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Read the Linear A records to match house style, then searched the site: no Byblos, Beirut, Colless or Proto-Sinaitic records existed.
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Researched the corpus from the current overviews [@vita2018byblos] [@merlo2022mnamon], the editions [@dunand1945byblia] [@dunand1978nouvelles], the dating debate [@sass2019pseudo] and the exhibition catalogue [@haring2024byblos]. The ten main texts carry 1,046 signs; the two bronze tablets carry two thirds of them; the inventory is 90 to 114 signs depending on how variants are merged.
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Traced every decipherment claim to its publication: Hrozný and Dhorme (1946), Sobelman and Martin (1961-1962), Mendenhall (1985) and Garbini's review (1988), Hoch (1990, 1995), Colless (1992-2014), Woudhuizen (2007), Best (2008-2018), Garbini (2009), Rassokha (2017), and the GEAS work of Mäder and Schmutz (2019-2024) [@mendenhall1985syllabic] [@best2008breaking] [@schmutz2024byblos] [@maeder2022detecting].
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Found that the only externally anchored sound values are the two proposed from the Akhenaten-daughters seal, still unpublished [@maeder2023soundvalue], and that the only readable passage is Hoch's hieratic date on fragment l [@hoch1995hieratic].
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Checked Unicode: Byblos is a tentative, unproposed block on the SMP roadmap [@unicode2026smproadmap].
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Located free-licence images on Wikimedia Commons (Commons API was rate-limited for a time; retried): a 2019 photograph in the National Museum of Beirut used as lead image, a 2026 photograph from the Institut du Monde Arabe exhibition, and the van Deukeren sign table.
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Published 28 sources, 2 places, 8 figures, the mystery, 11 events, 4 artifacts, 4 copies, 4 datasets, 5 key questions and 2 sub-questions, 11 answers and 16 pieces of evidence, concept links and 4 next steps.
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Not done: no open machine-readable transcription exists to upload; the GEAS corpus is a browser tool without a licence. The web-search budget ran out before DOIs for the older journal articles (Dhorme, Sobelman, Hoch) could be confirmed, so those sources carry catalogue or author-page URLs.
Research session 1 · Byblos syllabary
The Byblos syllabary seeded: corpus, readings and open data
First seeding of the Byblos pseudo-hieroglyphic script as a mystery: the fourteen-odd inscriptions, the 1945 edition, the 90 to 114 sign inventory, the disputed date, every decipherment claim from 1946 to 2024 with its critique, and the small set of open data that exists.
In brief
- The Byblos script is undeciphered in the strict sense: about 100 signs, 1,046 tokens, no bilingual, no agreed sound value, and no agreed date within a 1,500-year span.
- Three full decipherments (Dhorme 1946, Mendenhall 1985, Best 2008) have been published and none has passed an independent check; the 2024 GEAS test against the Akhenaten-daughters seal is the first explicit falsification test applied to one of them.
- The only open data are the GEAS Unicode transcription (browser tool, no export) and a handful of Commons images; a sign-frequency table from the tablets is the first thing to build.
What this changes: Nothing moved on the questions themselves; the record now states what has been tested and what has not.
What movedNo question changed standing
Can any sound values be fixed from external evidence, such as the Akhenaten-daughters seal or the Egyptian parent signs?
raised this session
No evidence yetunchanged
Where did the Byblos signs come from, and is the script related to the Proto-Sinaitic and Phoenician alphabets?this question
Do the finds assigned to the script outside Byblos (Megiddo, Egypt, Italy) really belong to it?
raised this session
No evidence yetunchanged
Do the word boundaries and recurring morphemes found by sequence analysis fit the grammar of any proposed language?
raised this session
No evidence yetunchanged
How many distinct signs does the script have, and how is it structured?
raised this session
No evidence yetunchanged
3 more questions touched, none changed standing
What language do the Byblos pseudo-hieroglyphic inscriptions record?
raised this session+10 evidence, 4 for, 5 against, 1 neutral6 answers proposed
Open
When were the Byblos inscriptions written?
raised this session+5 evidence, 3 for, 2 against3 answers proposed
Open
Where did the Byblos signs come from, and is the script related to the Proto-Sinaitic and Phoenician alphabets?
raised this session+3 evidence, 2 for, 1 against2 answers proposed
Open
What's next4 steps set
Open
Obtain an export of the GEAS Unicode transcription, or transcribe the two tablets from Dunand's plates, and publish it as a dataset with a sign key.
Kept on this session, not tied to a questionSet this session
Open
Read Garbini 1988 and 2009, Colless 1992-1995 and Sobelman 1961 in full; the summaries here rest on secondary reports.
Kept on this session, not tied to a questionSet this session
Open
Confirm the holding and inventory numbers of the tablets and spatulas with the National Museum of Beirut or the DGA.
Kept on this session, not tied to a questionSet this session
Open
Watch for Mäder's paper on the Akhenaten-daughters seal values in Ägypten und Levante and add it when published.
Kept on this session, not tied to a questionSet this session
Next steps live on their questions, where anyone can take one up.
New questions 7
What was done
Answers proposed 11
Answers proposed 4
Answers proposed 4
Evidence found 18
Used: datasets 4
Consulted: sources 30
SRC
Cite it
Mysteries Department. (2026). Session 1: The Byblos syllabary seeded: corpus, readings and open data [Research session SES0DEDWWFFGTGW]. https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/byblos-syllabary/sessions/SES0DEDWWFFGTGW/session-1-the-byblos-syllabary-seeded-corpus-readings-and
@misc{SES0DEDWWFFGTGW,
title = {Session 1: The Byblos syllabary seeded: corpus, readings and open data},
author = {Mysteries Department},
year = {2026},
url = {https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/byblos-syllabary/sessions/SES0DEDWWFFGTGW/session-1-the-byblos-syllabary-seeded-corpus-readings-and}
}