clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4). Clays develop plasticity when wet, due to a molecular film of water surrounding the clay par ...

Minoan The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age Aegean civilization on the island of Crete and other Aegean Islands, whose earliest beginnings were from 3500BC, with the complex urban civilization beginning around 2000BC, and then declining from 1450B ...

Phaistos Phaistos ( el, Φαιστός, ; Ancient Greek: , , Minoan: PA-I-TO?http://grbs.library.duke.edu/article/download/11991/4031&ved=2ahUKEwjor62y3bHoAhUEqYsKHZaZArAQFjASegQIAhAB&usg=AOvVaw1MwIv3ekgX-SxkJrbORipd ), also transliterated as Phaestos, ...

Crete Crete ( el, Κρήτη, translit=, Modern: , Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the 88th largest island in the world and the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, and ...

Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second pri ...

archaeological museum An archaeology museum is a museum that specializes in the display of archaeological Types Many archaeology museum are in the open air, such as the Ancient Agora of Athens and the Roman Forum. Others display artifacts inside buildings, such as Na ...

Heraklion Heraklion or Iraklion ( ; el, Ηράκλειο, , ) is the largest city and the administrative capital of the island of Crete and capital of Heraklion regional unit. It is the fourth largest city in Greece with a population of 211,370 (Urban A ...

Luigi Pernier Luigi Pernier (Rome, 23 November 1874 – Rhodes, 18 August 1937) was an Italian archaeologist and academic now best known for his discovery of the Disc of Phaistos.attempts have been made to decipher the code behind the disc's signs. While it is not clear that it is a script, most attempted

decipherment In philology, decipherment is the discovery of the meaning of texts written in ancient or obscure languages or scripts. Decipherment in cryptography refers to decryption. The term is used sardonically in everyday language to describe attempts to ...

s assume that it is; most additionally assume a

syllabary In the linguistic study of written languages, a syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent the syllables or (more frequently) moras which make up words. A symbol in a syllabary, called a syllabogram, typically represents an (optiona ...

, others an

alphabet An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syll ...

or

logography In a written language, a logogram, logograph, or lexigraph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced ''hanzi'' in Mandarin, ''kanji'' in Japanese, ''hanja'' in Korean) are generally logograms, as ...

. Attempts at decipherment are generally thought to be unlikely to succeed unless more examples of the signs are found, as it is generally agreed that there is not enough context available for a meaningful analysis. Although the Phaistos Disc is generally accepted as authentic by archaeologists, a few scholars believe that the disc is a

forgery Forgery is a white-collar crime that generally refers to the false making or material alteration of a legal instrument with the specific intent to defraud anyone (other than themself). Tampering with a certain legal instrument may be forbidd ...

or a

hoax A hoax is a widely publicized falsehood so fashioned as to invite reflexive, unthinking acceptance by the greatest number of people of the most varied social identities and of the highest possible social pretensions to gull its victims into pu ...

.

Discovery

The Phaistos Disc was discovered in the

Minoan The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age Aegean civilization on the island of Crete and other Aegean Islands, whose earliest beginnings were from 3500BC, with the complex urban civilization beginning around 2000BC, and then declining from 1450B ...

palace-site of

Phaistos Phaistos ( el, Φαιστός, ; Ancient Greek: , , Minoan: PA-I-TO?http://grbs.library.duke.edu/article/download/11991/4031&ved=2ahUKEwjor62y3bHoAhUEqYsKHZaZArAQFjASegQIAhAB&usg=AOvVaw1MwIv3ekgX-SxkJrbORipd ), also transliterated as Phaestos, ...

, near Hagia Triada, on the south coast of

Crete Crete ( el, Κρήτη, translit=, Modern: , Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the 88th largest island in the world and the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, and ...

