The Phaistos Disc or Phaistos Disk is a disk of fired clay from the island of Crete, Greece, possibly from the middle or late MinoanBronze Age (second millennium BC), bearing a text in an unknown script and language. Its purpose and its original place of manufacture remain disputed. It is now on display at the archaeological museum of Heraklion. The name is sometimes spelled Phaestos or Festos.
The disk was discovered in 1908 by the Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier during the excavation of the Minoan palace of Phaistos.[1] The disk is about 15cm (5.9in) in diameter and is covered on each side with a spiral text, consisting of a total of 241 occurrences of 45 distinct signs, which were created by pressing individual sign stamps onto the soft clay before firing. While its unique features initially led some scholars to suspect a forgery or hoax, the disk is now generally accepted as authentic by archaeologists.
This mysterious object captured the imagination of amateur and professional palaeographers, and many attempts have been made to decipher the code behind the disc's signs.[2] While it is not clear that it is a script, most attempted decipherments assume that it is; most additionally assume a syllabary, others an alphabet or logography.
Discovery
Tablet PH-1
The Phaistos Disc was discovered in the Minoan palace-site of Phaistos, near Hagia Triada, on the south coast of Crete;[3] specifically the disc was found in the basement of room 8 in building 101 of a group of buildings to the northeast of the main palace. This grouping of four rooms also served as a formal entry into the palace complex. Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier recovered the intact "dish" on 3 July 1908 during his excavation of the first Minoan palace.
The disc was found in the main cell of an underground "temple depository". These basement cells, only accessible from above, were neatly covered with a layer of fine plaster. Their content was poor in precious artifacts, but rich in black earth and ashes, mixed with burnt bovine bones. In the northern part of the main cell, in the same black layer, a few centimetres south-east of the disc and about 50cm (20in) above the floor, Linear A tablet 'PH-1' was also found.
Dating
Yves Duhoux (1977) dates the disc to between 1850 B.C. and 1600 B.C. (MMIII in Minoan chronology) on the basis of Luigi Pernier's report, which says that the disc was in a Middle Minoan undisturbed context.[4] Jeppesen (1963) dates it to after 1400 (LMII–LMIII in Minoan chronology). Doubting the viability of Pernier's report, Louis Godart (1990) resigns himself to admitting that archaeologically, the disc may be dated to anywhere in Middle or Late Minoan times (MMI–LMIII, a period spanning most of the second millennium B.C.). J. Best suggests a date in the first half of the 14th century B.C. (LMIIIA) based on his dating of tablet PH-1.[5]
Physical description
Material
The disk is made of fine-grained clay. Some authors have stated that the clay does not appear to be of local origin, perhaps not even from Crete.[6] It was intentionally and properly fired, unlike tablets and seals that were baked only accidentally.[6]
Shape and dimensions
The disk is approximately cylindrical, about 16 cm in diameter and almost 2 cm thick, with rounded edges. More precisely, the outline is slightly egg-shaped, with the diameter varying from 15.8 to 16.5 cm and the thickness from 1.6 to 2.1 cm. The disk is slightly concave on side A and convex on side B.[6]
Typographic writing
The most remarkable feature of the Phaistos disk is that the embossed signs that comprise its inscription all result from pressing separate stamps – one for each symbol – into the soft clay before firing. Thus the disk can be seen as an early example of movable-type printing.[7][8] Typesetter and linguist Herbert Brekle writes:[9]
If the disc is, as assumed, a textual representation, we are really dealing with a "printed" text, which fulfills all definitional criteria of the typographic principle. The spiral sequencing of the graphematical units, the fact that they are impressed in a clay disc (blind printing!) and not imprinted are merely possible technological variants of textual representation. The decisive factor is that the material "types" are proven to be repeatedly instantiated on the clay disc.
Popular-science author Jared Diamond describes the disc as an example of a technological innovation that did not become widespread because it was made at the wrong time in history. Diamond contrasts the process with Gutenberg's printing press.[12]
Scribed lines
Besides the stamped symbols, there are a few markings made by scoring the moist clay with a sharp stylus. On each side there is a continuous spiral line that separates successive turns of the text. The strip between successive spires of this line is divided into sections by short radial lines, so that each section contains a few whole signs. The presumed start of the text, adjacent to the edge, is also marked by such a radial stroke, with the addition of five dots punched along it with the stylus. Finally, under some of the stamped signs, there are short oblique strokes.
Signs
Sign list and counts
There are 45 distinct signs on the disk, occurring a total of 242 times — 123 on side A and 119 on side B. In addition to these, a small diagonal line was incised with a stylus (not stamped) underneath some signs, a total of 18 times. The 45 symbols were numbered by Arthur Evans from 01 to 45,[1] and this numbering has been adopted by most researchers.
The signs were added to the Unicode universal computer character (UCS) set in 2008, after a 2006 proposal by Michael Everson and John H. Jenkins.[13] In the following table, the No. column is the Evans number of each sign; the Glyph column is a modern drawing of the symbol; and the Font column uses the UCS font available in the browser. The assigned Unicode names are PHAISTOS DISC SIGN followed by the names shown under Name in the table below, taken from a 1995 book by Louis Godart.[14]
One sign occurrence on side A is too damaged to identify. According to Godart, it may be sign 03 (TATTOOED HEAD) or 20 (DOLIUM); or less probably 08 (GAUNTLET) or 44 (SMALL AXE).[14]:p.101 Theoretically, it could also be a 46th distinct sign.
