for future
examination. If that is so, then they are receipts of payment for something like
taxes. Perhaps the Phaistos Disk type deposit receipts were something else,
deposits that remained under the control of the depositor, such as in a bank. When
the depositor withdrew the commodities, the receipt, the disk, was meant to be
destroyed. The clerk would take the disk, return the commodities, possibly with
interest, and smash the receipt to finalize the arrangement. This would explain our
lack of numerous Phaistos Disks in the archaeological record.
This understanding of the purpose of the disk would explain as well why

65
words for the numbers are written out as full words (e.g. “four”), rather than using
either symbolic numbers (e.g. “IV” or “4”) or hatch marks (e.g. //// ) for
quantities. If the disk were meant to be a receipt of sorts for deposited valuable
goods or commodities, the treasury would not want the receipt to be vulnerable to
later tampering or forgery. Hatch marks and even symbolic numbers can be added
to or altered to make the receipt appear to reflect a greater number than was
originally deposited. Numbers written out as full words cannot be easily tampered
with. This convention continues to this day on monetary checks. One writes the
amount in both symbolic and verbal forms, e.g. “$114.50” is accompanied by the
words “One Hundred Fourteen and 50/100 Dollars.”
The Masseys shared these new findings with Dr. Bennett in early November
1997. In observing the new presentation, Dr. Bennett made an interesting
observation about the number scheme. The reader should first quickly understand,
Dr. Bennett's observation does not suggest in any way his endorsement of the
theory. Dr. Bennett does not currently endorse this or any theory on the
decipherment of the Phaistos Disk. Dr. Bennett made an observation that the
Massey twins missed because he possesses a keen analytical mind, suited to
puzzles such as the Phaistos Disk. Dr. Bennett noticed in the numbers Keith and
Kevin claimed were on the disk a pattern that surprised them, but in retrospect
makes a great deal of sense, especially given the probable genre of the disk.
Dr. Bennett noted that a clear pattern can be seen in the more frequently
occurring numbers on the two sides of the disk. Dr. Bennett noted that the two
chief numbers on the recto side, six and one, add up to seven. The two chief
numbers on the verso side, four and three, also add up to seven. What this pattern
points to is an underlying duodecimal number system on the disk. The accounting
of the disk goes by twelves rather than by tens.

66
 Many ancient cultures employed a duodecimal system of accounting instead
of the more modem decimal system. A duodecimal system has advantages over a
decimal system in commodities exchange because twelve divides into all the chief
fractions with round numbers. Half of twelve is six, a fourth of twelve is three, a
third of twelve is four. Ten does not so neatly divide. Vestiges of older duodecimal
systems can be seen in non- metric weights and measures, and in the sale of some
commodities, like eggs.
The numbers that appear on the disk clearly point to a duodecimal system.
The chiefly occurring numbers, four, three, and six are the basic fractions of
twelve. Twelve itself occurs in the word /T-W-T-K/.
Bennett's observation hints that the numbers on the disk, which themselves
already defy randomness, also portray a pattern which makes chance an ever more
remote player in this study.

67
 Authors' Epilogue
At the beginning of our tale, we asked the reader to assess our decipherment
on the basis of two questions,
1) Is our methodology sound and objective?
2) Do the findings produced by the methodology defy that which mere
chance could be expected to generate?
We employed a comparative method to arrive at phonological values for the
Phaistos Disk. Dr. Emmett Bennett immediately criticized this approach on the
grounds that internal decipherment alone is an acceptable method. We assert again
that his position is untenable. A comparative method is invalid only if the scripts
are unrelated. If they are related it is an obviously valuable approach.
One scholar criticized our comparative method on the grounds that the
similarities of characters is a purely subjective matter. While clearly a certain
amount of subjectivity could creep in at this point, nevertheless, we feel confident
that our comparisons are not far fetched. But it is not a matter of mere opinion that
the Phaistos characters and the corresponding Byblic, Linear B, and Cypriotic
character are similar. Where and when there is agreement between two or more of
the known scripts about the phonetic value of similar characters, a growing level
of confidence comes with an assignment of phonetic value.
On the requirements of decipherment, Chadwick wrote the following:

It may be difficult to assess the point at which ultimate scientific proof can be conceded.
But a relative degree of certainty must be granted to the theory when we try to estimate the
odds against its results having been obtained by chance.43

43
Chadwick, Decipherment, p. 23.

68
 Any decipherment is finally judged on the possibility that it is random.
Consider this. Were your cat to play with your computer keyboard and produce 200
characters on your screen, how likely would it be that following seventeen
instances of a dollar sign, you found the vocal names of the months in French?
Applying this absurdity to our study, the Phaistos Disk presents 17 words
that are marked with a distinguishing characteristic. In all, eight different words
have this mark. Six of them are the words for numbers in Greek that we confidently
identify. However, these six constitute 14 of the 17 slashed words. Therefore, of
the slashed words on the disk, 82% are easily read as Greek numbers.
Therefore, the results of this study satisfy the two questions posed at its
beginning. Obviously, work must still be done on further deciphering the text. We
continue to invite any and all students of the disk to review our progress in the
hope that they can identify yet more words and phrases that may be lurking behind
the syllables.

A SECRET RELIGION REDISCOVERED:

THE CULT OF BALAAM

Introduction
Balaam appears in sources as various as the Hebrew Bible, archaeological
excavations in Jordan, and Medieval Latin Anthologies. Balaam traditions
apparently enjoyed a wide circulation in both time and distance. Michael S. Moore,
in his book The Balaam Traditions: Their Character and Development, compares
the figure of Balaam in Numbers and Deir 'Alla, but concentrates on the social

69
role he plays, whether as a Prophet or a Cult figure.1 In this article we will
concentrate on one aspect of the material associated with Balaam: the use of animal
similes by Balaam in the accounts involving him. We will show that the inclusion
of these similes in the traditions of Balaam represents a development in the figure
which, when recognized, elucidates several Biblical texts touching on Balaam.

Balaam in the Hebrew Bible

Balaam first appears in the Hebrew Bible in Num 22-24 and 31. Numbers 22-
24 in the familiar story of how Balaam is hired by Balak to curse the Israelites. This
section includes the famous story of Balaam's talking donkey. Throughout these
first chapters Balaam is portrayed positively. He insists that he can speak no curse
that God does not allow. The image of Balaam as one who leads Israel astray comes
from Num 31. Here the killing of Balaam is described and the apostasy which
occurred at Peor (Num 25) is blamed on him.
Other references to Balaam in the Hebrew Bible recount the above stories
with little elaboration.2 In these texts, the stories occur as historical catalogue. In
post-biblical Jewish literature Balaam becomes a type for those who lead others
astray in matters of religion or morals. This is seen in the Pirke Avot, Mishnah 19,
where Abraham is a type for Orthodoxy and Balaam a type for Heterodoxy.

Whoever has these three qualities is of the disciples of Abraham our father; but he
in whom there are three other qualities is of the disciples of Balaam the wicked. A
good eye, a lowly mind and a humble spirit are the traits of the disciples of

1
Michael S. Moore, The Balaam Traditions: Their Character and Development, SBL Dissertation
Series 113, 1990.
2
Deut 23,4.5; Josh 13,22; 24,9.10; Neh 13,2; Mic 6,5.

70
Abraham our Father; an evil eye, a haughty mind and a proud spirit are the traits of
the disciples of Balaam the wicked.
In Numbers itself, however, Balaam is a Prophet/Mantic who is hired to curse
the Israelites. When Balaam begins his various "oracles" the Hebrew text reads
wayyisa'mšalo "And he took up his simile..." The word mašal, usually translated
'proverb', originally implied a simile structure. Indeed, the word
mašal in its root
means 'to be like', (cf. Arabic
mithl, 'similar to'). The passage implies that the use of
mešalim was typical of Balaam's style. In the oracles he speaks on these occasions,
he makes use of animal similes to convey his message:

God has brought him out of Egypt—a Wild Bull of great power.
(Num 23:22;24:8)

Behold a people which rises up like a lioness and which stalks like a lion, It will
not rest until it eats the prey and drinks the blood of the slain. (Num 23:24)

He lies crouching like a lion, and like a lioness, who can arouse him? (Num
24:9)

The repetition of the two images of Israel as both a Bull and a Lion, together with
the title of Balaam's oracles asmešalim, suggests that the ancient reader expected
animal similes to be a part of what the figure Balaam would say. Though Balaam is
primarily understood in the OT as a prophetic or magical figure, he also seems to
include the characteristics of a sage. This side of Balaam we will see grow until, by
the Medieval period, it becomes the chief role of the figure.

71
Balaam at Deir ‘Allah
In 1967, at Tel Deir ‘Alla in Jordan, archaeologists discovered in the ruins of
a temple dating to the 7th century BC plaster fragments containing writing which
mentions the figure of Balaam son of Beor. The texts are highly fragmentary and
their precise translation is in dispute. Nevertheless, they seem to recount how
Balaam sees a vision of the gods and relates to the people the significance of his
vision in a series of similes using animals. Attempting to convey the concept of the
natural order being overturned, Balaam describes situations that do not occur in the
animal kingdom. For example, "For the swift reproaches the griffin-vulture and the
voice of vultures sings out"3 and "Hares eat a [wo]lf."4
The Deir ‘Alla texts show that Balaam enjoyed a wider circulation than just
the OT. The appearance of the animal similes in this material as well shows that
there is some stability in the tradition. Readers over a span of time and area
understood the figure of Balaam to be associated with wisdom involving the use of
animal similes.

Animal Similes in Ahiqar

Animal similes were useful in ancient wisdom because the natural order
could be seen as a type for ideal behavior. In the Aramaic Ahiqar tradition, these
similes are very important. The Ahiqar text includes a great deal of didactic material
which makes use of animal similes.

3
sus‘agur harrapat nišr wa-qal rahamin yagvne(h) (Combination I,7-8). Reconstructions,
vocalizations, and translations of Deir ‘Alla texts come from J. Hackett, The Balaam Text from
Deir ‘Alla (Chico, CA 1980) pp. 27, 29.
4
’arnabin akalu [di]’b.(Combination I,9-10), ibid.

72
What is stronger (louder?) than a braying ass?…5

Ahiqar is another example of a wisdom figure whose influence and domain

grows with time until he becomes a legendary figure. Ahiqar is mentioned in Tobit.6
He is understood as a character in that story but it is clear that a tradition of wisdom
involving him informed the personality the ancient reader ascribed to him. The
same then should be true of a mention of Balaam in the diverse bodies of literature.
The writer may use the figure with a specific intention, even polemically as in
Numbers 31, but neither the writer nor reader could divorce all collateral
knowledge of the figure, such as association with animal based wisdom similes.

Balaam in the NT
When we understand that a development in the personality of the legendary
figure of Balaam was underway, we see that the traditional interpretation of a NT
text is wanting. In 2 Peter 2, the writer describes Christians who lead others astray.
In verse 15, he describes them as having "left the straight way (hodos) and gone
into error, following the way of Balaam son of Bosor." This has been understood in
light of the Jewish typological appropriation of Balaam. While 2 Peter has many
close affinities to Jude, 2 Peter's appropriation of the figure ofBalaam is not as
obviously typological. Further, a close examination of 2 Pet 2 presents several
pieces of tantalizing evidence that the writer is actually referring to the Balaam

5
Saying 1, p. 43, James M. Lindenberger, The Aramaic Proverbs of Ahiqar. Examples of other
proverbs with animal imagery are ##7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 15, 23, 28, 34, 35, 36, 106, lines 179-186 and
199b.
6
Tobit 1:22; 14:10.