; 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 Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

archaeologist

Luigi Pernier Luigi Pernier (Rome, 23 November 1874 – Rhodes, 18 August 1937) was an Italian archaeologist and academic now best known for his discovery of the Disc of Phaistos.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 Plaster is a building material used for the protective or decorative coating of walls and ceilings and for Molding (decorative), moulding and casting decorative elements. In English, "plaster" usually means a material used for the interiors of ...

. Their content was poor in precious artifacts, but rich in black earth and ashes, mixed with burnt

bovine Bovines (subfamily Bovinae) comprise a diverse group of 10 genera of medium to large-sized ungulates, including cattle, bison, African buffalo, water buffalos, and the four-horned and spiral-horned antelopes. The evolutionary relationship betwee ...

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 Linear A is a writing system that was used by the Minoans of Crete from 1800 to 1450 BC to write the hypothesized Minoan language or languages. Linear A was the primary script used in palace and religious writings of the Minoan civil ...

tablet 'PH-1' was also found. The site apparently collapsed as a result of an

earthquake An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from ...

, possibly linked with the

eruption Several types of volcanic eruptions—during which lava, tephra (ash, lapilli, volcanic bombs and volcanic blocks), and assorted gases are expelled from a volcanic vent or fissure—have been distinguished by volcanologists. These are often ...

of the

Santorini Santorini ( el, Σαντορίνη, ), officially Thira (Greek: Θήρα ) and classical Greek Thera (English pronunciation ), is an island in the southern Aegean Sea, about 200 km (120 mi) southeast from the Greek mainland. It is the ...

volcano that affected large parts of the

Mediterranean region In biogeography, the Mediterranean Basin (; also known as the Mediterranean Region or sometimes Mediterranea) is the region of lands around the Mediterranean Sea that have mostly a Mediterranean climate, with mild to cool, rainy winters and wa ...

during the mid-2nd millennium B.C.

Authenticity

The Phaistos Disc is generally accepted as authentic by archaeologists. The assumption of authenticity is based on the excavation records by Luigi Pernier. This assumption is supported by the later discovery of the

Arkalochori Axe The Arkalochori Axe is a 2nd millennium BC Minoan bronze votive double axe (''labrys'') excavated by Spyridon Marinatos in 1934 in the Arkalochori cave on Crete, which is believed to have been used for religious rituals. It is inscribed with fifte ...

with similar, though not identical, glyphs. The possibility that the disc is a 1908

forgery Forgery is a white-collar crime that generally refers to the false making or material alteration of a legal instrument with the specific intent to defraud anyone (other than themself). Tampering with a certain legal instrument may be forbidd ...

or hoax has been raised by two scholars.Robinson:2008 According to a report in ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...

'', the date of manufacture has never been established by

thermoluminescence dating Thermoluminescence dating (TL) is the determination, by means of measuring the accumulated radiation dose, of the time elapsed since material containing crystalline minerals was either heated (lava, ceramics) or exposed to sunlight (sediments ...

. In his 2008 review, Robinson does not endorse the forgery arguments, but argues that "a thermoluminescence test for the Phaistos Disc is imperative. It will either confirm that new finds are worth hunting for, or it will stop scholars from wasting their effort." A gold signet ring from Knossos (the Mavro Spilio ring), found in 1926, contains a Linear A inscription developed in a field defined by a spiral—similar to the Phaistos Disc. A sealing found in 1955 shows the only known parallel to sign 21 (𐇤, the "comb") of the Phaistos disc. This is considered as evidence that the Phaistos Disc is a genuine

Minoan The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age Aegean civilization on the island of Crete and other Aegean Islands, whose earliest beginnings were from 3500BC, with the complex urban civilization beginning around 2000BC, and then declining from 1450B ...

artifact.

Dating

Yves Duhoux (1977) dates the disc to between 1850 B.C. and 1600 B.C. (MMIII in

Minoan chronology The Minoan chronology dating system is a measure of the phases of the Minoan civilization. Initially established as a relative dating system by English archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans between 1900 and 1903 based on his analysis of Minoan pottery du ...