The sign images below are reversed left-to-right relative to their appearance on the disk, reflecting their presentation in most Western books and articles.[15]
Also, some signs occur in the disk in two or more orientations, rotated by 90 or 180 degrees. It is generally assumed that the rotation has no semantic or linguistic value, so the rotated copies are still the same symbol. Therefore, the "normal" orientation of those signs is not known, and might have been left to the scribe's discretion.[13][15]
Many of the signs are depictions of concrete objects with a recognizable general nature (such as humans, birds, plants, a boat), or parts thereof (heads, hides, flowers). However, in most cases the precise nature of objects depicted is still unknown (as of 2023). The sign names assigned by scholars, in particular by Godart[14] and the Unicode consortium,[13] were rather arbitrary, often based on the slightest shape similarity.
Symbol 21 (Godart's "COMB") was once conjectured to be a palace floorplan.[16] However, this hypothesis was cast in doubt by the discovery of a vase with a nearly identical symbol incised on the bottom, believed to be a potter's mark.[17]
Ritual sea snail (triton) conch, decorated with red paint. Phaistos, 3600–3000 BC.
Symbol 20 ("DOLIUM") was assumed to be the conch of a large sea snail, such as Tonna dolium or some Eudolium species. One such conch was found at Phaistos and is believed to have been used as a musical instrument for ritual uses.
Sign distribution
The distribution of symbols is highly non-random, and quite different between the two sides. Evans's symbol 02 (PLUMED HEAD) is most frequent one, occurring 19 times — 14 of them on side A. The next most frequent signs are 07 (HELMET), with 18 occurrences, mostly on side B; 12 (SHIELD), with 17, mostly on side A; and 27 (HIDE), with 15, of which 10 on side A.
Still, 26 of the 45 symbols occur on both sides, at least once on each. The most common signs that occur on only one side are 31 (EAGLE), on side A, and 22 (SLING), on side B; both with 5 occurrences each.
The following table shows how many distinct signs (Sign count) have the same number of occurrences (Frequency). The third number in each column is the product of the two numbers above, that is, the total number of occurrences (Token count) of those signs:
Frequency
19
18
17
16
15
14
13
12
11
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
Sign count
1
1
1
1
1
4
1
6
3
6
3
8
9
Total = 45 signs
Token count
19
18
17
15
12
44
7
36
15
24
9
16
9
Total = 241 tokens
The nine hapaxes (symbols occurring just once) are 04 (A5), 05 (B3), 11 (A13), 15 (B8), 17 (A24), 30 (B27), 42 (B9), 43 (B4), 44 (A7). Of the eight twice-occurring symbols, four (03, 21, 28, 41) occur on side A only, three (09, 16, 20) on side B only, and only one (14) occurs on both sides.
Sign correlations
The distribution of symbol pairs too is highly non-uniform. For example, of the 17 occurrences of sign 12 (SHIELD), thirteen follow immediately sign 02 (PLUMED HEAD).
Text
Directionality
Evans, at one point, published an assertion that the disc had been written, and should be read, from the center out; because it would have been easiest to place the inscription first and then size the disc to fit the text. There is general agreement that he was wrong, and Evans himself later changed his mind: the inscription was made, and should be read, in the clockwise sense, from the outside in toward the centre, as with the similar spiral inscription on the Lead Plaque of Magliano.[18]:649 Yves Duhoux stated that any outward reading may be discarded.[citation needed]
Among the arguments that support this conclusion is the fact that the centres of the spirals are not in the centre of the disc. Also, some of the symbols near the centre are crowded, as though the maker was cramped for space. One pair of symbols is even stacked in the "vertical" (radial) direction rather than side-by-side. Furthermore, whenever symbols overlap, the inner symbol overlies the outer symbol. (However, this analysis is complicated by several apparent corrections made by the scribe, where the stamping of the corrected symbols may well have been different from the reading order.) Jean Faucounau has proposed a reconstruction of the scribe's movements, which would also require an inward direction.[citation needed]
The outside-to-centre reading direction implies right-to-left reading of the text, which is into the faces of the people and animals — as is the case in Egyptian and Anatolian.
In spite of this widespread consensus, some authors still dispute this conclusion and attempt to decipher it under the opposite reading order (left-to-right, counterclockwise, from the center to the periphery).
Phaistos disk scholars publishing in languages with left-to-right writing systems have generally found it convenient to mirror the text so that it reads from left to right. In this case, for consistency, the individual symbols are mirrored as well. (This practice is commonly seen also in many publications about Egyptian and Anatolian hieroglyphic texts.) The Unicode character set was designed to be used in this way, thus Unicode fonts typically depict the characters flipped relative to their orientation on the disk.
Order of the two sides
Evans considered side A as the "front" side, but technical arguments have since been forwarded favouring side B as the "front" side.[citation needed]
The following is a single image of the text "unrolled". While the order of the characters is left-to-right reversed, the signs themselves are in the original orientation.
Unrolled and left-to-right reversed image of the text.