73
wisdom tradition described above.
Firstly, the use of hodos, 'way', suggests competing systems of thought.
"Way," is an early name for the Christian Church.7 It occurs again in 2 Pet 2:21:

For it would have been better for them to have never known the way (hodos) of
righteousness than, after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment
handed on to them.

Most importantly, the author of 2 Peter finishes his discourse on this subject by
describing them with animal similes, asserting that they will get their just reward
according to the "true proverb," implying that a "false" proverb inspires their
system of thought:

It has happened to them according to the true proverb,

"The dog returns to its own vomit"
and
"The sow is washed to wallow in the mud."

The use of animal similes to describe the ones who follow the "way" of Balaam
could be a sarcastic effort by the writer of 2 Peter to poke fun at the wisdom sayings
lying behind the Balaam tradition. At the very least, we can see that the writer of 2
Peter is being affected by the wider understanding of Balaam in his culture. The
development of Balaam into a sage was well underway, possibly nearly complete, at
the time of the writing of 2 Peter. Therefore it is more likely that the writer is

7
Acts 9,2; 19,9.23; 22,4; 24,14.22.

74
attacking an extant body of legendary wisdom material than that he is simply using
Balaam typologically.

Balaam in the Quran

Another attestation of a continuing Balaam tradition is found in the Quran,
Surah 31. This Surah, entitled Luqman, describes how the wise man Luqman gives
advice to his son. This advice includes typical Near-Eastern wisdom about the need
for humility and a guarded tongue:

75
Do not turn your face away from people in contempt and do not walk in the land
haughtily. Indeed Allah does not love any conceited boaster. Set your walk
(correctly) and lower your voice. The most disgusting of voices is the voice of the
ass ['ankara l'aswati lasawtu lhamiri]. (Quran 31:18-19)

The similarities between this material from the Quran and the Ahiqar text above are
striking. The animal simile is used for much the same purpose. But the similarity is
not to be understood as showing a connection with Ahiqar and Luqman. Animal
based wisdom was widespread in the region. Rather the early Islamic traditions link
Luqman with Balaam. Luqman is sometimes connected by Islamic tradition with the
figure of Aesop, also known for animal based wisdom literature. To some
commentators, Luqman was considered to have been an Ethiopian. The name
"Aesop" may very well be a corruption of Aethiops, Greek for 'an Ethiopian'. Other
early Islamic traditions, however, associate Luqman with the biblical Balaam by
describing him as the "son of Ba‘ur." Further evidence for the identification of
Luqman with Balaam is seen in the fact that the Arabic verbal root (lqm) means 'to
swallow', which is exactly what the Hebrew root bl‘),
( the base of Balaam's name,
means.

Balaam in the Disciplina Clericalis

The strongest identification of Luqman with Balaam is by Petrus Alfonsi, a
Spanish Jew who converted to Christianity in the 12th century. In his Disciplina
Clericalis, he equates Luqman with Balaam and continues with a sample of
Luqman's wisdom which is not found in theQuran and which uses the same animal
based similes.

76
Balaam, qui lingua Arabica vocatur Lucaman, dixit filio suo, ne sit formica
sapientior te, quae congregat in aestate unde vivat in hieme. Fili, ne sit gallus
vigilantior te, qui in matutinis vigilat, et tu dormis. Fili, ne sit gallus fortior te, qui
iustificat decem uxores suas, tu solam castigare non potes. Fili, ne sit canis corde
nobilior te, qui benefactorum suorum non obliviscitur, tu autem benefactorum
tuorum oblivisceris. Fili, non videatur tibi parum unum habere inimicum vel
nimium mille habere amicos.

Balaam, who in the Arabic language is called Luqman, said to his son, "Do not let
an ant be wiser than you, who gathers in the summer so that he may live in winter.
My son, do not let a rooster be more vigilant than you, who is watchful in the
morning, but you sleep. My son, do not let a rooster be stronger than you, who can
keep his ten wives in line, while you cannot keep track of one. My son, do not let a
dog be of nobler heart than you, who never forgets his benefactors, you however,
forget your benefactors. My son, let it not seem to you a little thing to have one
enemy or too much to have a thousand friends. (Prologue)

This text shows Balaam giving advice to his son in the same way as Luqman
does in the Quran. Here in this Medieval text we see that the figure of Balaam has
developed into a full fledged sage. The imparting of wisdom by the use of animal
similes is really the only constituent to his personality.
From the earliest mention of Balaam in the OT to this relatively late use in
the Middle Ages we can see the Balaam changes in estimation from a prophet to a
legendary sage. Still, even at the earliest mention, we can see hints that an element
of his personality, the use of animal based wisdom similes, is becoming connected
to his legend. This element won out to form the final definition of the figure.

77
Conclusion
We have suggested that a development in the figure of Balaam occurred over
a long span of time and area. Balaam began as a prophetic magical figure and
developed into a wise sage. The use of animal similes by the figure of Balaam
shows the continuing process of this development into an Aesop-like figure in the
Middle Ages. It is difficult to tell how extensive the traditions may have been. The
temple at Deir ‘Alla implies that Balaam was an important figure for some
religious expressions. The 2 Peter reference could even point to a continued
existence of this expression as late as the 1st century, but it is more likely that the 2
Peter reference shows the development of Balaam into a legendary figure associated
with the use of animal similes and part of a genre that included Aesop.
Nevertheless, in understanding this development, we gain a sharper view of the use
of Balaam in these diverse bodies of literature.

78
 Proverbs in Common!
Hebrew Proverbs and the Arabic Proverbial Genre

1-Introduction
In the study of Hebrew proverbs, concentration has been made upon the
relation of the Hebrew wisdom tradition to the international scene, especially
Mesopotamia and Egypt. With regards to the formation of Hebrew proverbs, study
has focused on the common two-line proverbs which use parallelism for their poetic
structure. Yet sprinkled throughout Hebrew wisdom literature are numerous
examples of one line proverbs, sometimes exhibiting a poetic structure comprised
of a rhyme and meter otherwise foreign to Hebrew poetry. Scholars in biblical
studies have differed in whether these exceptions to the norm are accidental in their
structure or intentional.8 In this article we will argue that these one line proverbs are
authentic examples of a genre of proverbial material which can be found developed
and more common in the Arabic tradition. We will further argue that evidence from
the Hebrew Bible supports our contention that the pattern of rhyme and meter and
even whole proverbs themselves have been borrowed from the Arabs into the
Hebrew tradition.

8
For some of the various views on the structures of proverbs in the Hebrew Wisdom tradition and
the considerable work which has been done to relate Hebrew wisdom to the Egyptian and
Mesopotamian traditions, see the following books: R.B.Y Scott, The Way of Wisdom in the Old
Testament (New York: Macmillan, 1971); Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry (New York:
Basic Books, 1985); William McKane, Proverbs: A New Approach, The Old Testament Library
(Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970); Gerhard Von Rad, Wisdom in Israel (New York: Abingdon
Press, 1972).

79
2-Proverbial Poetic Structure
Arabic proverbs are firmly set in a genre we could call that of the "Folk"
proverb. Folk proverbs are concerned with imparting wisdom and advice on the
most basic aspects of human behavior. They almost always display a scheme of
rhyme and rhythm. For the Arabic material we detect three basic forms the rhyme
and meter can take. The purpose of these structures is simple enough. By
compacting wisdom into concise rhythmic and rhyming units, the information is
easily memorized. Owing to how successful this arrangement is for preserving
wisdom, these same structures can be found in many languages.
The first type of proverbial poetic structure is a single short line of two to
four words including a rhyming syllable as an inclusio at the front and end. The
following is an Arabic example with a visual following to emphasize the rhyming
structure:

it-takraar biyi'allimil-Himaar "Repetition teaches even a donkey"

/- - aar - - - - - - aar/

Another example of an Arabic proverb meaning the same thing is

il-'i'aada
ifaada "Repetition is beneficial (to learning)"
/- - aada -aada/

Interestingly, these two proverbs give a sufficient lesson in the instructive

qualities of proverbs through a double entendre of teaching repetition and using it
to reinforce that lesson.
An example of this first type of proverbial poetic structure in another

80
language is the Norwegian proverb:

Selvgjort er velgjort "Self-done is well-done"

The second type of proverbial poetic structure is a single poetic line with a
rhyming syllable or sound appearing twice in the line:

man sakata salima

/- sa - a sa - a/
The one who is quiet is safe

'
amal min il-Habbah qubbah "He has made a seed into a dome"
/- - - - V-bbah V-bbah/

ma'rifatnafsi-ka il-ma'rifail-kubra wa-l-'usra

/- - - - - - - - - - u ra - u ra/
"Knowledge of self is the best knowledge, and the hardest."

An example of this second type in English is "A stitch in time saves nine."
The third type of proverbial poetic structure is two roughly equal lines
rhyming at the ends of the lines. There can also be complex rhyming in the interior
of these lines. Some Arabic proverbs of the third type are

81
 kalimat ya rayt mabit'ammirbayt "The words 'If only' do not build a house."
/a i a - ayt// a i a ayt/

taghadda tamadda ta'ashshatamashsha "After breakfast, rest, after supper, walk"

il-insan yidabbir wa-llah yiqaddir "People make plans, God makes fate."

An English example of this third type is "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a
man healthy, wealthy and wise."

3-An Arabic Source?

Due to close parallels between portions of the book of Proverbs and the
Egyptian wisdom instruction of Amenenope, Hebrew Bible scholars have focused
most efforts into elucidating Hebrew wisdom literature by recourse to Egyptian
parallels. While we do not dispute the borrowing of Egyptian material into Israel,
we assert that another major source of wisdom material is largely being ignored.
The Hebrew Bible itself admits of connections to Egyptian wisdom texts, but at the
same time refers to the tradition of wisdom in "Eastern parts" in a description of the
Wisdom of King Solomon:

And the Wisdom of Solomon was greater than the Wisdom of the sons of the East
(bney-qedem) and all the Wisdom of Egypt (1 Kings 5:10).

1 Kings is alluding to a strong wisdom tradition in the "eastern region" with which
people apparently had some familiarity. Another important figure in Hebrew
wisdom is Job, who is called the "greatest of the sons of the East (bney-qedem; Job

82
1:3). The exact identification of the location of this "Qedem" or "East" has been
debated. In Isaiah 11:14 the same term explicitly refers to the Edomites, Moabites,
and Ammonites, who dwell to the South and East of Canaan respectively. A more
southern referent is suggested by the travels of Sinuhe, a traveler from Egypt in ca.
2000 BC, who reports that he entered Qedem after traveling across the Sinai. The
application of the term to Job further supports a more southern provenance because
the location of Job is generally placed in either Edom or further south. The report
that Job's household was attacked bySabeans could place him in Arabia proper.
One of the characters in the Book of Job is one Eliphaz the Temanite, whose
homeland is solidly within Arabia.
Most intriguing is an instance in which actual proverbial material from the
undefined "Eastern region" and Arabia is quoted and acknowledged as coming from
those areas. Our first example is unfortunately marred by some textual difficulties.
A reasoned examination of the issues involved in it, however, clearly supports our
understanding of the passage. In 1 Samuel 24:14, David quotes against Saul a
proverb using the following words:

As it says in the proverb of the Qadmonite (mshal ha-qadmoni), "From the Wicked
comes forth wickedness (meresha'imyetse'resha')."