) 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 (LMII–LMIII in Minoan chronology). Doubting the viability of Pernier's report,

Louis Godart Louis Godart (born 12 August 1945) is an Italian archaeologist of Belgian origins. He is a specialist in Mycenaean archaeology and philology and holds the chair of philology at the University of Naples Federico II. He is also currently Director fo ...

(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. The 2nd millennium BC spanned the years 2000 BC to 1001 BC. In the Ancient Near East, it marks the transition from the Middle to the Late Bronze Age. The Ancient Near Eastern cultures are well within the historical era: The first half of the mil ...

). J. Best suggests a date in the first half of the 14th century B.C. (LMIIIA) based on his dating of tablet PH-1.

Typography

The disc's inscription was likely made by pressing hieroglyphic "seals" into the soft clay, in a clockwise sequence spiraling toward the center of the disk. It was then fired at high temperature. The unique character of the Phaistos Disc stems from the fact that the entire text was inscribed in this way, reproducing a body of text with reusable characters. The German typesetter and linguist

Herbert Brekle Herbert Ernst Brekle (11 June 1935 – 6 May 2018) was a German typographer and linguist. Brekle's main research interests were semantics, word formation theory, history of linguistics, history of Western alphabets and typography. Life Brekle ...

, in his article "The typographic principle" in the , argues that the Phaistos Disc is an early document of

movable type Movable type (US English; moveable type in British English) is the system and technology of printing and typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document (usually individual alphanumeric characters or punctuatio ...

printing, since it meets the essential criterion of

typographic Typography is the art and technique of typesetting, arranging type to make written language legibility, legible, readability, readable and beauty, appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, Point (typogra ...

printing, that of type identity: As a medieval example of the same technique, he goes on to cite the

Prüfening dedicatory inscription The Prüfening dedicatory inscription (german: Prüfeninger Weiheinschrift) is a high medieval inscription impressed on clay which was created in 1119, over three hundred years before Johannes Gutenberg, by the typographic principle. The inscr ...

. In his work on decipherment, Benjamin Schwartz also refers to the Phaistos Disc as "the first movable type". In his popular science book '' Guns, Germs and Steel'',

Jared Diamond Jared Mason Diamond (born September 10, 1937) is an American geographer, historian, ornithologist, and author best known for his popular science books ''The Third Chimpanzee'' (1991); ''Guns, Germs, and Steel'' (1997, awarded a Pulitzer Prize); ...

describes the disc as an example of a technological advancement that did not become widespread because it was made at the wrong time in history, and contrasts this with

Gutenberg Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (; – 3 February 1468) was a German inventor and craftsman who introduced letterpress printing to Europe with his movable-type printing press. Though not the first of its kind, earlier designs w ...

's

printing press A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a printing, print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in wh ...

.

Inscription

File:Diskos.von.Phaistos Detail.1 11-Aug-2004 asb PICT3372.JPG, File:Diskos.von.Phaistos Detail.2 11-Aug-2004 asb PICT3373.JPG, File:Diskos.von.Phaistos Detail.3 11-Aug-2004 asb PICT3374.JPG, File:Diskos.von.Phaistos Detail.4 11-Aug-2004 asb PICT3375.JPG,

Signs

There are 242 tokens on the disc, comprising 45 distinct signs. Many of these 45 signs represent easily identifiable objects, such as plants. In addition to these, there is a small diagonal line that occurs underneath the final sign in a group a total of 18 times. The disc shows traces of

corrections In criminal justice, particularly in North America, correction, corrections, and correctional, are umbrella terms describing a variety of functions typically carried out by government agencies, and involving the punishment, treatment, and su ...

made by the scribe in several places. The 45 symbols were numbered by

Arthur Evans Sir Arthur John Evans (8 July 1851 – 11 July 1941) was a British archaeologist and pioneer in the study of Aegean civilization in the Bronze Age. He is most famous for unearthing the palace of Knossos on the Greek island of Crete. Based on t ...