"Words"
The signs are laid out on each side as a single spiral text, which is split by the inscribed radial strokes into "words". Both ends of the text on each side are also assumed to be "word" boundaries. There are 61 such "words" on the Disc, with two to seven sign occurrences each: 31 on side A and 30 on side B. These "words" are conventionally numbered A1 to A31 and B1 to B30, reading from right to left (clockwise, edge-to-center).[14] The signs are laid out right next to the disk's edge at first (13 words on A, 12 words on B) before spiralling toward the center (18 more words on each side).
There may be one additional radial stroke near the center of side A, over-stamped by the sign 03 (TATTOOED HEAD), between sign 10 (ARROW) and the central sign 38 (ROSETTE). However, most scholars ignore that possible stroke and count the last three symbols as a single "word" 10-03-38 (which happens to occur also at about the same position on the next-to-last turn).[14]
On both sides, there is a radial line also right before the start (outermost end) of the text, with five dots punched along it using a sharp round stylus.
Fields numbering by Louis Godart
"Paragraphs"
The short oblique strokes that were drawn with a stylus (not stamped) below some signs are always attached to the last sign of a "word" (assuming outside-in reading direction). Their meaning is a matter of discussion. One hypothesis, supported by Evans,[1] Duhoux, Ohlenroth and others,[citation needed] is that they further subdivide the text into "paragraphs". However, alternative meanings have been offered by other scholars.[citation needed]
Most transcriptions have 10 of those oblique strokes on side A and 8 on side B. That mark occurs at the end of the last word on side B, but not on side A; however, the end of the text on side A is generally assumed to end a "paragraph" as well. There are thus 11 and 8 "paragraphs", respectively, on sides A and B. Those 19 "paragraphs" have between one and four "words", with two exceptions: one "paragraph" on side A with nine words (A4 to A12), and one on side B with 12 words (B7 to B18).
However, oblique strokes at the end of words A7 and B8 may have been lost due to damage along the edge of disk; and the discontinuity in the placement of symbols between B12 and B13, following the end of the first turn of the text, might have served as a "paragraph" break too.[citation needed]
Also, close inspection of modern high-resolution photographs of the disk show that the "stroke" commonly listed under sign 19 at the end of word A24 is not really a stroke sign, but merely part of a crack that extends from the center of the disk to its edge, cutting through several signs. Excluding that occurrence, there would be only 9 oblique strokes and 10 paragraphs on side A, and words A23 to A27 would be a single five-word paragraph.
Transcriptions
The following transcriptions of the text all assume a right-to-left (clockwise, edge-to-center) reading direction on the disk, starting at the vertical (radial) line of five dots. In these transcription, however, the order of the characters has been flipped, so that they should be read left-to-right and top-to-bottom. The oblique stroke is assumed to indicate the last word of a "paragraph". A horizontal line has been added after each "paragraph" for clarity.
For consistency with most published sources, these transcriptions assume that there is an oblique stroke at the end of word A24, even though high-resolution images show it to be just a crack.
Unicode
The following is a rendering of the Phaistos Disc inscription in Unicode characters from the Phaistos code block (code points +101D0 to +101FC). The radial strokes are denoted by the ASCII character "|" (+7C), and the oblique subscripted stroke by the comma-like PHAISTOS DISK COMBINING OBLIQUE STROKE (+101FD) after the affected symbol. The radial stroke with five dots, that indicates the presumed start of text, is denoted by the ISO Latin 1 character "¦" (+A6). The boxed question mark "⍰" (+2370) denotes the illegible sign in word A8. The appearance of the signs will depend on the font used by the browser, but normally they should all be left-to-right flipped relative to their appearance on the disk.
The following transcription uses modern drawings of the signs, which are left-to-right reversed with respect to their appearance on the disk. The labels A1-A31 and B1-B30 are the traditional word numbers.[14]
Side A:
A1
A2A3
A4A5A6A7A8A9A10A11A12
A13A14A15
A16
A17A18A19
A20A21
A22
A23A24
A25A26A27
A28A29A30A31
Side B:
B1B2B3
B4B5B6
B7B8B9B10B11B12B13B14B15B16B17B18
B19B20
B21
B22B23B24
B25B26
B27B28B29B30
Numerical
The following transcription uses the Evans numbers for the signs.[5] The vertical bar characters "¦" and "|" represent the start-of-text and word-separating radial lines, respectively. The slash "/" denotes the oblique stroke under the preceding sign. The caret "^" indicates the transition from the first turn of the text (along the disk's edge) to the inner turns, and "??" is the unreadable sign.
The following table shows the distinct "words" of the text, their frequencies, and their locations. (The oblique "paragraph separator" strokes are not considered part of the words.)
The up/down arrow buttons on the first column can be used to sort the "words" lexicographically based on the Evans sign numbering — so that all the "words" that start with the same symbols are listed together.
The arrow buttons on the third column can be used to sort the "words" by back-to-front lexicographic order, in which the signs of each word are reversed; so that all the "words" with same ending are listed together. Column 4 still shows each "word" in the presumed reading order, only right-justified to make the common endings more evident.
Normal lex order
Reversed lex order
Codes
Glyphs
Codes (Rev.)
Glyphs
Freq.