Translators have sometimes rendered this passage as "the old proverb" because the
adjective "qadmoni" can mean "old" in Hebrew, as it also can in Arabic. A close
examination of the use of this term will show that this interpretation is impossible.
The vowelling of the passage in the Masoretic text is reading the word proverb
(mshal) as being in a construct chain with the word following, meaning that the
proverb is possessed by what follows, not modified by it. Further, a manuscript of

83
this passage discovered at Qumran, 4Q Sama, has the reading "proverb of the
Qadmonites (mshl-hqdmnyym)." It is easy to see how the original reading found at
Qumran could have become corrupted into the reading preserved in the Masoretic
text. The "m" following "qadmonim" in the phrase "meresha'im" could have caused
a copyist to accidentally leave out the "m" of "qadmonim." The second "y", which
makes the Qumran reading unmistakably a gentilic adjective, could have been left
out at the same time, or by a later copyist. Another interpretation of the passage
reads "qadmonim" here as a substantive adjective, meaning "ancient ones." First of
all, this interpretation ignores the fact that the Qumran reading can only be a
reference to eastern peoples, because of the extra "y" in the ending. But even so, a
study of this adjective and the noun "Qedem" discovers that this understanding of
qadmonim is weak at best. When these terms modify time, they overwhelmingly
stand solely with units of time (eg., days of old, etc.), not independently, as in
"ancient ones. The only possible example, Job 18:20, uses the term in opposition to
"aHaronim," which can, like qadmonim, mean "after" in either a spatial or a
temporal sense. But it too is overwhelmingly spatial, so Job 18:20 is best taken as a
reference to people on the east and the west, not to people of the past and future.
Beyond this example, the Hebrew Bible also provides, finally, clear and
indisputable evidence of direct borrowing of wisdom material, not even from the
undefined "eastern region" but from a kingdom in the Arabian peninsula. In
Proverbs 30 and 31, we read the wisdom collections of two kings, Agur and Lemuel
respectively, who are called "Kings of Massa'". Genesis 25:14 listsMassa' as a part
of the descendants of Ishmael, Father of the Arabs. Inscriptional evidence from
Arabia places Massa' nearTayma, 250 miles southeast of Aqaba.
The Hebrew tradition, then, acknowledges entrance into its Folk proverb
tradition of material from the Arabs. In fact, between David's "Eastern proverb" and

84
the material in Proverbs 30 and 31, the only wisdom material in the Hebrew Bible
which is explicitly acknowledged as borrowed from a neighboring people comes
from the Arabs. There are no proverbs or wisdom collection in the Hebrew Bible
which are outright called "Egyptian or Mesopotamian." Given this fact, we must
believe that the Arab tradition influenced Hebrew wisdom as much, if not more,
than these other traditions. The neglect in comparing Hebrew wisdom to Arabic
sources can ultimately not be defended. We seek to make a start in what promises to
be a fruitful source of illumination for Hebrew proverbs.
As the structures of Arabic proverbs can be seen in many languages, we may
conclude that any similarity in the Hebrew material to these structures is a parallel
creation of the memory device, not borrowing. However, the admitted debt the
Hebrew tradition acknowledges to the Arabs implies that the similarity is more than
coincidence. A comparison of Hebrew proverbs from this genre will show that this
borrowing has been in the form of both structure and content. Examples can be
found in Hebrew literature for each of the three types of proverbial poetic structure.

Type I
Ezekiel 16:44 "See, everyone who uses proverbs will use this proverb about
you,
ki'immahbittah "Like mother, so is the daughter."
/- i ah i ah/

tov shem mishshemen tov

/o e - ee o/
"A good name is better than fine oil" Eccl 7:1

85
 Type II
Tov shakhen qarov me-aH raHoq
/ - - - ao - - a o/
"Better is a neighbor nearby than a brother far off" Prov. 27:10b

Tovah tokhaHat megulah me'ahavahmeSutaret

/- - - - - - ua -- - - - u a -/
"Better is open rebuke than hidden love." Prov. 27:5

ki keqol hassirim taHat hassir, ken seHoq hakksil

/k- - - - i i - - ha i k- - - ha i/
"For like the sound of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool" Eccl
7:6

Type III
sefat '
emet tekhon la'adve-'adargi'ah
' leshon shaqer
/ - a - - e o a -// - a - - - e o a -/
"Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue only a moment" Prov. 12:19

kasheleg baqqayits ve-kammaTar baqqatsir

/ka - - baqqa - i - ka - - - baqqa - i/
"Like snow in summer and like rain in Harvest time " (ie., when hell freezes
over) Prov 26:1a

kekhelev shav 'alqe'o,ksil shoneh bi'ivvalto

86
 /- - - - - - o - - - - - - - o/
"Like a dog returns to its vomit, a fool repeats his folly" Prov 26:11

notser torah ben mevin ve-ro'ehzolelim yakhlim aviv

/o e o - - - vi / / - o e o - - - - - vi/
"A Keeper of the Law is a wise child, but a companion of gluttons shames his
parents" Prov. 28:7

ne'emanimpits'eohev
' ve-na'tarotneshiqot sone'
/n- - - - - - o e/ - n- - - - - - o e/
"Well meant are the wounds a friend inflicts, but profuse are the kisses of an
enemy." Prov. 27:6

The following collection will demonstrate the similarity in content which can be
found between the Hebrew and Arabic tradition. In each case, the Hebrew proverb
will be followed by the Arabic.

po'elotsarot
' bi-leshon shaqer
hevel niddaf mevaqshe mavet
"The getting of treasures by a lying tongue is a fleeting vapor and a seeking
for death." Prov. 21:6

87
 il-maal il-Haraam la yidoom
"Sinful money does not last"

lev-'adamyiHashev darco
va-YHWH yakhin tsa'ado
The mind of man plans a path, but the LORD prepares the step.
il-insan yidabbir
wa-llah yiqaddir
"People make plans, God makes fate."

yihallele-kha zar ve-lo'fi-kha

nakhri ve-'alsefatekha
"Let the neighbor praise you, not your own mouth, a stranger, and not your
own lips." Prov. 27:1
liyamdaHa-ka il-gharib, la fam-ka
"Let the stranger praise you, not your own mouth."

shomer piv u-leshono

shomer mitstsarot nafsho
The one who minds his mouth and tongue will save his life from distress.
man sakata salima
The one who is quiet is safe.

5-Conclusion
We have demonstrated affinities of structure, style, and content between
Hebrew and Arabic proverbs. These affinities suggest that at least some of the

88
Hebrew proverbs properly belong to a parenetic genre shared by Arabic language
and literature. The clear evidence that the Hebrew people borrowed considerable
amounts of wisdom material from the Arabs leads us to conclude that the similarity
in style and structure was a part of this borrowing. The evidence of these affinities
invites scholars of Hebrew language to search for more close affinities between
these two languages, their bodies of literature, and the cultures of the people that
developed them, both ancient and modern.

89
 GOD OF THE UDDER: ANOTHER LOOK AT EL SHADDAI

1 - Introduction
Students of the Hebrew language and Bible are familiar with various theories
about the original meaning of the word šadday, found mainly in the construction El
Shaddai.1 The phrase is traditionally rendered "God Almighty," reading with Greek
pantokrator. This understanding of the word is thought to arise from the assumed
derivation of the term from the relative particle she- coupled with the word day,
'sufficient', producing, 'the one who is sufficient', i.e., 'able to do all'.
Albright
W. F.
argued for a meaning of 'the one of mountain', deriving the word from
Akkadian
šadû.2 More recently, Walter Wifall has remarshalled the evidence for an
3
understanding of the term as 'the one of the fields'.
Among the more controversial assertions in biblical studies is that put forth
by David Biale in which El Shaddai is interpreted as "the god with breasts."4
Deriving the term from the common Semitic word *tady (Hebrew, šad [sg.]
šadayim [dual] 'breasts'),
Biale points to strong circumstantial evidence which
consistently links the use of the term with language and promises of prosperity. We
believe that Biale has worked toward the proper understanding of the term, but that
a more precise interpretation of the actual form šadday will produce a more sensible

1
For the common term 'ElShaddai' we will use the familiar spelling. All other representations of
lexical items will be phonetic.
2
W. F. Albright, "The Names Shaddai and Abram", JBL 54 (1935), 173-182.
3
W. Wifall, "El Shaddai or El of the Fields", ZAW (1980), 24-33.
4
D. Biale, "The God with Breasts: El Shaddai in the Bible", History of Religions 20 (1982), 240-
256.
(though no less controversial) result.
2 - Biale's 'the god with breasts'
Biale asserts that šadday is a form of the Hebrew word šad "breast," with a
gentilic-adjectival yod ending, probably what is known in Arabic studies as a '
nisba'
ending.5 Another possibility he suggests is that it could be a cognate of an Egyptian
root meaning "to suckle."6 Therefore, Biale asserts that El Shaddai originally meant
"the god with breasts." This "god with breasts" he connects to the wider milieu of
the Canaanite fertility cults.7
Biale's work, while short on the forms of the term, is long on the contextual
evidence. Biale arrives at this suggestion mainly by noting that šadday occurs in
quite specific contexts:

El Shaddai occurs six times in Genesis and once in Exodus. Five of the
Genesis occurrences and the passage in Exodus are usually attributed to the
Priestly author, while the sixth Genesis text—in the Testament of Jacob (Gen.
49)—stands outside the accepted typologies. The Exodus text may be
dismissed from the discussion because it is most probably a late editorial note
explaining the change in God's name from ElShaddai to Yahweh. Of the five
passage [sic] presumed written by P, four are fertility blessings using the "be
fruitful and multiply" formula of Genesis 1 and 9 or varying it slightly.8

5
D. Biale, "The God with Breasts", 248.
6
D. Biale, "The God with Breasts", 249.
7
D. Biale, "The God with Breasts", 252.
8
D. Biale, "The God with Breasts", 247.

91
 Biale's observation is quite significant. In the wider contexts in which it
occurs, the word does seem closely connected to the concepts of growth and
productivity. Yet it is the actual forms and cognates relating to this idea of shadday
as "breast" that need to be examined more closely. A different picture appears when
this is done.

3 - Comparison of Related and Cognate Forms

The Arabic cognate to Hebrew šad is tadyun. We provide the Arabic word in
its nominative form with nunation, "-un" to show that the third radical of the word
is consonantal ya'. Below is a list of several nouns of this class in both Arabic and
Hebrew:

ARABIC HEBREW
Term Root Meaning Term Root Meaning
jadyun j-d-y "goat kid" gedi g-d-y "goat kid"

lahyun l-h-y "jaw" lehi l-h-y "(animal)

jaw"
labwa l-b-w(*y?) "lioness" lebi l-b-y "lion"

zabyun z-b-y "gazelle" sebi s-b-y "gazelle"

It is intriguing that so many nouns in this class, quite stable in form and
meaning, concern pastoral life. Yet this should not be so surprising. Nouns with
connection to rural concerns are often more conservative than are other noun
classes. Arabic jirrah "cud" matches Hebrew gerah "cud." This leads to our closer
examination of Hebrew šad.

92
4 - Irregularities in Lamed-Yod words
On the basis of Arabic tadyun, we can assume that Hebrew šad has lost an
original consonantal yod in the singular. The plural and dual forms of šad is
šadayim, written with a consonantal yod. The Semitic languages have the noted
tendency to do away with final consonantal yods. In Arabic, many final yaa's have
become alif maksoora, that is, pronounced as an alif yet written with an unmarked
anachronistic yaa'. For example, Classical Arabicmata, 'when', is cognate to
Hebrew matay, 'when', which has preserved the consonantal
yod.
With an eye toward this tendency, we can confidently reconstruct the singular
form of šad through a proto-form *šadæh,9 from an original form *šedi. This form
*šedi matches the corresponding Arabic term tadyun.