from 01 to 45, and this numbering has become the conventional reference used by most researchers. Some symbols have been compared with

Linear A Linear A is a writing system that was used by the Minoans of Crete from 1800 to 1450 BC to write the hypothesized Minoan language or languages. Linear A was the primary script used in palace and religious writings of the Minoan civil ...

characters by Nahm, Timm, * and others. Other scholars (J. Best, S. Davis) have pointed to similar resemblances with the

Anatolian hieroglyph 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 ter ...

s, or with

Egyptian hieroglyph Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1,00 ...

s (A. Cuny). In the table below, the character "names" as given by Louis Godart (1995) are given in upper case; where other description or elaboration applies, they are given in lower case. The frequency distribution of the Phaistos Disc signs is: The nine ''

hapax In corpus linguistics, a ''hapax legomenon'' ( also or ; ''hapax legomena''; sometimes abbreviated to ''hapax'', plural ''hapaxes'') is a word or an expression that occurs only once within a context: either in the written record of an entire ...

es'' (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.

Oblique stroke signs

There are a number of signs marked with an oblique stroke; the strokes are not imprinted but carved by hand, and are attached to the first or last sign of a "word", depending on the direction of reading chosen. Their meaning is a matter of discussion. One hypothesis, supported by Evans, Duhoux, Ohlenroth and others, is that they were used to subdivide the text into paragraphs, but alternative meanings have been offered by other scholars.

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, from the outside in toward the centre. The centres of the spirals are not in the centre of the disc, and some of the symbols near the centre are crowded, as though the maker was cramped for space. One pair of symbols are set top-to-bottom, so it is hard to tell what order they should be in. Except in the cramped section, when there are overstrikes, the inner symbol overlies the outer symbol. Jean Faucounau has proposed a reconstruction of the scribe's movements, which would also require an inward direction; Yves Duhoux says that any outward reading may be discarded. Despite this consensus, there are still a few such attempted decipherments (See

Phaistos Disc decipherment claims Many people have claimed to have deciphered the Phaistos Disc. The claims may be categorized into linguistic decipherments, identifying the language of the inscription, and non-linguistic decipherments. A purely ideographical reading is ''seman ...

). In addition to the question of the directionality of the text on the disc itself, different viewpoints are held as to how the Phaistos Disc characters should be displayed when transcribed into text. The disc itself probably has right-to-left directionality, if reading proceeds from the outside to the centre; this means that the reading direction is into the faces of the people and animals, as it is in Egyptian and Anatolian. Phaistos Disc characters are shown with left-to-right directionality in this article, with the glyphs mirrored compared to their orientation on the disc; which is also the typical practice for edited Egyptian and Anatolian hieroglyphic text.

Inscription text

The following is a rendering of the Phaistos Disc inscription in

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...

characters:

Side A

¦ 𐇑𐇛𐇜𐇐𐇡𐇽 , 𐇧𐇷𐇛 , 𐇬𐇼𐇖𐇽 , 𐇬𐇬𐇱 , 𐇑𐇛𐇓𐇷𐇰 , 𐇪𐇼𐇖𐇛 , 𐇪𐇻𐇗 , 𐇑𐇛𐇕𐇡 , 𐇮𐇩𐇲 , 𐇑𐇛𐇸𐇢𐇲 , 𐇐𐇸𐇷𐇖 , 𐇑𐇛𐇯𐇦𐇵𐇽 , 𐇶𐇚 , 𐇑𐇪𐇨𐇙𐇦𐇡 , 𐇫𐇐𐇽 , 𐇑𐇛𐇮𐇩𐇽 , 𐇑𐇛𐇪𐇪𐇲𐇴𐇤 , 𐇰𐇦 , 𐇑𐇛𐇮𐇩𐇽 , 𐇑𐇪𐇨𐇙𐇦𐇡 , 𐇫𐇐𐇽 , 𐇑𐇛𐇮𐇩𐇽 , 𐇑𐇛𐇪𐇝𐇯𐇡𐇪 , 𐇕𐇡𐇠𐇢 , 𐇮𐇩𐇛 , 𐇑𐇛𐇜𐇐 , 𐇦𐇢𐇲𐇽 , 𐇙𐇒𐇵 , 𐇑𐇛𐇪𐇪𐇲𐇴𐇤 , 𐇜𐇐 , 𐇙𐇒𐇵 ,