Position(s)
01-41-40-07
07-40-41-01
1
A11
02-06-35-23-07
07-23-35-06-02
1
B28
02-09-27-01
01-27-09-02
1
B17
02-12-04-40-33
33-40-04-12-02
1
A5
02-12-06-18-??
??-18-06-12-02
1
A8
02-12-13-01
01-13-12-02
1
A26
02-12-13-01-18
18-01-13-12-02
1
A1
02-12-22-40-07
07-40-22-12-02
1
B1
02-12-27-14-32-18-27
27-18-32-14-27-12-02
1
A23
02-12-27-27-35-37-21
21-37-35-27-27-12-02
2
A17,A29
02-12-31-26
26-31-12-02
3
A16,A19,A22
02-12-32-23-38
38-23-32-12-02
1
A12
02-12-41-19-35
35-19-41-12-02
1
A10
02-26-36-40
40-36-26-02
1
B11
02-27-25-10-23-18
18-23-10-25-27-02
2
A14,A20
02-37-23-05
05-23-37-02
1
B3
06-18-17-19
19-17-18-06
1
A24
06-35-32-39-33
33-39-32-35-06
1
B16
07-18-35
35-18-07
1
B23
07-23-18-24
24-18-23-07
1
B25
07-24-40-35
35-40-24-07
1
B10
07-45-07
07-45-07
1
B24
09-30-39-18-07
07-18-39-30-09
1
B27
10-03-38
38-03-10
2
A28,A31
13-01
01-13
1
A30
13-01-39-33
33-39-01-13
1
B7
15-07-13-01-18
18-01-13-07-15
1
B8
16-14-18
18-14-16
1
B14
16-23-18-43
43-18-23-16
1
B6
22-25-27
27-25-22
1
B4
22-29-36-07-08
08-07-36-29-22
2
B21,B26
22-37-42-25
25-42-37-22
1
B9
23-19-35
35-19-23
1
A27
24-40-12
12-40-24
1
A2
27-25-38-01
01-38-25-27
1
B12
27-34-23-25
25-23-34-27
1
B22
27-44-08
08-44-27
1
A7
27-45-07-12
12-07-45-27
1
A6
27-45-07-35
35-07-45-27
1
B2
28-01
01-28
2
A15,A21
29-08-13
13-08-29
1
B19
29-24-24-20-35
35-20-24-24-29
1
B13
29-29-34
34-29-29
1
A4
29-33-01
01-33-29
1
B15
29-34-23-25
25-23-34-29
1
B29
29-36-07-08
08-07-36-29
1
B18
29-45-07
07-45-29
2
A3,B20
31-26-12
12-26-31
1
A25
31-26-35
35-26-31
1
A9
33-23
23-33
1
A18
33-24-20-12
12-20-24-33
1
B5
39-11
11-39
1
A13
45-07
07-45
1
B30
Word-related sign statistics
The distribution of the word-initial symbols is quite non-uniform. In particular, the most common word-initial symbol, 02 PLUMED HEAD, occurs only in that position, and begins 19 of the 61 words. On 13 of its 19 occurrences, it is followed by 12 SHIELD (which however also occurs a few times at the end of words). The next most common word-initial signs are 29 CAT with seven occurrences in that position, 27 HIDE with five, 07 HELMET with four, and 22 SLING with three.
The distribution of word-final signs is also quite non-uniform and quite distinct from that of word-initial signs. The most common word-ending symbols are 07 HELMET, with eight occurrences; 01 PEDESTRIAN, with seven; 35 PLANE TREE with seven; 18 BOOMERANG with five; and then 08 GAUNTLET, 25 SHIP, 26 HORN, and 33 TUNNY, each with three occurrences each.
Repeated words
Six entire words occur twice each:
The three-word sequence "| 02 27 25 10 23 18 | 28 01/ | 02 12 31 26/ |" occurs twice, as words A14-16 and A20-22. Its last word "| 02 12 31 26/ |" recurs for a third time as word A19. Four more words occur twice each, "| 02 12 27 27 35 37 21 |" (A17, A29), "| 10 03 38 |" (A28, A31), "| 22 29 36 07 08/ |" (B21, B26), and "| 29 45 07/ |" (A3, B20).
Corrections
The disc shows signs of corrections having been made, with some signs erased and over-printed by other signs.
Godart describes these corrections as occurring in the following words: A1 (signs 02-12-13-01), A4 (29-29-34) together with A5 (02-12-04), A8 (12), A10 (02-41-19?-35), A12 (12), A16 (12-31-26?), A17 (second 27?), A29 (second 27?), B1 (12-22), B3 (37?), B4 (22-25 imprinted over the same), B10 (07?-24?-40?), B13 (beside 29?). Question marks indicate uncertainty about that particular sign being the result of a correction.[14]:p.99–109
The borders of word B28 were also widened to make room for sign 02.[14]:p.107[4]:p.34–35
Sign rotations
The two signs 27 (HIDE) in word A29 are rotated 180 degrees compared with all other occurrences of this sign: "head down" versus "head up". This rotation might be motivated by lack of space in A29.[4]:p.24
The rotations of the signs 29 (CAT) and 31 (EAGLE) have no lack of space. Defining the sign 29 in words B19, B20 and B21 as "head to the right", this presents as: head down in B29; head to the left in A3 and B15; head up in B18 and B26; head in between up and left in B13; head in between right and down in A4 (twice). The direction of the head of sign 31 is as follows: to the right in A16, up in A9 and A25, and to the left in A22.
