Bare måtte være en bløff?

Arkeologer har i hundre år slitt i en heller intens modus for å finne ut hva i all verden teksten på Faistos-disken (så lenge nå Wikipedia holder seg til den gamle historien) egentlig betyr - for ikke å si når den er fra (bronsealderen har så langt vært gjennomgangstonen).

Det hele har utvilsomt også vært av interesse for enkelte med en litt vel livlig fantasi. For ikke å si oss stakkars turistene som har reist helt til Kreta for å se den på egenhånd. Som vi gjorde med våre barn en vakker sommer i 1996.

Og nå får vi altså alle høre at det hele i stedet kan være en bløff.

Jerome Eisenberg, a specialist in faked ancient art, is claiming that the disc and its indecipherable text is not a relic dating from 1,700BC, but a forgery that has duped scholars since Luigi Pernier, an Italian archaeologist, “discovered” it in 1908 in the Minoan palace of Phaistos on Crete.

Pernier was desperate to impress his colleagues with a find of his own, according to Dr Eisenberg, and needed to unearth something that could outdo the discoveries made by Sir Arthur Evans, the renowned English archaeologist, and Federico Halbherr, a fellow Italian.

Nå er det de færreste forunt å beherske de språklige og ikonografiske kunnskaper som kreves for i det hele tatt å gi seg i kast med å tolke disken. Selv mine barn lot seg forføre.

Samtidig viser det seg at det likevel ikke er så enkelt å avgjøre dette. I hvertfall ikke sånn en gang for alle.

He believes that Pernier's solution was to create a “relic” with an untranslatable pictographic text. If it was a ruse, it worked. Evans was so excited that he published an analysis of Pernier's findings. For the past century innumerable attempts have been made to decipher the disc. Archaeologists have tried linking them to ancient civilisations, from Greek to Egyptian.

Dr Eisenberg, who has conducted appraisals for the US Treasury Department and the J. Paul Getty Museum, highlighted the forger's error in creating a terracotta “pancake” with a cleanly cut edge. Nor, he added, should it have been fired so perfectly. “Minoan clay tablets were not fired purposefully, only accidentally,” he said. “Pernier may not have realised this.”

Each side of the disc bears a bar composed of four or five dots which one scholar described as “the oldest example of the use of natural punctuation”.

Dr Eisenberg believes that it was added to lead scholars astray — “another oddity to puzzle them, and a common trick among forgers”. The Greek authorities have refused to give Dr Eisenberg permission to examine the disc outside its display case, arguing that it is too delicate to be moved.

Nei, turistindustrien krever sitt.

Som så ofte er det bare å lene seg lettere tilbake og si at fremtiden vil vise. Også når det gjelder fortiden.