Holiday musings: the power of writing, old games
I'm slowly returning from a holiday, which has been fairly hot and far too short, it seems. Alas, there is nothing to do about it: AST (the Alien in Swimming Trunks) which I won at "Burgerhjørnet" (the place with the biggest ice creams in all of Northern Sealand) and me are back at the office.

Facing immediate brain meltdown before leaving ITU, I kept my intellectual pursuits at a relatively low level during the entire holidays, with one exeption. The visit to the Museum of Minoan Findings in Heraklion on Crete was a fascinating experience. Here I learnt that the Phaistos disc, a clay tablet with iconographic imprints on both sides, remains yet to be deciphered. Scientists have figured out the meaning of the Linear B writing on other similar clay tablets (turned out to be mainly inventory lists...), but the Linear A writing on the Phaistos disc to this day remains to be understood. It's highly intriguing and oddly comforting that in a world so intent on cracking the codes of everything, there are codes which remain a mystery to us. Of course several people have claimed to have deciphered the Linear A writing completely and not surprisingly, someone even claim that what is found on the tablet is not really writing butactually a game! Well, here is a picture of the disc, give deciphering a try yourself if you want... (note, there is actually writing on both sides)



The named museum also contained another interesting find: a board game found at the Palace of Knossos in what they expect to be the guards' chambers, comparing the game and the site to similar finds in Egypts. It dates back several centuries B.C. The board, made out of stone, was nicely reconstructed, painted in clear blue and white colours; the pieces to play with were four stone pyramids, approx. 5 cm in diametre. They were placed next to the board, but from the looks of the board, it appeared that they would fit perfectly in some of the round squares on the board. It looked a bit like a game of Ludo, that is as a game involving moving the pieces around on the board and perhaps trying to hit homebase. Again, no one seems to know exactly how it was played, so feel free to use your own imagination.


I haven't played many games myself during the last three weeks, apart from Backgammon, at which I was beaten several times by my eleven-year-old niece who have played far more than I have (I'm a newbie, but at least initiated now). But I finally had the time to read some novels, including the new Harry Potter which I devoured in little more than two days - and yes, I think it is as good (or as bad) as the other books in the series, at least Rowling still succeeds in making a "what happens next" junkie out of me. One of the more remarkable books I read was Jan Kjærstads Tegn til Kærlighed (Signs for Love), about a woman who tries to invent the perfect font which will not only convey meaning, but also emotion. I will not disclose whether she succeeds or not, but I liked the idea and not the least, all the small stories and fairytales Kjærstad inserts in the main story, stories about the amazing powers of singular letters. In a strange way, it seemed to go well with my musings on the Phaistos disc, as I read the book the same week I visited the museum. Kjærstad is a fabulous story-teller, but the end of the book disappointed me somewhat, as have the ends of many books, I have read this year. Perhaps I am just growing more sensitive to well-carried plots, but my general disappointment makes me wonder whether perhaps a story is not always most perfect while it is being told, because it still holds so much promise of possible endings and developments. Perhaps this is also why the Phaistos disc fascinates me (and many others) so much, because it could be telling us an infinite number of different stories, because the story of itself as a piece of writing still remains to be told.

In this space, however, the not-so-exiting story of my academic research and life will continue shortly.

# posted by Lisbeth at: 13:54