The sign 02 (PLUMED HEAD) in word A29 is 90 degrees rotated to the right compared with all other occurrences of this sign. This might well be due to lack of space; the word is crowded and messy, with the sign 12 (SHIELD) pushed aside.
The two occurrences of sign 28 (BULLS LEG) are not rotated compared with each other. Rather, the way this sign is shown in the literature (including Unicode), with the foot down, is rotated compared with the sign on the disc, with the foot up.
Arie Cate observed that if signs rotations were random with uniform distribution, then the probability that they end up in only two (or three) signs is very small.[19]
Signs in adjacent windings
There are several locations on side A where two occurrences of the same sign lie near each other in adjacent turns of the spiral, such as sign 02 (PLUMED HEAD) in word A1 and in word A14. Also the two 27 signs (HIDE) signs in word A29 are upside down, with the "heads" pointing to the HIDE sign of word A23, in the adjacent turn. Arie Cate claims that the probability of these alignments being coincidental is rather small.[20]
A great deal of speculation developed around the disc during the 20th century, particularly capturing the imagination of amateur archeologists. Many attempts have been made to decipher the code behind the disc's signs, with a wide variety of theories having been suggested, including prayers, a narrative or an adventure story, a "psalterion", a call to arms, a board game, and a geometric theorem; some of these theories are considered to be pseudoarchaeology, with little realistic chance of being accurate.
Most linguistic interpretations assume a syllabary, based on the proportion of 45 symbols in a text of 241 tokens typical for that type of script; some assume a syllabary with interspersed logographic symbols, a property of every known syllabary of the Ancient Near East (Linear B as well as cuneiform and hieroglyphic writing). There are, however, also alphabetic and purely logographical interpretations.
While enthusiasts still believe the mystery can be solved, scholarly attempts at decipherment are thought to be unlikely to succeed unless more examples of the signs turn up elsewhere, as it is generally thought that there is not enough context available for meaningful analysis. Any decipherment without external confirmation, such as successful comparison to other inscriptions, is unlikely to be accepted as conclusive.
Origin of the artifact
For the first few decades after its discovery most scholars argued strongly against the local origin of the artifact. Evans[1]:p.24 wrote that:
...when one comes to compare the figures in detail with those of the Minoan hieroglyphic signary, very great discrepancy is observable... Out of the forty-five separate signs on the Phaistos Disk, no more than ten more or less resemble Cretan hieroglyphic forms... The human figures in their outline and costume are non-Minoan... The representation of the ship also differs from all similar designs that occur either among the hieroglyphic or the linear documents of Crete.
Gustave Glotz claimed that the clay was not from Crete.[21]:p.381 Ipsen concluded that the disc was certainly from somewhere on the Aegean; however, because of its differences from Linear A or B, he, like Evans, supported a non-Cretan origin for the Disc. He observes, however, that since Linear A was a common Aegean script such an assumption will not resolve the problem of multiplicity.[22]:p.15
Vase from Knossos with a stamped sign similar to SHIELD.
However, the consensus on this question changed in later decades, as a few other artifacts were found on Crete with significant resemblances to the disk. For instance, a vase found at Knossos (Vase 14 236) bears a stamped sign identical to the disk's 25 SHIELD sign (a circle with seven dots).[citation needed] Also, under the bottom of a bowl found in 1965 at Phaistos (bowl F 4718 from the House South of the Ramp) there is a sign in relief, believed to be a potter's mark, that is practically identical to sign 21 (COMB).[17] A very similar sign is found as an impression on a sealing from a deposit of administrative documents discovered in 1955, beneath Room 25 of the Second Palace of Phaistos (sealing CMS II.5, n. 246).[17][23][24] Female images with pendulous breasts have also been found at Malia and Phaistos.[14]:p.125The Arkalochori Axe also bears a short inscription that uses several signs similar to those of the disk.[25]
The uniqueness of the script, of the spiral arrangement, and of the method of writing (individual glyph stamps) have led some scholars to raise the possibility that the Phaistos disc is a 1908 forgery or hoax.[6][29] It was pointed out that the date of manufacture has never been established by thermoluminescence dating.[30] However, the Disc is now generally accepted as authentic by archaeologists.[31] Andrew Robinson concurs that thermoluminescence dating would be highly desirable, but does not endorse the forgery arguments.[28]
The precise excavation records maintained by Luigi Pernier have always been a problem for the hoax hypothesis. That hypothesis was eventually put to rest by the discovery of the other artifacts in Crete with similar glyphs, which a 1909 hoaxer would not have known about. Also, a gold signet ring from Knossos (the Mavro Spilio ring), found in 1926, contains a Linear A inscription laid out in a spiral, similar to the Phaistos Disc.[32]
Comparison with other scripts
While the Phaistos disk writing system is, on the whole, very different from other known scripts, several scholars have argued against it being an entirely independent invention. Gunther Ipsen argued that the creator must have been influenced by other scripts, and points out the Hieroglyphic Luwian script from Anatolia as an example of an original script inspired by other writing systems (its symbol values inspired by cuneiform, its shapes by Egyptian hieroglyphs).[22]:p.11
Comparison of the disk's signs with those of Linear A inscriptions go back to Evans in 1909.[1] In1959, Benjamin Schwartz asserted a genetic relationship between the Phaistos Disc script and the Cretan linear scripts.[7]:p.108 Similar claims were made also by Werner Nahm in 1975,[34]Torsten Timm in 2004,[35] and others.
