GEAS — Alice Kober Gesellschaft für die Entzifferung Antiker Schriftsysteme

News

By using the GEAS decipherment tool with its dynamic syllabary sequence detection method, we have contributed to a number of small-step decipherment advancements with results partially or fully accepted among scholars.

2025.01.01 GEAS claims breakthrough by means of Experimental Script Archaeology, Part II: The emergence of 'runic' sign forms through the Rahmenquader Effect

Besides the proposal for the development of the futhark order (cf. part I), the GEAS Rune Provenance Theory contains other micro-theses to explain unsolved problems within the Rune transfer question. One more of these explanations – the Rahmenquader Effect, could be given solely due to the Reitia Alphabet Learning Procedure reappraised by actors of the “Iluis Glanna” Celtic Reenactment…

2024.12.01 GEAS claims breakthrough by means of Experimental Script Archaeology, Part I: The origin of the futhark order

In the past years, two things have changed in regard to the long-lasting debate on the provenance of runic writing: At the one hand, Old European alphabets have been examined more thoroughly than ever, using modern paleographic methods in projects such as TIR, LexLep and PQN. At the other hand, archaeology has shown that North Italic writing was in use much longer than previously assumed, i.e. up…

2024.11.01 The GEAS Rune Provenance Theory: A Response to every single question as to how writing emerged in Germania

The GEAS RPT is a multi-disciplinary long-term endeavour envisaging an overall theory of the genesis of runic writing. The outline of parts 1 to 4 presented below gives insight into the content of the following publications:

2023.08.01 Paleografia Quantitativa Norditalica (PQN): Mathematical evidence for a full grapho-phonological integration of the runes into North Italic alpbabets

The collective GEAS project called PQN (Paleografia Quantitativa Norditalica) depicts every single graphic shape of the Lepontic/Brembonic/Cisalpine-Celtic, Raetic/Camunic, and Etruscan/Lemnic sub-alphabets…. and the Elder Futhark.

2023.07.01 Byblos Script: First sound value proposal ever based on external (iconographic) evidence

In an article soon to be published in Ugarit Forschungen, M. Mäder will suggest the first two sound value proposals for the Byblos Syllabary ever achieved by external evidence. A cylinder seal published by Garbini in 2004, depicting the three daughters of Achenaton and Nofretete together with three names written in Byblos script attached to them, is compared to the Berlin Familienstele showing the…

2021.07.01 Linking Leponticon and Raeticon to Lexicon Leponticum and Thesaurus Inscriptionum Raeticarum

It is our duty to provide photographs to every inscription depicted in the GEAS Corpora. But in the case of Lepontic and Raetic, this would be double work. Instead of collecting and rendering images for each of the more than 600 inscripitons unicodified by GEAS, we decided to link each of the Leponticon and Raeticon inscriptions to the respective entrance in [LexLep]…

2021.03.01 James Hoch (1990) confirmed: The Byblos syllabary is indeed adopted from the Egyptian Consonant Alphabet

Back in 2017, Marwan Kilani pushed us to new realms by recommending Harvey Sobelman’s (1961) n-gram analysis and James Hoch’s (1990) suggestion of comparing the Byblos script to the Egyptian phonographic (consonantial) sub-alphabet. Departing from the successful sound value attribution of ;  pa compared to p3 in Anchesen-pa-Aton’s hieroglyphic name on the Berlin Familienstele, combined with the…

2019.09.01 Does Brian Colless refuse the  me-ke-t-ATON ≈  me-ri-t-ATON proposal?

We appreciate Brian Colless’ great and almost live-long efforts and contributions to the deipherment of the Byblos syllabary, and we agree that IF one of the former claims for full decipherment should be partially taken for serious, then it is clearly Mendenhall’s (1985) work, who integrates Dunanats (1945) basic observations better and more cautiously than anyone since and before. And, to be…