The Phaistos Disc: Printed Signs Nobody Can Read

On 3 July 1908 the Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier was excavating the Minoan palace of Phaistos in southern Crete. In a room of the palace complex he found a small disc of fired clay, about 16 centimetres across. Both faces were covered with a spiral of little pictures: a walking man, a head with a plumed crest, a fish, a bird, a ship, a flower. Each sign had been pressed into the wet clay with a stamp, so that every occurrence of a sign is identical. It is the earliest known text made with something like movable type, and it has never been deciphered.

The disc

• 241 or 242 stamped signs (the count depends on one uncertain sign) of 45 distinct types, arranged in 61 groups separated by incised lines: 31 on side A, 30 on side B.
• The text runs in a spiral, most scholars think from the rim inwards.
• Usually dated to the Middle Minoan period, c. 1850–1600 BCE, from its find context, although the context has been questioned.
• It is unique. No other text uses the same signs, except for a single possible parallel sign on a sealing found in 1955.

Why it cannot be read

Decipherments need enough text and ideally a bilingual or known names. The Rosetta Stone (V53) had both; Linear B had thousands of tablets. The Phaistos Disc has fewer than 250 signs, no parallel texts and no known language. Statistical analysis suggests the 45 sign types fit a syllabary (signs for syllables) better than an alphabet or a word-script, but that does not tell us the language. Most specialists agree that no proposed decipherment can be verified unless new texts are found.

The interactive cards above list the main kinds of claimed reading, from Greek and Luwian to calendars and hymns. There have been dozens more.

Is it genuine?

In 2008, for the centenary of the find, the antiquities specialist Jerome Eisenberg argued that the disc was a forgery made or commissioned by Pernier, pointing to its uniqueness, its crisp firing and unusual find circumstances. Most archaeologists reject this. They point to the excavation records, to the 1955 sealing and to features a forger of 1908 would not have known. A thermoluminescence test, which could date the firing, has not been permitted by the museum. Its authenticity is widely accepted but not proven by testing.

Symbology and sacred encoding

Pictures that are signs. The signs are pictures, but as in all early scripts they probably stood for sounds. Reading the pictures as symbols of their objects is the most common mistake in amateur decipherments.

Stamps and repetition. Making stamps for 45 signs suggests the maker expected to produce more than one text. None has been found.

The spiral. A spiral text had to be turned as it was read, perhaps suiting a ritual use such as a hymn or prayer. This is a suggestion, not evidence.

Connections

Early Greece (ch08), where Minoan Crete is discussed. Compare the Voynich Manuscript (V01) and the Rohonc Codex (V11) for other unread texts, and the Rosetta Stone (V53) for what a decipherment needs.

From The Divine Archives · https://getconexto.com/vault/phaistos-disc.html