Some of these proposals point to simiarities between some glyphs, such as 12 (SHIELD), 43 (STRAINER), and 31 (EAGLE) to both Linear A and Linear B characters, and conjecture that they may have the same phonetic values — respectively 'qe', 'ta', and 'ku'. Based on the Linear A character distribution patterns collected by Giulio Facchetti,[36] Torsten Timm goes as far as identifying 20 of the 45 characters with Linear A/B signs.[37]
The following table summarizes the proposed identifications of Phaistos signs with Linear A/B,[citation needed] the Arkalochori Axe glyphs,[citation needed] and Luwian hieroglyphs:
Decipherment claims can be categorized into linguistic decipherments, identifying the language of the inscription, and non-linguistic decipherments. A purely logographical reading is not linguistic in the strict sense: while it may reveal the meaning of the inscription, it will not allow for the identification of the underlying language.
Linguistic
Unless said otherwise, the attempts below assumed the right-to-left (clockwise, edge-to-center) reading direction, starting with side A.
A set of 46 symbols from the Phaistos Disc, comprising Evans's 45 signs and one combining oblique stroke, have been encoded in Unicode since April 2008 (Unicode version 5.1). They are assigned to the range 101D0–101FF in Plane 1 (the Supplementary Multilingual Plane). These characters were encoded with strong left-to-right directionality, and so in code charts and text (such as elsewhere on this page) the glyphs are mirrored from the way they appear on the disc itself.
In philology, decipherment is the discovery of the meaning of texts written in ancient or obscure languages or scripts.
Linear A is a writing system that was used by the Minoans of Crete from 1800 BC to 1450 BC. Linear A was the primary script used in palace and religious writings of the Minoan civilization. It was succeeded by Linear B, which was used by the Mycenaeans to write an early form of Greek. It was discovered by the archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans in 1900. No texts in Linear A have yet been deciphered. Evans named the script "Linear" because its characters consisted simply of lines inscribed in clay, in contrast to the more pictographic characters in Cretan hieroglyphs that were used during the same period.
Linear B is a syllabic script that was used for writing in Mycenaean Greek, the earliest attested form of the Greek language. The script predates the Greek alphabet by several centuries, the earliest known examples dating to around 1400 BC. It is adapted from the earlier Linear A, an undeciphered script potentially used for writing the Minoan language, as is the later Cypriot syllabary, which also recorded Greek. Linear B, found mainly in the palace archives at Knossos, Kydonia, Pylos, Thebes and Mycenae, disappeared with the fall of Mycenaean civilization during the Late Bronze Age collapse. The succeeding period, known as the Greek Dark Ages, provides no evidence of the use of writing.
Egyptian hieroglyphs were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with more than 100 distinct characters. Cursive hieroglyphs were used for religious literature on papyrus and wood. The later hieratic and demotic Egyptian scripts were derived from hieroglyphic writing, as was the Proto-Sinaitic script that later evolved into the Phoenician alphabet. Through the Phoenician alphabet's major child systems, the Egyptian hieroglyphic script is ancestral to the majority of scripts in modern use, most prominently the Latin and Cyrillic scripts and the Arabic script, and possibly the Brahmic family of scripts.
Mycenaean Greek is the most ancient attested form of the Greek language, on the Greek mainland and Crete in Mycenaean Greece, before the hypothesised Dorian invasion, often cited as the terminus ad quem for the introduction of the Greek language to Greece. The language is preserved in inscriptions in Linear B, a script first attested on Crete before the 14th century BC. Most inscriptions are on clay tablets found in Knossos, in central Crete, as well as in Pylos, in the southwest of the Peloponnese. Other tablets have been found at Mycenae itself, Tiryns and Thebes and at Chania, in Western Crete. The language is named after Mycenae, one of the major centres of Mycenaean Greece.
The Cypriot or Cypriote syllabary is a syllabic script used in Iron Age Cyprus, from about the 11th to the 4th centuries BCE, when it was replaced by the Greek alphabet. It has been suggested that the script remained in use as late as the 1st century BC. A pioneer of that change was King Evagoras of Salamis. It is thought to be descended from the Cypro-Minoan syllabary, in turn, a variant or derivative of Linear A. Most texts using the script are in the Arcadocypriot dialect of Greek, but also one bilingual inscription was found in Amathus.
Eteocretan is the pre-Greek language attested in a few alphabetic inscriptions of ancient Crete.
The Minoan language is the language of the ancient Minoan civilization of Crete written in the Cretan hieroglyphs and later in the Linear A syllabary. As the Cretan hieroglyphs are undeciphered and Linear A only partly deciphered, the Minoan language is unknown and unclassified; with the existing evidence, it is impossible to be certain that the two scripts record the same language.
