Ancient Civilisations

Deciphering the Phaistos Disk

Numerous attempts have been made by scholars to interpret the Phaistos Disk text over the past century.

They have included translations as a poem, hymn, prayer, sacred text, a magic inscription, curse or aid to a healing ritual, a funerary record, almanac, court list, political treaty, proof of a geometric theorem, list of soldiers, a board game and even musical notation for a stringed instrument.

Perhaps the most colourful idea is that the disc displays a prototype of the "Little Boy Blue" nursery rhyme. This explanation was given in the 1980s by the late Christian O'Brien, the ancient history and languages specialist, whose view was that the die-stamped vertical picture signs on the disc demonstrated a unique use of the earliest known Indo-European pictorial text, and described a "pastoral disaster": the oxen of the seven lords escape from their field, stampede through corn, knock over beehives and disrupt the order of farming life.

"It tells a charming everyday story of country folk," said Edmund Marriage, the British ancient civilisations researcher who is promoting O'Brien's scholarship. "A theme likened to 'little boy blue come blow on your horn, the sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn'."
O'Brien identified the disc's picture language as similar to, but pre-dating, the Sumerian cuneiform of the Kharsag Epics - regarded as the world's oldest religious text, dated to about 2,500BC - and evidence of a link between the Sumerian and Cretan civilisations.

Tying in with O'Brien's translation of the disc, the Epics tell of the foundation of an agricultural settlement near Mount Hermon in modern-day Lebanon which he believed was the site of the Biblical Garden of Eden (see items below on this page).

Edmund, a distant relative of O'Brien, enlists the work of Professor George Aaron Barton (1859-1942), Professor of Semitic languages at the Quaker Bryn Mawr College, near Philadelphia, USA, who verified the origins of cuneiform and was the first person to attempt to translate the Kharsag Epics nearly a century ago, when he published his Miscellaneous Babylonian Inscriptions.

Edmund believes the Phaistos Disk is genuine because its pictorial images are identical to the collection of 288 pictographs identified by Prof Barton as early as 1913 in his The Origin and Development of Babyloni Writing, when he finally established and traced their development into cuneiform.
According to Prof Barton, the original signs were modelled after the human body and its parts and after mammals, birds, insects, fishes, trees, stars and clouds, earth and water, buildings, boats, household furniture and utensils, fire, weapons, clothing, implements of worship, nets, traps, pottery, and musical instruments.

An early date for the Phaistos Disk would therefore be a most important discovery in the history of writing.

Was this the site of the Garden of Eden?

From archaic Sumerian, Aramaic and Hebraic written records, together with a detailed geological and scientific study of the Near East, Christian and Joy O'Brien, in their remarkable book, The Genius of the Few, published in 1985, identified the Mt Hermon area in Southern Lebanon as the site of the Biblical Garden of Eden.
It's not often that a book comes your way that can alter the whole way you look at the world and your place in it, but there's no doubt The Genius of the Few, a classic of its kind, falls into this category.

According to the O'Briens' thesis, the Mt Hermon area was the scene of agricultural domestication in a restart of civilisation by survivors of an advanced race - dubbed the Shining Ones - following a global catastrophe believed to have occurred in about 10,400BC when cosmic debris struck the Earth in the Hudson Bay region of Canada.

The purported Eden site lies eight miles north of Mt Hermon - the highest mountain bordering Israel, Lebanon and Syria - and 25 miles from Damascus. The O'Briens saw the ancient community here as being the single benevolent source for law and religions. Barbara and Christian O'Brien

Christian, who died in 2001 at the age of 87, was a professional exploration geologist by profession with BP who, from retirement in 1970, surveyed ancient sites in Britain and found it necessary to master archaic cuneiform, Aramaic and Hebraic texts in his search for the enlightened master builders who constructed them

Edmund Marriage, of Dorset, England, together with Barbara Joy, are continuing his research into ancient records and archaeological science through the Patrick Foundation's Golden Age Project.

Utilising detailed French ordnance survey maps of the area north of Mt Hermon, and the detailed descriptions of the terrain and other features contained within the Sumerian Seven Kharsag Epics and the Books of Enoch, the O'Briens concluded that the site in the Near East which best met these descriptions was the inter-montaine basin area north of Rachaiya, close to Mt Hermon.

From images available on Google Earth, important archaeological remains have been identified at this location, and Edmund hopes for an archaeological investigation of the area in partnership with the Lebanese authorities. He says it has to be a prime target for research despite all the marks on the ground relating to warzone activities.