5 - Meanings of tadyun/*šedi
The singular form of Arabic tadyun can mean "udder" as well as "breast." It
has this meaning in the construct tadyu-l-hayawaan 'animal's udder'. Hebrew
šad in
the singular also means this:

gam tannin halesu šad heniqu gureyhæn

Even jackals offer the teat and nurse their young. (Lam 4:3)

When the word occurs in the singular, then, it should be assumed to refer to
the teat or udder of an animal because with reference to humans the word naturally
tends toward the dual:

9
Note earlier Hebrew beki and the later (only Ezra 10:1) bækæh.

93
ani homa wa-šaday ka-migdalot (Can 8:10)
"I am a wall and my (two) breasts are like towers."

Since *šedi in singular indicates animal reference, we assert that the primary
meaning of the exact form šad/*šedi to be 'udder'.

6 - El Shaddai Re-examined
The Masoretes pointed the consonants š-d-y with pataIh under the shin, the
dalet doubled and carrying a patah creating a diphthong with the yod (šadday). As
noted earlier, this pointing seems to reflect the interpretation of the term as a
compound of the relative particle ša- or še-, which doubles the following
consonant; and the term day "(self-)sufficient." It is this understanding that likely
brings about the Septuagint translation pantokrator and the Vulgate omnipotens.
Obviously this interpretation predates the Masoretic vocalization, because it was
already influencing the Septuagint before the common era.
The connection between El Shaddai and the concepts of increase and
productivity are well demonstrated by Biale's statistics noted above. ButBiale's
attempt to connect šadday to šad is only complicated by calling the yod a gentilic-
adjectival ending or by referring to some Egyptian root. The reason for explaining
the yod in any of those ways comes from the fact that if the yod of the form is taken
as a part of the root, an interpretation of (human) breast is practically excluded. The
form can not be a plural or a dual in that environment since the final mimation
would appear. As in the use seen in Can 8;10, the form šaday can only refer to
human breasts as a dual with the 1st person possessive suffix. None of these
tenuous assertions is necessary, however, when we note that without the Masoretic
pointing, š-d-y is also the spelling for the simple singular form *šedi "udder."

94
7 - The God of the Udder
All the contextual evidence which demonstrates that El Shaddai means "the
god with breasts" can also be used, with perhaps even more strength, to demonstrate
that El Shaddai originally meant "the God of the Udder." One passage in particular,
Gen 49: 25, supports this understanding. We will here render Shaddai traditionally:

By the God of your father who will help you, by God Almighty (*El
Shaddai)10 who will bless you, blessings of the heavens above, blessings of
the deep lying beneath, blessings of udders (šadayim) and the womb (raham).

The blessings here seem to be connected more with pastoral success, large
and healthy flocks and herds, than with human fertility. Further, the proximity of
šadday and šadayim suggests a connection. This could be a simple word play but
Biale's statistics would indicate otherwise.
Biale connects his "god with breasts" with the wider Ancient Near Eastern
fertility cults.11 This step is not at all necessary when El Shaddai is understood as
the "God of the Udder." An El RaIham could be seen as a fertility god, but 'el *šedi
would not be. Blessings of the udder meant an ample food supply to an ancient
pastoral people. Blessings of the udder meant the assurance that the flocks and
herds would grow. Thus "God of the Udder" would best be understood as a
"prosperity" God rather than as a fertility God.
It is possible to see some shadows of this understanding of El Shaddai when

10
Codex Leningradensis in this verse reads 'et shadday, which we correct to
'
el shadday, reading with other Masoretic manuscripts, the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the
Septuagint.
11
D. Biale, "The God with Breasts", 253.

95
we see the form that idolatry and apostasy in Israel takes. The Israelites in the Sinai
made an idol of a calf (Ex 32). The enigmatic depictions of "Yahweh and his
Asherah" from Kuntillet Ajrud seem to represent the deity as a Bull with horns.

8 - Summary and Conclusion

We have provided linguistic evidence that Hebrew šad had a singular proto-
form *šedi. This proto-form provides the best fit as the word lying behind
Masoretic šadday, thus El Shaddai would have originally meant "the God of the
Udder." Linguistic evidence focusing on the forms of nouns certainly tends toward
our interpretation. Contextual evidence supporting an understanding of El Shaddai
as "the god with breasts" supports the translation "the God of the udder" as well, if
not better.

96
 THE KENSINGTON STONE IS GENUINE!

.
AVM: FRÄELSE: AF: ILLY:
"HAIL MARY DELIVER FROM EVIL!"
AUTHENTIC MEDIEVAL ELEMENTS IN THE KENSINGTON STONE1

Since its discovery in 1898, the Kensington Rune Stone has endured several
cycles of acclaim and scorn. The opinion of scholarship today is as divided as it has
been from the beginning. In general, Scandinavian linguists and runologists are
overwhelmingly against accepting the genuineness of the Stone. Few scholars in
other disciplines have challenged their ruling. Recent exceptions, such as Robert
Hall (Hall: 1982, 1994) and Richard Nielsen (Nielsen: 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989),
have argued that nothing in the Stone itself would preclude its authenticity and that
the continued rejection of the Stone is fueled simply by an a priori assumption of
fraud. In this article, we will examine two lines of the Kensington Stone which have
generally been neglected. We believe that authentic medieval elements can be seen
in these lines which will demonstrate to scholars of the medieval period, even
outside of Runology and Scandinavian linguistics, that a reexamination of the
Kensington Stone is necessary.

1
This article appears in the 2000 issue of Epigraphical Society Occasional Publications. We
dedicate this article to that organization which has, against the derision and scorn of so-called
academica, dared to have an open mind and publish evidence and ideas which can find no other
public outlet.
OPPONENTS OF AUTHENTICITY

Over the years, a long march of experts in Scandinavian Language and Runic
writing have examined the stone's text and almost uniformly declared the stone to
be a hoax. They have insisted that the nature of the Scandinavian language
presented by the stone, the presence of perceived linguistic anachronisms, the
possibility of Anglicisms, the character of its runic writing, and the circumstances
of its discovery all prove that the stone is a forgery. Perhaps the most influential
opponent of the Kensington Stone is Erik Wahlgren, who argued against it in The
Kensington Stone, a mystery solved (Walgren: 1958).

ADVOCATES FOR THE KENSINGTON STONE

Despite the strong currents against it, the Kensington Stone was never
without its supporters. Earlier in this century, a remarkable amateur linguist,
Hjalmar Holand (e.g., Holland: 1956), defended the stone for about fifty years. He
published numerous books and articles in which he took issue, point by point, with
all the linguistic and practical objections raised by scholars. Robert A. Hall Jr, a
respected American linguist of Romance Languages, published persuasive books
arguing that the methodology of the stone's naysayers has been less than
professional , compared to other disciplines. He has demonstrated that the
Kensington Stone actually contains a number of elements which should have
suggested authenticity. Richard Nielsen has published a series of articles in this
publication in which he addressed and answered every objection made to the Stone
by previous scholars (see bibliography). In our judgment, Holand, Hall, and Nielsen
have succeeded in making ample room to give the Kensington Stone the benefit of
the doubt.

98
99
A NEW APPROACH

We too are convinced that the stone's language, writing, and circumstances
are no barrier to its being accepted as genuine. Yet, the official opinion of the
Kensington Stone remains today that it is a forgery and a hoax. We propose
therefore to consider the authenticity of the Kensington Stone by closely examining
a part of the inscription which has not gathered significant comment to date. Our
.
study will focus solely on the phrase in lines 8 and 9 of the Stone, AV M:
fräelse:af:illy: "Hail Mary, deliver from evil." We will discuss this phrase in detail
and show that, like other parts of the inscription, it displays a knowledge which not
only is unlikely to have been held by a modern forger, but was probably unavailable
at the time of the reputed forgery. Our assertion that this phrase suggests the Stone's
.
authenticity concerns two points, 1) the nature of the abbreviation AV M:; and 2)
the historical significance of the statement following it, Fräelse af illy, "Deliver
from evil."
This study will not deal with the runic characters themselves, therefore we
will show here only a transcription of the stone which approximates its appearance.
A line by line translation accompanies the transcription:

[Written on the front of the stone]

8:göter:ok:22:norrmen:po:
opdagelsefard:fro:
vinland:of:vest:vi:
hade:lager:ved:2:skjar:en:
dags:rise:norr:fro:deno:sten:
vi:var:ok:fiske:en:dagh:aptir:
vi:kom:hem:fan:10:man:röde:
.
af:blod:og:ded:AV M:
fräelse:af:illy:
[Written on the side of the stone]
har:10:mans:ve:havet:at:se:
äptir:vore:skip:14:dagh:rise:
from:deno:öh:ahr:1362:
8 Swedes and 22 Norwegians on
a discovery voyage from
Vinland westward, we
had anchored by 2 rocky islets one
days voyage north from this stone.
We had fished a day, after
we came home, [we] found 10 men red
with blood and dead. AV(E) M(ARIA)
deliver from evil.
We have 10 men at sea to look
after our ship 14 days voyage
from this island. Year 1362

100
 .
THE ABBREVIATION AVM:

.
The belief that AV M: fräelse:af:illy: pointed to the Stone's authenticity was
forwarded quite early after the Stone's discovery. Archbishop John Ireland of St.
Paul Minnesota, whose knowledge of Medieval matters was respected, made the
claim already in 1909. [St. Paul Dispatch, December 14, 1909]. Early comment on
the abbreviation concerned itself only with the seemingly unimportant question of
whether this stood for "AV[e] M[aria] (Hail Mary)" or "A[ve] V[irgo] M[aria] (Hail
Virgin Mary)." The instinct to force AVM to stand for Ave Virgo Maria is
understandable, since modern conventions of abbreviation tend toward a first letter
format. Yet this option is unlikely. Coinages such as "Ave Virgo Maria were rare at
best, and certainly not in common currency. With that in mind, we assert that not
nearly enough attention has been paid to the implication of the abbreviation of Ave
Maria as AVM.
There is a need to place the abbreviation AVM either within the framework
of the productive and/or formal conventions in use in the late 1300's or into the
likely abbreviation which a forger would have chosen in the late 19th century. If
AVM is not a generally acceptable abbreviation for Ave Maria, this would cast
some serious doubt on the authenticity of the Stone. Conversely, if AVM were an
acceptable abbreviation, but one which a modern forger would not have been likely
to use, this would provide evidence that the Stone is genuine.
At the time the Kensington Stone was reputedly carved in 1362, abbreviation
had evolved into a system of numerous conventions. From ancient times and
continuing into the Middle Ages, the great expense of writing materials created a
critical need to save space. Partly for that reason, the Semitic languages were
written with purely consonantal alphabets and Greek and Latin Paleography used

101
no word divisions in common use. Beyond that, extensive abbreviation was
practiced to cram as much onto the page as possible. The conventions in use in the
late 1300's fell generally into three categories, 1) 1st Letter Abbreviation, 2)
Abbreviation by Contraction, and 3) Superscript Lettering.