Anatolian hieroglyphs are an indigenous logographic script native to central Anatolia, consisting of some 500 signs. They were once commonly known as Hittite hieroglyphs, but the language they encode proved to be Luwian, not Hittite, and the term Luwian hieroglyphs is used in English publications. They are typologically similar to Egyptian hieroglyphs, but do not derive graphically from that script, and they are not known to have played the sacred role of hieroglyphs in Egypt. There is no demonstrable connection to Hittite cuneiform.
Eteocypriot is an extinct non-Indo-European language that was spoken in Cyprus by a non-Hellenic population during the Iron Age. The name means "true" or "original Cypriot" parallel to Eteocretan, both of which names are used by modern scholars to mean the non-Greek languages of those places. Eteocypriot was written in the Cypriot syllabary, a syllabic script derived from Linear A. The language was under pressure from Arcadocypriot Greek from about the 10th century BC and finally became extinct in about the 4th century BC.
The Arkalochori Axe is a 2nd millennium BC Minoan bronze votive double axe (labrys) excavated by Spyridon Marinatos in 1934 in the Arkalochori cave in Crete, which is believed to have been used for religious rituals. It is inscribed with fifteen symbols.
Cretan hieroglyphs are a hieroglyphic writing system used in early Bronze Age Crete, during the Minoan era. They predate Linear A by about a century, but the two writing systems continued to be used in parallel for most of their history. As of 2024, they are undeciphered.
The Byblos script, also known as the Byblos syllabary, Pseudo-hieroglyphic script, Proto-Byblian, Proto-Byblic, or Byblic, is an undeciphered writing system, known from ten inscriptions found in Byblos, a coastal city in Lebanon. The inscriptions are engraved on bronze plates and spatulas, and carved in stone. They were excavated by Maurice Dunand, from 1928 to 1932, and published in 1945 in his monograph Byblia Grammata. The inscriptions are conventionally dated to the second millennium BC, probably between the 18th and 15th centuries BC.
Many people have claimed to have deciphered the Phaistos Disc.
The Cypro-Minoan syllabary (CM), more commonly called the Cypro-Minoan Script, is an undeciphered syllabary used on the island of Cyprus and at its trading partners during the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age. The term "Cypro-Minoan" was coined by Arthur Evans in 1909 based on its visual similarity to Linear A on Minoan Crete, from which CM is thought to be derived. Approximately 250 objects—such as clay balls, cylinders, and tablets which bear Cypro-Minoan inscriptions, have been found. Discoveries have been made at various sites around Cyprus, as well as in the ancient city of Ugarit on the Syrian coast. It is thought to be somehow related to the later Cypriot syllabary.
Aegean script or Cretan script refers to a group of scripts that originate from the island of Crete. It may also refer to:
Many undeciphered writing systems exist today; most date back several thousand years, although some more modern examples do exist. The term "writing systems" is used here loosely to refer to groups of glyphs which appear to have representational symbolic meaning, but which may include "systems" that are largely artistic in nature and are thus not examples of actual writing.
Phaistos Disc is a Unicode block containing the characters found on the undeciphered Phaistos Disc artefact.
Frederik Christiaan Woudhuizen was a Dutch independent scholar who studied ancient Indo-European languages, hieroglyphic Luvian/Luwian, and Mediterranean protohistory. He was the former editor of Talanta, Proceedings of the Dutch Archaeological and Historical Society.
References
1 2 3 4 5 Evans, Arthur J. (1909). Scripta Minoa, the written documents of Minoan Crete, with special reference to the archives of Knossos. Oxford: Clarendon Press. OL7128491M.
1 2 3 Balistier, Thomas (2000). The Phaistos Disc – an account of its unsolved mystery. Verlag Dr Thomas Balistier. ISBN978-3980616805.
1 2 3 Yves Duhoux (1977): Le disque de phaestos, Leuven.
1 2 3 4 5 Winfried Achterberg, Jan Best, Kees Enzler, Lia Rietveld, and Fred Woudhuizen (2004): The Phaistos Disc: A Luwian letter to Nestor. Volume 13 of the Publications of the Henry Frankfort Foundation. ISBN978-90-72067-11-1
1 2 3 4 Eisenberg, Jerome M. (2008). "The Phaistos Disk: one hundred year old hoax?". Minerva (July/August): 9–24.
↑ Herbert E. Brekle (2005): Die Prüfeninger Weiheinschrift von 1119. Eine paläographisch-typographische Untersuchung (brief summaryArchived 2011-10-01 at the Wayback Machine ), Scriptorium Verlag für Kultur und Wissenschaft, Regensburg, ISBN3-937527-06-0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Louis Godart (1995): The Phaistos Disc: the enigma of an Aegean script. translated by Alexandra Doumas. Éditions Itanos. ISBN960-7549-02-3
↑ Evans, Arthur J. (1921). The palace of Minos: a comparative account of the successive stages of the early Cretan civilization as illustrated by the discoveries at Knossos. Vol.1. London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd. LCCN22006622. OCLC3536093. OL7063760M. It might, a priori, have been supposed that the signs of the inscriptions had run outwards[...].
↑ Arie ten Cate (2013): "A statistical analysis of the rotated signs of the Phaistos Disc", Pioneer Journal of Theoretical and Applied Statistics, volume 6, issue 2, pages 81-88
↑ Michael Trauth (1990): "The Phaistos Disc and the Devil's Advocate: On the Aporias of an Ancient Topic of Research". Glottometrika, volume 12Archived 2023-08-25 at the Wayback Machine (= Quantitative linguistics, volume 45), pages 151–173. Quote: "Crete as [the] source of the Disc can no longer be called into question."