Features include the site of a dam and reservoir used to irrigate crops, during what was, in about 9,250 BC, a very dry period during which agriculture would have been impossible without adequate supplies of water. Of major interest in the Google images is what appears to be the reservoir overflow watercourse running from the site of the dam to divert surplus water into a lower valley, thereby ensuring that the basin was not flooded. Sumerian Figurines

The Sumerian, Aramaic and Hebraic records refer to the eventual destruction of this settlement by what is described in the Sumerian texts as a "thousand-year storm".

There is archaeological evidence from many other sites in the area of increased precipitation and flooding in about 6,500 BC. It would appear that, at about this time, severe flooding destroyed the dam and reservoir, and severely disabled the storm watercourse.

Kharsag translates from the archaic Sumerian as "head enclosure". The Kharsag site is named after the Kharsag Epics, a series of clay cylinders and tablets inscribed in cuneiform and translated by Christian O’Brien. The cylinders and tablets form part of the Nippur collection held at the University Museum, Philadelphia, USA, and they describe in some detail the agricultural activities of the primary Sumerian gods An, Enlil and Ninhursag, which are supported by the Books of Enoch and the early chapters of Genesis.

"We believe our project is of great historical importance to all the people of Lebanon and Syria, and would not want to proceed without a much better understanding of the subject among the political and religious factions who, we would hope, would be more likely to be united by a greater knowledge of their common ancestors," says Edmund.

Mohammed made a special journey to Syria to gain historical knowledge of the anti-Lebanon area. On his death, the first mosque was built in Damascus on the site of the Temple of Baal Hadad (the great lord Hadad) and the eight petalled symbol of the first occupants of Kharsag can still be seen on the main mosque doors of the original construction. Christians share the god of Abraham with Arab and Jew and Arab, Christian and Jew have lived in harmony in the past. In Jewish history, the sons of God were said to have lived near Mt Hermon, and in Arab literature, the Garden of Eden was described as being 25 miles from Damascus.

"I believe we will all benefit and be brought together in the knowledge that the land of Canaan preceded Mesopotamia and Egypt as the first high culture and civilization, following global catastrophe at the end of the ice age," says Edmund.

Jesus on the holy mountain

Mt Hermon is linked to many Biblical stories, including that of Noah, and, according to local legend, Cain and Abel and various "sons of God" lie buried in a cave there.
    Most famously, Matthew, Mark and Luke recount an extraordinary encounter on a high mountain when Jesus was transfigured before three of his disciples, Peter, James and John, who were privileged to witness the glory of Christ.
    It seems more than likely that the transfiguration took place on Mt Hermon. Both Matthew and Mark in their gospel accounts say that Jesus journeyed north from Bethsaida on the Sea of Galilee to the city of Caesarea Philippi, at the southern base of Mount Hermon, just before his ascent to a high mountain (Matt 16:13; Mark 8:27).
    "And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves; and he was transfigured before them, and his garments became glistening, intensely white, as no fuller on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses; and they were talking to Jesus." Mark 9:2-4:

The Great Pyramid and the Catastrophe Code

When Canadian John Gagnon sent me the first draft of a book he was writing, which added to growing evidence that the Earth was bombarded by debris from a supernova explosion in about 10,400BC, I put him in touch with Edmund Marriage whose Golden Age Project collates evidence for the cataclysm believed to have destroyed an advanced civilisation – the few survivors of which are recalled as gods in myths worldwide.
    John's book, Message from the Ancients: the Great Pyramid and the Hudson Bay pole, aims to prove that the Great Pyramid of Giza encodes the outcome of the catastrophe, and offers a major challenge to established scientific theories.
    "Multiple large meteors impacted the Earth on its northern polar ice cap with such unimaginable force as to cause a geo-repositioning of the continents," says John, of Clayton, Ontario, who believes the Pyramid records how the impact shifted the Earth on its axis.
    "This date of 10,400BC is generally linked to the timeframe of rapid and dramatic climate change which abruptly ended the so-called ice ages. As well as climate change, massive extinction took place. All recent information indicates to the scientific community that a major impact event occurred."
    John claims that structural elements in the Great Pyramid mark the positions of Giza on the African continent before and after it was propelled north in the fearsome collision. This knowledge could only have been handed down by the survivors of the disaster who had calculated the axis shift.
    Describing himself as just "one small guy in a small town", who has balanced his life as a single dad with studying how climate change today could affect his children, John wants to remove complacency that the last major Earth impact was the one that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
    "We must now consider this is a much more common occurrence then we have been made aware of," he adds. "Should more time not be spent to investigate the massive implications and to develop strategies to protect ourselves? Mankind is no match for Mother Nature. We must err on the safe side."