FIRST LETTER ABBREVIATION

Inherited from Imperial times had come the convention of abbreviating

phrases with the first letter only, such as in the well known S.P.Q.R. (Senatus
Populusque Romanus), "The Senate and the Roman People." In normal Classical
and Medieval usage, even these well known abbreviations used periods or
suspended dots to signal the abbreviation. As stated above, the interpretation of
AVM as Ave Virgo Maria is without any attested basis, and so AVM can not be an
abbreviation of this type. There is a Medieval abbreviation of Ave Maria of this
type, attested as A.M. (Cappelli: 1928, p. 15; see Bischoff: 1990, pp. 150-168 for
discussion and further examples of the three abbreviation conventions). The
existence of another abbreviation does not, however, exclude a different
abbreviated form because more than one acceptable convention was used,
sometimes in mixed forms.

ABBREVIATION BY CONTRACTION

Another convention involved stripping a word of its vowels or other internal

letters. This originated in the abbreviation of the frequently used divine names of
the Bible. An example of this is found in the newly re-accepted Yale Vinland Map,
where we read in dnm ihm xpm credunt, "They believe in the Lord Jesus Christ."
The Yale Vinland Map, first presented in the 1960's was originally dated to 1430

102
and depicts the world, including a large land mass entitled Vinlanda Insula. Bound
with the map is a document called the Tartar Relation, telling the story of a 13th
century Franciscan mission trip to Asia. The map and the Tartar Relation
manuscript seem to be written in the same hand.
At first hailed as an historical prize, the map was later discredited as a
forgery. This year, however, the Library of Yale University decided once again to
stand by their map as authentic and have forthcoming their evidence for its
authenticity. If authentic, the map would provide collaborating evidence that some
14th and 15th century Europeans had knowledge of the North American mainland.
It is clear from the opposition the Kensington Stone and the Yale Vinland Map have
met, that matters vinlandic are highly controversial and must be proven innocent in
the courts of the mind before being given the benefit of the doubt.
As in the Vinland Map, medieval contractions were generally signaled by the
use of a horizontal superscript line above the contracted word. Maria under this
convention was normally abbreviated as MA. The use of the horizontal line signal
was not an absolute requirement, especially in less formal registers. Attested cases
of this type of abbreviation for the Ave Maria in runic characters from the medieval
period displays a tendency to spell out Ave in full and then shorten Maria (eg., avæ:
ma: [Ikast sword-pommel, Moltke: 1985, p. 474] and MA AV [the Greenlandic
wooden cross (#150 b side at Herjolfsnes), Jonsson: 1924, 283]). So, despite the
nomina sacra, AVM is not an abbreviation of this type. The form would not bear
out this interpretation.

SUPERSCRIPT LETTERING

The final tool in use during the Middle Ages for abbreviation was to shorten
words by the use of superscripted letters. So, for example, the Latin preposition de,

103
"from," becomes de. Maria in this convention is first shortened to Ma and then

writing the final "a" as a superscript, Ma. For example, the medieval Scandinavian
manuscript form for jomfru (virgin) is often seen as jomfu. In some cases, the
superscript letter seems to have evolved into a mere dot, and so, for instance, aqua

is found as aq.

.
AV M: IS A MEDIEVAL SUPERSCRIPT ABBREVIATION

.
It is our assertion that the abbreviation AV M displays tendencies of both the
medieval contraction and superscripting conventions. The stone medium in which
the inscription is carved, combined with the mixing of Latin and Runic symbols in
the Stone have obscured this recognition. The evidence for our claim is based on an
observation in this abbreviation of an element which has not yet been discussed in
.
this capacity. There is a superscript dot to the right of the V (V ), precisely where a
miniature letter e would have been found if this were written out. Even Wahlgren
observes this and includes it in his general character assassination of the man who
found the Kensington Stone, Ohman, by making his cryptic theories work off it:

If written out and punctuated in the same way as the rest of the words, the
two words "Ave : Maria" would then be separated by a colon. There would
then be a cryptic restoration of the prevailing system based on 22 : 66 words
and 66 sets of separating dots. In assuming this, one is not reduced to
conjecture alone, for examination of the word AVM in line 8 of the
inscription shows a circular chisel puncture in the stone adjoining the
upper right-hand portion of the V [emphasis our own] as if the runecarver

104
had planned to carve two dots between the AV and the M, then abandoned
the notion" (Walgren: 1958, p. 212).

The pictures above show closeups of the area of the Kensington Stone in
question here and a representation of the form of the inscription. One can observe,
as indeed even Wahlgren did, that there is a mark in the location of the upper-right
hand of the V. The authors saw the Kensington Stone itself in Alexandria
Minnesota during the summer of 1997. Based on our firsthand observations, we
assert that the shape and texture of the dot in question are consistent with that of a
chisel mark, as opposed to being a pock mark or imperfection in the material of the
stone. Therefore, we assert that the AVM abbreviation is an example of the
superscript convention.
Obviously, chiseling a tiny "e" would be unreasonable, so we assert that the
carver did the next best thing and carved a dot in its place. Yet even in written form,
a superscript dot could be used in place of the letter. The Kensington abbreviation
could be seen, then, as a mixture between a superscripted letter for the first word
.
and the first letter of the second, thus producing AV M.
.
Properly interpreted, then, AV M: is a fully acceptable productive Medieval
abbreviation for the phrase Ave Maria. We should ask the question of whether a

105
forger would have done the abbreviation this way. The abbreviation which would
become standard in modern times for Ave Maria is A.M. (separated by subscript
dots in earlier periods). Unless the forger had conducted an intentional study into
the abbreviation conventions of the Middle Ages, he would almost certainly have
used the well known AM. Is it possible that a 19th century forger could have known
about the medieval conventions? It is possible but highly unlikely. We have to
remember that the issue is not just whether there was anyone on the planet in 1898
who could have forged the Stone; the real issue is whether we can reasonably
assume that Olof Ohman and Sven Fogelblad could have done it. The Stone's
naysayers have not been able to produce any other likely forgers besides these two
who may have had either the ability or the opportunity to pull off a hoax. Ohman
was a farmer who may have known some runes. Fogelblad was a minister who may
have known some runes. But our discovery forces the forger to have known
considerably more than just a runic alphabet. While it is true that the information on
how to do this was in existence, it could not be called readily available. Few if any
facsimile guides for manuscripts had been produced. In fact, the only useful guide
to Medieval abbreviation techniques in modern times was published in Italy and in
Italian about the same time as the Stone's discovery. There is no evidence that
Ohman had anything more than a basic education. Fogelblad had studied in
Sweden, but the basic course for theology in the last century was less than a modern
American Bachelor's degree. It is nearly impossible that either of these two could
have been acquainted with specific conventions of late Medieval abbreviation.

FRÄELSE AF ILLY (DELIVER FROM EVIL)

While the philological issues of the phrase fräelse af illy have been
extensively discussed, we believe that the phrase has more to yield in defense of the

106
 .
Stone from an historical and contextual standpoint. Holand suggested that AV M:
fräelse: af: illy: is an attempt to pray both the Hail Mary and the Lord's Prayer for
their fallen comrades,

We, therefore, see how their solicitous comrade couples together the two
most popular prayers of the Middle Ages, the Ave Maria and the Pater
Noster, by citing the first two words of the former and the last clause of the
latter" (1956:319).

We find this explanation unlikely, primarily because the evidence we have of

citation conventions in Scandinavian religious texts of the Middle Ages reveals that
the normal citation of the Lord's Prayer in an abbreviated form was as Pater
"
Noster. Et ne nos inducas [Our Father. and lead us not]" (Faehne: 1962, p. 2). We
will suggest, instead, that the final phrase fräelse af illy is not standing pars pro toto
for the Lord's Prayer, but instead displays another deeply Medieval characteristic
about which no forger could have known.
Even modern Catholics are usually not aware how recently the Hail Mary as
we know it today took its form. The prayer first originated in about the 12th century
and for a long time consisted only of the first part of the modern Hail Mary. (see
Ayo: 1994).This short form is found in the "Presta Handbok" (Priest's Handbook)
of the pre-Reformation Nidaros Rite, the Catholic Rite used in Norway with its
Archbishopric in modern Trondheim:

Ave Maria gratia plena Dominus tecum.

Benedicta tu in mulieribus et benedictus fructus ventris tui

107
Hail Mary Full of grace, the Lord is with you.
Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
(Faehne: 1962, p. 131)

It is this short form which is attested in Latin written in runic characters on

medieval Scandinavian artifacts (eg., Hæstrup church-bell, Moltke: 1985, pp. 442-
443, Ulbølle censer, Moltke: 1985, p. 448). Over time, additional clauses were
added to the Ave Maria. In fact, the time of the reputed carving was within the
period when the additions were multiplying. The Eastern Churches developed the
convention of adding to the Ave Maria a statement saying "because you have
brought forth Christ, the savior of our souls. Amen." Another early addition was,
simply, "So be it." A runic tombstone attests the equivalent of this addition by
adding "amen" (Allerum tombstone, Moltke: 1985, p. 516). Another version from
the Johanne Nielsdatters Tidebog (circa 15th century) reads, "Ave Ma v. Deus in
ad[jutorium meum intende] (Hail Mary. v[ersicle], God, come to my assistance.)
(Nielsen: 1945, p. 35). Yet another example is in the Anna Brades Bonnebog (AD
1497) which reads, "Ave Maria meth then annen bon" (Hail Mary, with another
prayer) (Nielsen: 1949, p. 163). The rubric "with another prayer" implies that one
naturally followed the Hail Mary with an ending of one's choice. The present form,
with the familiar "Holy Mary Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the
hour of our death. Amen." was not added until the prayer was fixed in form by Pope
Pius V in 1568.
One piece of evidence for the Kensington Stone's ending to theAve Maria
comes from a 14th century Norse (Telemark) Ballad that Hjalmar Holand refers to
for support of this line of the Kensington Stone, "Hjaelpe oss God å Maria Möy å
fräelse oss alle av illy, 'Help us God and Virgin Mary and Deliver us all from evil'"

108
(Holand, p. 319). This song shows not only the willingness of a medieval Norseman
to link Mary with God in such an imprecation, but even provides us with the same
exact prayer.
Numerous examples in which Mary is asked for such help can be found as
well on runic artifacts. Medieval Scandinavian memorial stones implore Mary to
help the soul of a deceased relative (Gesing Stone 1, Moltke: 1985, p. 412; Vester
Marie stone 2, Moltke: 1985, p. 338; Klemensker stone 6, Moltke: 1985, p. 339).
The liturgical tradition of the Bridgettine Community tells us yet more. St.
Bridget of Sweden (1304-1373) was a contemporary of the date on the Kensington
Stone. The Religious Community she founded spread throughout Europe. The
Bridgettine Breviary from the famous Syon Abbey in England, probably the work
of Peter Olafsson (d. 1390), can be trusted to provide us with evidence of liturgical
practices in Scandinavia at the time the Stone was reputedly carved in 1362. In this
Breviary we find evidence of a practice in which the Lord's Prayer was followed by
the Hail Mary and then followed by the last part again of the Lord's Prayer:

Pater Noster. Ave Maria.

Et ne nos inducas in temptacionem. Sed libera nos a malo
Our Father. Hail Mary.
And lead us not into temptation. but deliver us from evil.
(Collins: 1969, p. 15)

However, stronger evidence can be found in the Anna Brades Bonnebog that
this convention was known in Scandinavia and, in fact, very commonly used in
prayers to Mary. One prayer found in the book reads Kyrieleison Christeleyson
Kyrieleyson Pater Noster Ave Maria et ne nos. (Lord have mercy, Christ have

109
mercy, Lord have mercy, Our Father, Hail Mary and [lead] us not…) (Nielsen:
1949, p. 159). This useage is nearly identical to that found in the Bridgettine
Breviary and is similar to that of the Kensington Stone.

