Gnomon's Guide

Phaistos is an archaeological site in southern Crete, Greece. In the 2nd Millennium BC, the Minoans, a Bronze Age civilisation, had a huge palace there. The ruins of this palace were uncovered and excavated in the early 20th Century. The palace followed the general plan of most Minoan palaces, with a huge courtyard surrounded by many pillared buildings.

The most celebrated find made by the archaeologists at Phaistos, on 3 July, 1908, was a small disc of baked clay, inscribed with symbols on both sides in a spiral pattern. The symbols have been printed on the clay, making this the earliest example of printing in existence. You can see a picture of it at the official Hellenic Ministry of Culture site. The disc is on display in the Museum of Archaeology in Iraklion, Crete.

The symbols on the disc appear to be writing of some sort, but nothing like it has ever been found anywhere else in the world, so nobody has ever succeeded in figuring out what the writing means. It is one of the most celebrated mysteries of archaeology. Of course, this hasn't stopped people from trying, and numerous decipherments of both the scholarly and crackpot varieties have been published, each claiming to be the one true decipherment and conflicting totally with all the others. Suggested languages that the symbols represent include archaic Greek; Semitic; a language allied to Basque; Luvian; Slavonic; and even Polynesian!

Some suggested interpretations of the message include temple rites, a calendar, a prayer, a magical invocation, a geometrical theorem and a call to arms.

Description

The disc is made of baked clay, is about 15cm in diameter and about 1cm thick. It is not possible to use carbon dating on something like this, so its age can only be deduced from where it was found. The best guess at the moment is 17th Century BC.

On each side, symbols have been stamped into the clay, apparently using some sort of printing stamps. The two sides bear different messages. The symbols are laid out in a spiral which appears to start at the outside and spiral inwards, judging from the way it changes from a circular inscription to a spiral one at the outer rim. In addition, some of the symbols are stamped very close to their neighbours and actually overlap: the ones closer to the centre were printed on top of the outer ones, again indicating that the message reads from outside to centre. There are also lines drawn on the disc marking out the path of the symbols, and dividing them up into groups, which might be words or sentences. If we assume that the symbols of men, heads etc are intended to be correctly oriented, then the message reads from right to left, with the figures facing towards the beginning of the message, as is normal in Egyptian hieroglyphs.

There are 242 symbols¹ printed on the disc, consisting of 45 different symbols. The archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans gave numbers to each of the symbols in his attempts to decipher the script, and these are used as standard now by researchers. Some of the symbols clearly represent people or things: symbol 01 is a walking man; symbol 02 is a head with spiky hair or a crested helmet. Others are more abstract: symbol 21 has been interpreted variously as a comb and the floor plan of a palace.

The Massey brothers, who claim to have deciphered the disc, have a very nice diagram of the disc. You can see it and their interpretation on Keith's website. This highlights the individual symbols and makes them easier to see than in a photograph. If you're trying to decipher the disc yourself, though, bear in mind that any such drawing may introduce some inaccuracy based on the artist's idea of what the symbols represent. You should also refer to detailed photos of the original.

Writing or Art?

Although most people assume that the symbols are writing of some sort, some people have proposed that the disc is just a work of art. This is certainly possible, but no other work of art like it has ever been found. All art works from the time are either practical objects such as cups and swords or are wall paintings. The disc serves no function unless it is writing.

The State of Writing in Bronze Age Crete

Crete was home to a number of writing systems in the 17th Century BC: Sir Arthur Evans identified three different scripts that were used in Knossos, the biggest of the Minoan palaces. He labelled them Hieroglyphic, Linear A and Linear B. Linear B has been deciphered. It was used to write the Greek language and appears to have been an adaptation of Linear A for that purpose - it was used both in Crete and on the Greek mainland. Linear A and Hieroglyphic are both undeciphered, and it is assumed that they were used to write down the Minoan language. Unfortunately, there appears to be no resemblance between any of these writing systems and the symbols used on the Phaistos disc.

Undecipherable?

The disc is a tantalising glimpse into a writing system which is advanced ahead of its time, but there just isn't enough text on the disc to allow a reliable reading of it. John Chadwick, the scholar of archaic Greek who worked with Michael Ventris on the decipherment of Linear B, had this to say about the disc:

We must curb our impatience, and admit that if King Minos himself were to reveal to someone in a dream the true interpretation, it would be quite impossible for him to convince anyone else that his was the one and only possible solution.

So until more examples of this strange script are discovered, the Phaistos disc will remain an enigma.