Phaistos Disc

thumb|upright=1.2|Palace complex at [[Phaistos]]

The Phaistos Disc, or Phaistos Disk, is a disc of fired clay from the island of Crete, Greece, possibly from the middle or late Minoan Bronze 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 disc was discovered in 1908 by the Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier during the excavation of the Minoan palace of Phaistos.]]

The Phaistos Disc was discovered in the Minoan palace-site of Phaistos, near Hagia Triada, on the south coast of Crete; 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 above the floor, Linear A tablet 'PH-1' was also found.

Dating

Yves Duhoux (1977) dates the disc to between 1850 BC and 1600 BC (MM III in Minoan chronology) on the basis of Luigi Pernier's report, which says that the disc was in a Middle Minoan undisturbed context. Jeppesen (1963) dates it to after 1400 (LM II–LM III 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 (MM I–LM III, a period spanning most of the second millennium BC). Jan Best suggests a date in the first half of the 14th century BC (LM IIIA) based on his dating of tablet PH-1. Typesetter and linguist Herbert Brekle writes:

A medieval example of a similar blind printing technique

is the Prüfening dedicatory inscription of 1119 AD.

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.

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

<!-- Redundant images?

{| border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2"

| style="vertical-align: top;" | thumb|200px|Side A (Original)

| style="vertical-align: top;" | thumb|200px|Side B (Original)

|}-->

thumb|right

Sign list and counts

There are 45 distinct signs on the disc, 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 Sir Arthur Evans from 01 to 45, 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. 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.

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).

Also, some signs occur in the disc 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. 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.

"Words"

The signs are laid out on each side as a single spiral text, which is split by the inscribed radial strokes into groups. These groups are conventionally called "words", even though their true linguistic or other nature is not known. 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).

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.

Origin of the artifact

For the first few decades after its discovery most scholars argued strongly against the local origin of the artifact. Evans 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. Female images with pendulous breasts have also been found at Malia and Phaistos.

These and other finds have made Cretan origin more popular. Yves Duhoux in 2000 and Andrew Robinson in 2008.

Hoax hypothesis

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. It was pointed out that the date of manufacture has never been established by thermoluminescence dating. Andrew Robinson concurs that thermoluminescence dating would be highly desirable, but does not endorse the forgery arguments.

Decipherment attempts

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.

Comparison with other scripts

While the Phaistos disc 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).

Several scholars have proposed that the Phaistos signs are older or alternate forms of Linear A glyphs, specifically. Others have pointed to similar resemblances with the Anatolian (Luwian) hieroglyphs, or with Egyptian hieroglyphs. More remote possibilities are the Phoenician abjad or the Byblos syllabary.

Linear A

Comparison of the disc's signs with those of Linear A inscriptions go back to Evans in 1909. Torsten Timm in 2004, and others.

Some of these proposals point to similarities between some glyphs, such as 12 (SHIELD) 40x30px|Phaistos glyph 12, 43 (STRAINER) 40x30px|Phaistos glyph 43, and 31 (EAGLE) 40x30px|Phaistos glyph 31 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, Torsten Timm goes as far as identifying 20 of the 45 characters with Linear A/B signs. and Jan Best and Fred Woudhuizen in 1988. In 2004, Winfried Achterberg and others proposed an extensive mapping to Anatolian hieroglyphs, which led them to a full decipherment claim. The third revised and extended edition of the authors' monograph on the subject was published in 2021.

Summary table

The following table summarizes the proposed identifications of Phaistos signs with Linear A, the Arkalochori Axe glyphs, and Luwian hieroglyphs:

{| class="wikitable"

!No.

!Sign

!Linear A

!Arkalochori Axe

!Luwian hieroglyphs

|-<!--

|26

|class=skin-invert|26

|27

|class=skin-invert|27

|28

|class=skin-invert|28

|--->

|29

|class=skin-invert|29

|AB80 class=skin-invert|01|30px 'MA'

|08 class=skin-invert|08|30px

|30

|class=skin-invert|30

|AB13 class=skin-invert|01|30px 'ME', AB85?

|31

|class=skin-invert|31

|AB81 class=skin-invert|01|30px 'KU'

|-<!--

|32

|class=skin-invert|32

|33

|class=skin-invert|33

|--->

|34

|class=skin-invert|34

|AB39 class=skin-invert|01|30px 'PI'

|35

|class=skin-invert|35

|AB04 class=skin-invert|01|30px 'TE'

|09 class=skin-invert|09|30px

|36

|class=skin-invert|36

|AB30 class=skin-invert|01|30px 'NI'

|-<!--

|37

|class=skin-invert|37

|38

|class=skin-invert|38

|--->

|39

|class=skin-invert|39

|AB28 class=skin-invert|01|30px 'I'

|02 class=skin-invert|02|30px

|'TARHUNT'

|40

|class=skin-invert|40

|-<!--

|41

|class=skin-invert|41

|42

|class=skin-invert|42

|--->

|43

|class=skin-invert|43

|AB66 class=skin-invert|01|30px 'TA<sub>2</sub>'

|-<!--

|44

|class=skin-invert|44

|--->

|45

|class=skin-invert|45

|AB76 class=skin-invert|01|20px 'RA<sub>2</sub>'

List of decipherment claims

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.

George Hempl, 1911: interpretation as Ionic Greek, syllabic writing.
Florence Stawell, 1911: interpretation as Homeric Greek, syllabic writing; B-side first.
Albert Cuny, 1914: interpretation as an ancient Egyptian document, syllabic-logographic writing.
Benjamin Schwartz, 1959: interpretation as Mycenean Greek, syllabic writing, comparison to Linear B.
Vladimir I. Georgiev, 1976: interpretation as Hittite language, syllabic writing; reading outward.
Steven R. Fischer, 1988: interpretation as a Greek dialect, syllabic writing.
Kjell Aartun, 1992: interpretation as a Semitic language, syllabic writing; reading outward.
Derk Ohlenroth, 1996: interpretation as a Greek dialect, alphabetic writing; reading outward; numerous homophonic signs.
Achterberg et al., 2004: interpreted as Luwian.
Gareth Alun Owens, 2007: interpretation as Indo-European, syllabic writing, comparison to Linear A.

Non-linguistic or logographic

Harald Haarmann, 1990: interpretation as logographic writing.
Helène Whittaker, 2005: a votive miniature version of a game board similar to the Egyptian Mehen.

Unicode

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.

Modern use

Side A of the Phaistos Disc is used as the logo of FORTH, one of the largest research centers in Greece.

References

External links

Exploring the Enduring Mystery of Crete's Phaistos Disc – AtlasObscura – 2022

Dating

Scribed lines

Signs

Sign list and counts

"Words"

Signs in adjacent windings

Origin of the artifact

Hoax hypothesis

Decipherment attempts

Comparison with other scripts

Linear A

Summary table

List of decipherment claims

Linguistic

Non-linguistic or logographic

Unicode

Modern use

See also

References

Further reading

General

Attempted decipherments

External links