.
AVM: FRÄELSE: AF: ILLY: Finally found in a Contemporary Source?

One of the challenges to those arguing for the authenticity of the Kensington
Stone has been to demonstrate that the phrase AVM fraelse af illy can be found
substantially in sources far pre-dating the reputed forgery. The evidence marshaled
by Holand by ancient songs is interesting but has not been decisively convincing to
those who are skeptical of the Stone. We have found, however, two prayers in the
Karen Ludwigdatters Tidebog (circa 1500) that display the additional words
following the AVM in similar liturgical contexts.
One prayer opens with the words, "O Maria sødiste Ihesu Christi Moder…"
(O Mary, sweetest Mother of Jesus Christ…) and includes a line "bedh then same
thin vaelignet søn ath han for the same thin drøwelse giffue mik allae myne synders
for ladilsæ och frælsæ mik aff alt unt" (pray the same your blessed son that he for
the same your sorrow may give me absolution for all my sins and save me from all
evil) The prayer ends with the words Amen Pater Noster Ave Maria. (Nielsen:
1945, pp. 277-278).
This imprecation demonstrates the same concept "deliver from evil" in a
Marian prayer. Further, the prayer contains the same optative form of fraelse as that
found on the Kensington Stone.
In addition to the phrase appearing as an optative with Jesus as the intended
agent of "freeing from evil" the Karen Ludwigdatters Tidebog also shows the
imperative, with Mary as the intended agent, with this verb. "Heel fruae Sancta

110
Maria… fræls mik aff alt vnt och bedh for myne synder. Amen" (Hail Lady Holy
Mary… free me from all evil and pray for my sins. Amen) ( Nielsen: 1945, p. 291).
This is the first direct linkage identified between the Hail Mary and some
form of the words fraelse af illy in a text roughly contemporary to the reputed
carving of the Kensington Rune Stone in the 14th century. In our opinion the
similarities in form and function between the first of these prayers and the phrase on
the Kensington Stone are startling. This shows that the addition to the Hail Mary of
a request that Mary intercede for some favor is a genuine Medieval feature. A 19th
century forger, either Catholic or Protestant, could not have known just how
authentic such an addition was to the Ave Maria in a pre-reformation Scandinavian
context. None of the sources that show its use were published until this century.

CONCLUSION

.
Our work with the phrase AV M: fräelse: af: illy: proves that it is a Medieval
creation. The conventions used for abbreviation and the inclusion of this particular
ending to the Ave Maria are solidly in line with the usage and flavor of the 14th
century from which the Stone Inscription claims to come. This new evidence
deserves a direct refutation from anyone who still believes that the Kensington
Stone is not genuine.
Hall and Nielsen have demonstrated that the forger must have had a detailed
knowledge of an Archaic Norse which was not even available at the time of the
supposed forgery. Our study adds to that, the need for the forger to have known
Latin Paleography and quite obscure pre-Reformation Scandinavian liturgical
practices. The carver, if a forger, must have been quite a Renaissance man. We feel
it is time to admit that he was more likely a Medieval man.

111
 BIBLIOGRAPHY for the Kensington Stone

Bischoff, Bernhard
1990 Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Dáibhí Ó Cróinín and David
Ganz, trans. Cambridge University Press.

Cappelli, Adriano
1928 Lexicon Abbreviaturarum. J. J. Weber.

Collins, A. Jefferies, ed.

1969 The Bridgettine Breviary of Syon Abbey (From the MS. with English Rubrics F.4.II
at Magdalene College Cambridge). Stanbrook Abbey Press.

Faehne, Helge, ed.

1962 Libri Liturgici Provinciae Nidrosiensis Medii Aevi. Vol. 1, Manuale Norvegicum
(Presta Handbok) ex tribus codicibus saec. XII-XIV.

Hagen, O. E.
1911 Samband. No. 42, pp. 363-369.

Hall, Robert A. Jr.

1982 The Kensington Stone is Genuine: Linguistic, Practical, Methodological
Considerations. Hornbeam Press
1994 The Kensington Runestone: Authentic and Important. Jupiter Press.

Holand, Hjalmar R.
1956 Explorations in America Before Columbus. Twayne Publishers, Inc.

Jonsson, Finnur
1924 "Interpretation of Runic Inscriptions from Herjolfsnes" in Meddelelser om
Grønland. Copenhagen.

Moltke, Erik
1985 Runes and their Origin: Denmark and Elsewhere. National Museum of Denmark.

Nielsen, Karl Martin, Ed.

1945 Middelalderens Danske Bønnebøger. Vol I. Gyldendalske Boghandel Nordisk
Forlag.
1949 Middelalderens Danske Bønnebøger. Vol II. Gyldendalske Boghandel Nordisk
Forlag. 1982 Middelalderens Danske Bønnebøger. Vol V. Gyldendalske Boghandel Nordisk
Forlag.

Nielsen, Richard
1986 "The Arabic Numbering System on the Kensington Rune Stone" in Epigraphical
Society Occasional Publications Vol. 15, pp. 47-61

112
 1987 "The Kensington Runestone: Part 2, Aberrant Letters" in Epigraphical Society
Occasional Publications Vol. 16, pp. 51-83.
1988 "The Kensington Runestone: Part 3: Linguistic Evidence for its Authenticity" in
Epigraphical Society Occasional Publications Vol. 17, pp. 124-178.
1989 "The Kensington Runestone: Part 3: Linguistic Evidence for its Authenticity" in
Epigraphical Society Occasional Publications Vol. 18, pp. 110-132.
1998 "Linguistic Aspects Concerning the Kensington Runestone" in Epigraphical
Society Occasional Publications Vol. 23, pp. 189-265.

Skelton, R. A., Thomas Marston, and George D. Painter

1965 The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation. Yale University Press.

Wahlgren, Erik
1958 The Kensington Stone: A Mystery Solved. The University of Wisconsin Press.

113
 THE "DAUGHTERS" OF ALLAH IDENTIFIED

'
afara'aytumu llata
' Have you seen Allat and
wa'l'uzza al-Uzza
wamanata and Manat the third, the
'
ththalithata '
l'ukhra last? 1

These verses from the Quran, 18-19 of Sura an-Najm, "the Star, (53)" introduce
the daughters of Allah— Allat, Uzza, and Manat. Putting aside the issue of text
history and the so-called "Satanic Verses" which may have been deleted from this
section, nothing out of the ordinary follows. Typical of the Prophet's mission, we
see polytheism condemned and any security based on "intercession" denied. The
goddesses themselves, however, have been the focus of considerable debate.
Scholars have long disputed the identifications of these deities of pre-Islamic
Arabia, usually settling on astral bodies such as the Sun, Moon, and Stars. In this
article we will not revisit the issue of who Allat or Uzza or Manat were individually
to their respective devotees. Instead, we will examine who Allat, Uzza, and Manat
were as the formal grouping we see in Sura 53. We will argue that a fundamentally
different concept of these goddesses is presented in Sura 53 than any we would
have suspected based soley on historical evidence from the Arabian peninsula.
In the full polemic against the "daughters," the Prophet condemns the worship
and request for intercession of these three particular deities. He portrays the
people's belief that Allah even hasdaughters as ridiculous, given their own desire

1
To clarify to all our many muslim friends, this article seeks to explain some curious verses in the
Quran. We do not believe that Allah has daughters, but simply seek to uncover the reason that
some people in Ancient Arabia apparently did believe that.
to have sons. He concludes that the people have incorrectly named angels with
female names. Furthermore, the angels have no independent power of intercession
anyway:

Have you seen Allat and al-Uzza

and Manat the third, the last?
To you the males and to Him the females?
This, then, is an unjust division.
They are nothing but names which you and your fathers named
them. Allah did not reveal them with authority. They follow
(nothing) but fancy and what (their) soul desires. And guidance
had (even) come to them from their Lord
Or shall Humans have what they wish
while the hereafter and the beginning are Allah's?
And how many of the Angels are there whose intercession does
not profit a thing except after Allah has given permission to
whom he wills and pleases?
Indeed those who do not believe in the hereafter name the
Angels with feminine names (vv. 19-27).

It is generally held that Allat is a syncopated form of al-ilat; i.e., the goddess. As
such Allat seems to have been a female version of Allah, whether as a consort or
even in substitution.2 Identifications range from the Moon3 to the Sun.4 Manat,

2 Vid. Winnett, Ancient Records from North Arabia (1970) where Allah and Allat seem
interchangeable in the Jawf area (pp. 77-78). Allah does not appear as a deity in Nabatean
inscriptions, while Allat does (p. 148).
3
P. 78, Winnett (1970).

115
whose name probably means "destiny," should likely be connected with the concept
of Fate. Uzza (strong one) has been connected with the planet Venus.5
The problem with trying to connect the inscriptional evidence concerning these
deities with the Quranic passage in which they appear is that no where else are the
three deities presented as forming any type of group, still less to be "daughters" of
Allah. These deities tended to be located at major cult shrines in which they
enjoyed a position of primacy. Thus Allat had a shrine at Ta'if,Uzza in Naklah,
while Manat had a sanctuary in Qudayd. It is clear that these goddesses were
independent deities, with separate cults. In some areas Allat was worshipped to the
apparent exclusion of Allah. A similar situation may have existed with the
Nabatean deity RIdy. The two forms of the name, RIdw and RIdy, may represent
male and female forms under which the one deity was worshipped.6 If this is the
case with Allah and Allat, the description of Allat as a "daughter" of Allah is
inexplicable. In short, apart from Sura 53:19-27, we would not have had any reason
to believe that Allah had daughters in the popular religion, much less that Allat,
Manat, and Uzza were those daughters. Nevertheless, scholars of pre-Islamic
religion seem to accept the Quranic description without any question. Winnett, in
an article which attempts to grapple with these same problems, repeatedly calls
these three deities "daughters of Allah," assuming de facto the accuracy of the
Quran in this area.7

4
P. 61 Hitti History of the Arabs, (1963).
5
P. 127, Winnett (1970); P. 99 Hitti (1963).
6
Vid. p. 75, Winnet (1970) for a full treatment of this issue.
7
"The Daughters of Allah" in The Moslim World (1940).Vid. eg., p. 117, "In the Nabatean
inscriptions Allah does not appear, although numerous Nabateans bear Allah names. Allah's
daughters, however, appear several times.

116
A New Solution
We propose that Sura 53 reflects a development in North Arabian religion which
was accurate within a very limited scope, but which was a departure from the
traditional and wider understanding of the three deities. The Quran is reflecting a
development in which three Arabian goddesses have been secondarily fit into the
roles of a formal group of goddesses which had been imported into the area from
outside.
In 1929 cuneiform tablets were discovered at Rash-Shamra in Northern Syria
which gave scholarship the literature and records of a Semitic speaking culture
dating to the 15th century BCE. This city, Ugarit, left behind a wealth of
mythological material which has been revolutionary for biblical studies.
Vocabulary and grammatical usages which had been poorly understood could
suddenly be compared with a newly found body of literature in a cognate language.
In some cases words were fully understood for the first time.
One of the many interesting figures found in the mythological texts is a wise king
named Daniel.8 Daniel needs a son and heir. After praying fervently for assistance,
he is assured that his prayer will be answered and that he will have the son he seeks.
The prayer, however, is not immediately granted. Instead, a group of female deities
called the Kotharat9 appear at Daniel's house. Daniel properly supplies them with
food and drink for several days, after which they leave. Apparently it is the
Kotharat who have actually granted the request for conception, because they are the
ones who have this expertise (24-37).