1 2 Andrew Robinson (2008): "A century of puzzling". Nature, volume 453, pages 990–991 doi:10.1038/453990aS2CID5166897PMID18563139 Quote: "Most scholars today, including Duhoux, think it a plausible working hypothesis that the disc was made in Crete."
↑ Facchetti, Giulio M. "Statistical data and morphematic elements in Linear A". Kadmos. 38 (2. (1999)).
1 2 Torsten, Timm (2008) [2005]. Der Diskos von Phaistos - Fremdeinfluss oder kretisches Erbe? (in German) (2nded.). Books on Demand. ISBN978-3833424519.
↑ S. Davis (1961): The Phaistos disk and the Eteocretan Inscriptions from Psychro and Praisos. Witwatersrand University Press.
↑ B. E. Newton (1962): "[ S. Davis: The Phaistos Disc and the Eteocretan Inscriptions (Book Review)]". Acta Classica, volume 5, page 75.
↑ S. Davis, (1964): "Cretan Hieroglyphs: The end of a Quest?" Greece & Rome, volume 11, issue 2, pages 106-127. doi:10.1017/S0017383500014121
↑ Jan G. P. Best, Fred C. Woudhuizen (1988): Ancient Scripts from Crete and Cyprus. Volume 9 of the publications of the Henri Frankfort Foundation. 131 pages. ISBN9789004084315
↑ Jan G. P. Best, Fred C. Woudhuizen (1989): Lost Languages from the Mediterranean. Volume 10 of the publications of the Henri Frankfort Foundation. 179 pages. ISBN9789004089341
↑ Stawell, F. Melian (1911). "An Interpretation of the Phaistos Disk". The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs. 19 (97): 23–38. ISSN0951-0788. JSTOR858643.
↑ Jean Faucounau (1975): "Le déchiffrement du Disque de Phaistos est-il possible par des méthodes statistiques?" Revue des Études Anciennes, volume 77, issues 1-4, pages 9-19. doi:10.3406/rea.1975.3981
↑ Jean Faucounau (1999): Le déchiffrement du Disque de Phaistos. Paris.
↑ Jean Faucounau (2001): Les Proto-Ioniens: histoire d'un peuple oublié. Paris.
↑ Steven R. Fischer (1988): Evidence for Hellenic Dialect in the Phaistos Disk. ISBN3-261-03703-2
↑ Derk Ohlenroth (1996): Das Abaton des lykäischen Zeus und der Hain der Elaia: Zum Diskos von Phaistos und zur frühen griechischen Schriftkultur. ISBN3-484-80008-9
↑ Adam Martin (2000): Der Diskos von Phaistos – Ein zweisprachiges Dokument geschrieben in einer frühgriechischen AlphabetschriftISBN3-9807169-1-0.
↑ van Meerten, Rainer J (1977). "Decipherment of the Phaistos Disc with help of a Probability Method". SMIL Journal of Linguistic Calculus. 1977 (1): 29–104.
Bennett, Emmett L. (1996) — Aegean Scripts, (in The World's Writing Systems, Peter T. Daniels and William Bright (Eds.) Oxford: University Press. ISBN0-19-507993-0
Chadwick, John. The Decipherment of Linear B, Cambridge University Press, 1958.
Faure, P. "Tourne disque", l'énigme du disque de Phaistos, Notre Histoire n°213, October 2003 (PDF 0.7 Mb[permanent dead link]).
Gaur, Albertine. 1984 — A History of Writing — Charles Scribner's Sons.
Aartun, Kjell, 'Der Diskos von Phaistos; Die beschriftete Bronzeaxt; Die Inschrift der Taragona-tafel' in Die minoische Schrift: Sprache und Texte vol. 1, Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz (1992) ISBN3-447-03273-1
Gordon, F. G. 1931. Through Basque to Minoan: transliterations and translations of the Minoan tablets. London: Oxford University Press.
Hausmann, Axel, Der Diskus von Phaistos. Ein Dokument aus Atlantis, BoD GmbH (2002), ISBN3-8311-4548-2.
Thomas G. Palaima, Emmet L. Bennet, Jr., Michael G.F. Ventris, Alice E. Kober, "Cryptanalysis, Decipherment and the Phaistos Disc.", in M.-L. Nosch and H. Landenius-Enegren eds., Aegean Scripts, (Incunabula Graeca 105, Rome: 2017) vol. 2, pp.771–788
Polygiannakis, Ο Δισκος της Φαιστού Μιλάει Ελληνικά (The Phaistos disk speaks in Greek), Georgiadis, Athens (2000).
Pomerance, Leon, The Phaistos Disk: An Interpretation of Astronomical Symbols, Paul Astroms forlag, Goteborg (1976). reviewed by D. H. Kelley in The Journal of Archeoastronomy (Vol II, number 3, Summer 1979)
Whittaker, Helène (2005). "Social and Symbolic Aspects of Minoan writing". European Journal of Archaeology. 8 (1): 29–41. doi:10.1177/1461957105058207. S2CID162881074.
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Phaistos Disc .
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