8
The Daniel of the Ugaritic literature is the most likely candidate for the individual linked with
Noah and Job in Ezekiel 14:14,20 as intercessors par excellance.
9
The Ugaritic materials are unvocalized, making reconstruction of the pronunciation of this title
problematic. The Ugaritians would likely have pronounced it Kaathiraat, with the same pattern as
a feminine plural participle in Arabic. Some reconstructions use a long o vowel as if the term had
undergone the Canaanite shift seen in Hebrew.

117
Daniel proceeded to his house
Daniel betook himself to his palace
There did enter into his house the Kotharat
the swallow-like daughters of the crescent moon. Then Daniel
man of Rapiu, thereat the hero man of
He-of-Harnam slaughtered an ox for the Koth-
arat. He fed the Kotharat and
gave drink to the swallow-like daughters of crescent moon.
Behold!, a day and a second he fed
the Kotharat and gave drink to the swallow-like daughters of the crescent moon.
a third, a fourth day he
fed the Kotharat and gave drink
to the swallow-like daughters of the crescent moon, A fifth
a sixth day he fed the Kotharat
and he gave drink to the swallow-like daughters of the crescent moon,
Then on the seventh day the Kotharat did depart from his house.
the swallow-like daughters of the crescent moon
those [artful] in pleasure(s) of the bed of conception,
delight(s) of the bed of childbirth.
Daniel sat down (and) [counted] her months
A month [(passed) ]
a third, a fourth[(month) ]
10
month passed

The passages treating the Kotharat are unclear both from textual decay and
difficulty in interpretation. The vocabulary used is repeated constantly. The
standard description of the Kotharat, then, is:

10
Aqhat 17 ii:24-46. All translations and textual reconstructions of Ugaritic texts are from Gibson,
Canaanite Myths and Legends (1977), unless otherwise noted.

118
 Ktrt bnt hll snnt
Gibson translates this phrase as "the Kotharat, the swallow-like daughters of the
crescent moon."11 The root (hll) is problematic because several different meanings
are current in the various Semitic languages. The most common meaning, and the
one used above, is based on a derivation from the Arabic word hilal, 'crescent
moon', the most likely meaning in light of the hymn Nikkal
" and the Kotharat"
where the Moon god Yarikh figures prominently and a parallel term (gamlu,
'sickle') is used. The link between these lunar deities and fertility is probably to be
found in the monthly cycle of menstruation. The same phenomenon is in Greek
religion where Artemis, the Moon goddess, is closely linked to fertility and
childbirth. Nevertheless, interpretations based on the Hebrew root (hll) either
meaning of 'to shine' or 'to praise' could be posited. The final term
snnt)( has
presented the most difficulty. The translation "Swallow" is based on Assyrian
sinuntu. Alternatively, the root (snn) can be linked to a meaning of "to shine" in
both Aramaic and Arabic. Without further, more specific, texts these issues will not
be definitively solved.
The Aqhat passage itself, however, tells us much about the actual function of the
Kotharat. This group of deities appear to have been the custodians of conception
and childbirth such that Daniel wished to placate them to succeed in his desire to
have a son. The means he used is repeated several times— eating and drinking.
After their departure it seems certain (albeit in a highly fragmentary text) that
Daniel's wife was pregnant. Daniel proceeds to count the months of the pregnancy.
When the story resumes Daniel's sonAqhat has already grown up.
Another text from Ugarit shows this "vocation" of the Kotharat as well:

11
P. 106, (1977)

119
I sing (of) Nikkal-and-Ib
(and of) Khirkhib king of summer, Khirkhib
king of [AGZT] At the going down of the sun
Yarikh was inflamed (and) embraced her who
would give birth, the daughter
[O] Kotharat, o [swallow-like] daughters of the crescent moon,
behold! a maiden shall bear a son
[(May)] their eye[ ]For her use may they get sustenance
for her flesh blood
and wine; for the betrothed one
Hear, goddesses the Kotharat

O Kotharat, swallow-like <daughters> of the crescent moon

Yarikh, lamp of heaven, sent (word)

[I sing (of) the goddesses the Kotharat]

swallow-like [daughters] of the crescent moon, daughters of
the crescent moon, lord of the sickle that come down with
12
['RGZM] with [GBZT DM ]
Surely my victory is with Latipan
kindly god! Look! in my mouth is their incantation,
on my lips their formula
Her dowry and her wedding gift(s) will be
13
in her presence with shouting.
In the presence of Prbht
let the good young Kotharat applaud!14

12
Gibson (p. 129 (1977) does not put forth an interpretation of these words, saying only that they
are "apparently drugs or potions for use at childbirth; the first appears in the hippiatric text CTA
161 10 and the second was perhaps an agent to prevent haemorrage (cp. the element dm)."
13
Gibson does not offer an interpretation of the word yttqt.

120
 The final lines of this poem have received considerable attention among the
commentators regarding the number of the Kotharat. Given the lack of any
enumeration in the stock references for the Kotharat, it is difficult to know whether
or not the people of Ugarit themselves would have known their number. Perhaps
the Kotharat were simply an undefined group of goddesses. The plural number
suggests a number larger than two. If the Kotharat had been simply a pair, we might
have expected them to be a pair of names, such as Kothar-wa-Khassis (who seem
later to have even collapsed into one deity). The picture in the story of Aqhat of
Daniel preparing food and drink for them for several days does seem to suggest that
the number was not too unmanageable for him to support. Several scholars,
however, have used the final lines of this poem to put forth various views on the
number of the Kotharat. Lines 45-50, as reconstructed and translated by Gibson
read as follows:

Look! in my mouth is their incantation,

on my lips their formula
Her dowry and her wedding gift(s) will be
. . . . . . . . . in her presence with shouting.
In the presence of Prbht
let the good young Kotharat applaud!

Any translation of these lines will be open to criticism because the words used
are otherwise unknown. One solution to this was put forward by Johannes De
Moor, who interprets most of the last four lines as a list of the names of the
Kotharat:

14
Nikkal and the Kotharat lines 1-11, 15-16, 40-50 from Gibson (1977) pp. 128-129.

121
Look! Their list is in my mouth, their enumeration on my lips: Thillukhuha
and Mulugu-hiya, Thatiqatu, with her Baqi‘atu, Taqi‘atu, with Perubakhthi,
Damiqtu, the youngest of the Kathiratu.15

De Moor comments that "[l]ike their Babylonian counterparts the Shassuratu,

the number of the Kathiratu was seven."16 Gibson, however, does not see the names
or number of the Kotharat coming into play in this passage in the least (see above).
One problem with Gibson's translation is that it introduces a characteristic (youth)
into the discussion of the Kotharat that is otherwise not present and is certainly not
found in the stock epithets. For this reason we favor the way De Moor has rendered
the final two words in the passage (Isg×rt ktrt, youngest of the Kotharat). A
grammatical parallel to this form is found in 2 Chronicles 21:17 where we read
about "Jehoahaz, youngest of his sons." We do not, however, think that all of the
terms can be interpreted as names, least of all so as to arrive at the same number as
a Babylonian grouping of goddesses, the Shassuratu, marriage goddesses.
Frede Løkkegaard has proposed another reconstruction which charts a middle
road through this issue:

Their counting is not in my mouth, nor their numbering on my lips. The teats
of Hawa (desire) suckled him, he sought (20) his sustenance with Habqa‘at,
famine-dispelling food at the breast-pore of Miqat, the youngest of the
Amiable.17

15
P. 145, De Moor, An Anthology of Religious Texts from Ugarit (1987).
16
P. 145, De Moor (1987).
17
Løkkegaard, p. 56, "The Canaanite Divine Wetnurses" in Studia Theologica 10 (1956).

122
 Løkkegaard has emended the first word of this section (hn) to (in), which
accounts for his use of the negation in the first line. This move is quite unnecessary
and even contrary to the rest of the passage. In Løkkegaard's interpretation some of
the words are rendered as names and others as gifts or body parts of the Kotharat.
Løkkegaard, as with all of the scholars interpreting this passage, relies heavily on
Arabic. Little else will help to interpret this difficult passage. In Løkkegaard's favor
is the fact that, for the most part, the non-name words, (tlh, mlg, yttqt, tq‘t, prbh),
which he uses Arabic to elucidate can be connected with productive, relatively
common words and not rare words culled out of the largest of dictionaries.18
For these reasons we support the enumeration of three in this passage. The
enumeration of seven, we feel, may be overly motivated by the desire to link the
Kotharat more strongly with the Babylonian Shassuratu, marriage goddesses, while
Gibson's rendering does not do justice to the most obvious interpretation of the final
line in this poem.

18
Cf. malaj, 'to suck (milk)',
qut, 'to feed, nourish', and
barbah, 'duct, channel.' See also Song of
Songs 4:13, šelah, for tlh.

123
The "Daughters" of Allah

We argue that the three pre-Islamic goddesses, Allat, Manat, and alUzza, have been
secondarily fit into the roles of the Kotharat, on the basis of the following:
1) The Quran conceives of the three "daughters" as a specific, exclusive
grouping. Manat is specifically referred to as the "third, the last." Other
female deities were current in Arabia at the time of Muhammad. If the
Prophet were simply condemning polytheism or the "naming of angels with
female names" there should have been no reason to group these three in such
an exclusive sense as to imply that there are no more than these three.
Obviously Muhammad is condemning these three together in the capacity of
a group which would have been intelligible to his audience.
2) The cause for which the intercession of the "three daughters" was requested
seems to have been the procreation of children, in particular, sons. This fact
is inherent in Muhammad's argument against the very concept of these
female goddesses, for he mocks the people saying, "To you the males and to
Him the females?" Following an explanation of how angels have been
misnamed, Muhammad asks "Or shall Humans have what they wish?"
Finally, the intercession of angels is condemned as ineffectual: "And how
many of the Angels are there whose intercession does not profit a thing
except after Allah has given permission to whom he wills and pleases?"
3) There is possibly a polemical reference to the Kotharat in Sura 108, where
Allah seems to assure his believers of posterity because he has given them a
fountain named Kawthar:19

19
This Sura of the Quran is quoted by both Segert (p. 190 (1984)) and Gordon (p. 425 (1965)) as a
possible connection with the deity Kothar-wa-Khassis. No connection with the Kotharat, however,
seems to have been yet forwarded.

124
 Surely We have given you the '
Kawthar'
So pray to your Lord and make sacrifice
Surely your enemy— he is the one cut off (from
progeny).

Peculiar in the name of the fountain is the (aw) diphthong within the regular
root ktr. This could be an attempt to represent the long (o) vowel of a
language which had, unlike Arabic, undergone the Canaanite shift. In this
case Allah assures his people that they will not lack for posterity because
they forsake the Kotharat— he has given them the "Kawthar" instead.
4) The transplantation of the Moabite or Mesopotamian Moon god Hubal to
Mecca likely brought with it ancient traditions about the Moon god, which
could have included respect for the intercessory powers of his daughters.
This produced the need to fill in these roles with indigenous deities. If the
arguments numbering the Kotharat at three are correct, a remarkable parallel
can be demonstrated between dmqt sgrt ktrt (dmqt, "youngest of the
Kotharat) and wamanata 'ttalitata 'l'uhra (and Manat the third, the last).
5) Muhammad's connecting of the three "daughters" with Allah is no where
actually stated, so the phrase the "daughters of Allah" is properly "un-
quranic." They are equated with the chief deity, who for Muhammad, was
Allah. For others, especially those associated with the Ka'ba, the chief deity
was probably Hubal, the moon god. The moon god had been the head of the
pre-Islamic Arabian pantheons since the time of the ancient south Arabian
Kingdoms. These cults appear to have survived until the time of Muhammad,
as shown by a condemnation of their worship along with other deities in Sura
71:

125
 Don't you see how Allah has created the seven
heavens one on top of another
and made the moon as a light20 in them and the
sun as a lamp?
(vv. 15-16)

In this Sura the Prophet affirms Allah's creation of heaven, including the celestial
bodies which the people were worshipping. The people, however, are reported to
have insisted on maintaining their polytheism:

And they say, "Don't leave your gods. Leave

neither Wadd, nor Suwa, nor Yaghuth and Yauq
and Nasr (v. 23).

If this theory is correct, the picture of these three deities presented in Sura 53
should not be harmonized with the still scanty evidence we have from pre-Islamic
Arabian inscriptions. On one level the godesses were separate entities enjoying
supremacy in their individual cults. On another, secondarily contrived, level, they
were the three daughters of the Moon god, renowned for their intercessary powers
on behalf of those who sought children or a safe delivery. By separating this aspect
from the rest of the evidence, further research can explore solutions leading to a
better understanding of this still shadowy period of Arabian religion.

20
Note the strong parallel between this phrase and the description of the Moon in the Nikkal hymn,
line 16: yrh ny[r] šmm, "Yarikh, lamp of heaven"

126
 APPENDIX TO DAUGHTERS:
IDENTIFYING THE KATHIRAT

As stated above, among the many deities of the Ugaritic Pantheon are the
Kathirat, a group of fertility goddesses. Owing to the fragmentary nature of some of
the texts that treat them, several aspects of the Kathirat are hotly contested. We
believe, however, that a close examination of the evidence will reveal what the
people at Ugarit believed the Kathirat represented astronomically—the three stars in
the handle of the Big Dipper.

The Kathirat seem to have been a group of female deities, perhaps three or seven
in number, who were connected with conception, certainly, and possibly with
childbirth and nursing as well. This connection is likely from the firm connection
between the Kathirat and the "bed (‘rš)" in the Hymn of Nikkal and Ib and the
success Daniel finds in having a child following his entertaining of the Kathirat. We
may be able to surmise from the Daniel story that food and drink offerings played
an important part in seeking their help. The stable epithet used for them, "daughters
of the New Moon (bnt hll)" further suggests a connection with one of Ugarit's
celestial deities. Apart from that, little else can be said with any certainty about
them.

THE KATHIRAT AND URSA MAJOR

The identification of the Kathirat as daughters of Hilal, the Crescent Moon,
provides the tantalizing possibility that these goddesses were as well features of the
night sky. Since the figures of Moon (Yarikh) and Sun (Shapash) are well known,
the astronomical basis for the Kathirat may be in the figure of stars, perhaps even a

127
constellation.21
One of the descriptions of the Kathirat in the Aqhat story, coupled with
astronomical traditions from other Semitic cultures provides a hint at a specific
constellation. These goddesses are said to have been "[y]d[‘]t.n‘my.‘rš.h[r]m
ysmsmt.‘rš.hlln (lit, knowledgeable in the pleasures of the bed of conception,
delight(s) of the bed of childbirth)." The word for bed used here, ‘rš, is, in fact, the
name for both the constellations Ursa22 Major and Ursa Minor (the Big and Little
Dippers) in Syriac sources.23 Another name for the constellations, na‘aš, is also
found in Arabic sources, though the meaning is essentially the same, "bed, bier."24
In each language, the four stars which constitute the "square" of the constellations
are called the "bed" proper. The three accompanying stars, however, are called the
"daughters of the Bed" (Arab. banat an-Na‘aš; Syr. banath ‘arsa). It is unlikely that
the "Bed" is the actual "father." Rather, the daughters must have some other
relationship to the bed. A Bedouin legend describing the "Banat an-Na‘š" as
celestial entities confirms this.25 In the story, seven daughters carry their dead father
on the bier (an-Na‘aš), hence their name. Here, all seven stars making up the

21
The two newly born deities, Shachar and Shalim have been identified with the Gemini
constellation. See Gibson (1977) 29.
22
The word Ursa could be a chance similarity to the Semitic root ‘rš. The Latin word means 'bear'.
Interestingly, when the Arabs borrowed the constellation from Europeans they translated it into
Arabic dubb. If the Romans borrowed the Semitic name for the constellation, they could have
reinterpreted it into ursa. Given the prominence of the Kathirat at Ugarit, as evidenced by their
appearance in sacrifice lists and diverse mythology. We will argue that they were identified with
the larger of the two Dippers. My argument, however, will serve equally for both constellations.
23
See R. Payne Smith, Thesaurus Syriacus Vol. 2. (1801) 2994; Drower and Macuch, A Mandaic
Dictionary (1963) 38.
24
Lane, (1863 [1955]) 2816.
25
Bergsträsser, Introduction to the Semitic Languages (1983) 200-201.

128
constellation are daughters.26 In other Arabic sources and in the Syriac, only the
three tail stars are the daughters. While the Bedouin myth portrays the bed in terms
of death, ‘arš in the Kathirat myths has a sexual connotation. A similar origin for
the name could be suggested on the basis of the Nikkal hymn. In that hymn, Yarikh
(the same deity as Hilal) seeks marriage and offspring. As in the Bedouin legend,
then, the Kathirat have become identified with the celestial ‘arš via their father's
exploits. Being goddesses of conception, they are figured in the sky as standing
beside the bed, ensuring its fertility. Either enumeration of the Kathirat, whether
three or seven, could be incorporated into this view, given the discrepancy in the
Arabic sources.
Another aspect of the Nikkal hymn may further confirm this identification. At
the beginning of the hymn, reference is made to hrhb.mlk qz hrhb mlk agzt, Khrkhb
king of summer— Khrkhb king of agzt." Gibson leaves the term untranslated but
27
adds, "Possibly 'the raiding season', i.e. autumn."Certainly the term is somehow
synonymous with summer. Raiding, however, was not conducted only in the fall
such that 'raiding season' can stand for 'autumn'. In Judges 6:3ff,
Midianites
the and
Amalekites seem to come raiding on the Israelites in the spring, when the yebul of
the land is vulnerable and there is harvested wheat for Gideon to try to hide from
them. An Old South Arabian text (Ry 506:2-3) also attest spring raiding: kgzyw
M‘dm gzwtn rb‘tn, "when (the tribe) Ma‘addum carried out spring raids."28 If

26
In Arabic, the reference for a singular star of a constellation is ibn, 'son'. Since Arabic reckons
non-human plurals as feminine, the use of banat, 'daughters' could be purely grammatical. The
Bedouin myth, however, shows that on a popular level the daughters were understood as female
entities. In this case, it is the use of singular ibn which is purely grammatical.
27
Gibson, (1977) 128 no. 2. See de Moor, p. 142, however, for a very different interpretation.
28
G. Ryckmans, Le Muséon 66 (1953) 278. He explains, "Il s'agit de larazzia de printeps… c'est la
saison à laquelle les rois se metent en campagne" (ibid, 280).

129
raiding were synonymous with autumn, there might be need to define spring raiding
in this fashion. However, this would also be the way to refer to spring raiding which
was, so to speak, an institution. Consider, for instance, the phrase in English
"Spring Cleaning."
This may be important to an identification of the Kathirat as Ursa Major because
from the Palestinian vantage point, Ursa Major is only fully visible in the Spring
and Summer. There, the constellation spends only half the day above the horizon. In
the Fall and Winter that time falls during daylight, so the constellation can not be
seen.29 In the Spring and Summer, though, the constellation is above the horizon
throughout the night. It is interesting, then, that the hymn which describes the
Kathirat's exploits seems to refer to these two seasons.
The identification of the Kathirat as stars suggests that "shining ones" will prove
to be a better rendering of snnt. We might now translate Ktrt bnt hll snnt as "The
Kathirat, Daughters of the New Moon, Shining ones." Whether or not the Kathirat
were actually identified with the stars of Ursa Major or if the constellation was
associated with them in a sense similar to that of Greco-Roman use can not be
known for certain. Stars in the Hebrew Bible are several places described in
mythological terms that would imply agency. In Judges 5:20 they are said to have
helped fight against Sisera, "From Heaven the Stars fought. From their courses they
fought against Sisera." Also Job 38:7, "When the Stars of the Morning sang
together and all the Sons of God shouted." This latter reference identifies the Stars
as minor deities of the pantheon. The constellation as a figure could also have been
simply linked to the Kathirat because of their association with the Bed. Their
relation to the New Moon perhaps weighs in favor of a celestial understanding of

29
Thanks are due to Prof. Glenn Cooper of the Department of Astronomy at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison for help in calculating the positions of this constellation.

130
the goddesses. In the future, more evidence may illuminate the issue further.

B I B L I O G R A P H Y for Daughters/Katirat

Bergsträsser, Gotthelf
1983 Introduction to the Semitic Languages: Text Specimens and Grammatical
Sketches. Peter T. Daniels, trans. Winona Lake, IN.

Gaster, Theodor Herzl

1938 "The 'Graces' in Semitic Folklore: A Wedding-song from
Ras Shamra "in
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 37-56.

Gese, Harmut, Maria Höfner, and Kurt Rudolph

1970 Die Religionen Altsyriens, Altarabiens und der Mandäer. Berlin.

Gibson, John C. L.
1977 Canaanite Myths and Legends. Edinburgh.

Gibson, John C. L.
1982 Syrian Semitic Inscriptions: Vol. 2. Oxford.

Goetze, Albrecht
1941 "The Nikkal Poem from Ras Shamra" in Journal of Biblical Literature, 353-
374.

Gordon, Cyrus H.
1965 Ugaritic Textbook. Analecta Orientalia 38. Rome.

Hitti, Philip K.
1963 History of the Arabs: From the Earliest Times to the Present. New York:
Macmillan.

Lane, Edward William

1863 [1955] An Arabic-English Lexicon. Reprinted: New York: Frederick Ungar
Publishing.

Løkkegaard, Frede

131
 1956 "The Canaanite Divine Wetnurses" in Studia Theologica. 10, 53-64.

de Moor, Johannes C.
1987 An Anthology of Religious Texts from Ugarit. Religious Texts Translation
Series 16. New York.

de Moor, Johannes C. and Klaas Spronk

1987 A Cuneiform Anthology of Religious Texts from Ugarit. Semitic Study
Series 6. New York.

1953 Le Muséon: Revue deÉtudes Orientales. Louvain.

Nougayrol, J. E. Laroche, Ch. Virolleaud, C. F. A. Schaeffer

1968 Ugaritica V: Nouveaux Textes Accadiens, Hourrites et Ugaritiques des
Archives et Bibliothèques Privées D'Ugarit Commentaires des Textes Historiques
. Paris.

Payne Smith, R.
1801 Thesaurus Syriacus. Oxford.

Ringgren, Helmer.
1973 Religions of the Ancient Near East. John Sturdy, trans. London.

Segert, Stanislav
1984 A Basic Grammar of the Ugaritic Language. .Los Angeles.

van Selms, A.
1954 Marriage and Family Life in Ugaritic Literature. .Pretoria Oriental Series I.
London.

Wellhausen, Julius.
1887 Skizzen und Vorarbeiten. .Berlin

Winnett, F. V.
1940 "The Daughters of Allah." in The Moslem World. Pp. 113-130.

Winnett, F. V. and W. L. Reed

1970 Ancient Records from North Arabia. Near and Middle East Series 6.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

132