Side B

¦ 𐇑𐇛𐇥𐇷𐇖 , 𐇪𐇼𐇖𐇲 , 𐇑𐇴𐇦𐇔𐇽 , 𐇥𐇨𐇪 , 𐇰𐇧𐇣𐇛 , 𐇟𐇦𐇡𐇺𐇽 , 𐇜𐇐𐇶𐇰 , 𐇞𐇖𐇜𐇐𐇡 , 𐇥𐇴𐇹𐇨 , 𐇖𐇧𐇷𐇲 , 𐇑𐇩𐇳𐇷 , 𐇪𐇨𐇵𐇐 , 𐇬𐇧𐇧𐇣𐇲 , 𐇟𐇝𐇡 , 𐇬𐇰𐇐 , 𐇕𐇲𐇯𐇶𐇰 , 𐇑𐇘𐇪𐇐 , 𐇬𐇳𐇖𐇗𐇽 , 𐇬𐇗𐇜 , 𐇬𐇼𐇖𐇽 , 𐇥𐇬𐇳𐇖𐇗𐇽 , 𐇪𐇱𐇦𐇨 , 𐇖𐇡𐇲 , 𐇖𐇼𐇖𐇽 , 𐇖𐇦𐇡𐇧 , 𐇥𐇬𐇳𐇖𐇗𐇽 , 𐇘𐇭𐇶𐇡𐇖 , 𐇑𐇕𐇲𐇦𐇖 , 𐇬𐇱𐇦𐇨 , 𐇼𐇖𐇽 , There are 61 "words" on the Disc; 31 on side A and 30 on side B (numbered A1 to A31 and B1 to B30, outside to inside), here read outside-to-inside (putting the "plumed head" signs word-initially and the strokes word-finally). The shortest words are two symbols in length, the longest seven symbols. The strokes are here transcribed as diagonal strokes. The transcription begins at the vertical line of five dots, circling the rim of the disc once, clockwise (13 words on A, 12 words on B) before spiralling toward the center (18 more words on each side). There is one word-final effaced sign at A8, which Godart (1995:101) notes as resembling sign 3 or 20; or less probably 8 or 44. Evans considered side A as the front side, but technical arguments have since been forwarded favouring side B as the front side.

Sides A and B left-to-right orientation

The signs in the transcription below appear in left-to-right orientation:

Numerical transcription

In numerical transcription, these are:

Side A

02-12-13-01-18/ 24-40-12 29-45-07/ 29-29-34 02-12-04-40-33 27-45-07-12 27-44-08 02-12-06-18-? 31-26-35 02-12-41-19-35 01-41-40-07 02-12-32-23-38/ 39-11 02-27-25-10-23-18 28-01/ 02-12-31-26/ 02-12-27-27-35-37-21 33-23 02-12-31-26/ 02-27-25-10-23-18 28-01/ 02-12-31-26/ 02-12-27-14-32-18-27 06-18-17-19 31-26-12 02-12-13-01 23-19-35/ 10-03-38 02-12-27-27-35-37-21 13-01 10-03-38

Side B

02-12-22-40-07 27-45-07-35 02-37-23-05/ 22-25-27 33-24-20-12 16-23-18-43/ 13-01-39-33 15-07-13-01-18 22-37-42-25 07-24-40-35 02-26-36-40 27-25-38-01 29-24-24-20-35 16-14-18 29-33-01 06-35-32-39-33 02-09-27-01 29-36-07-08/ 29-08-13 29-45-07/ 22-29-36-07-08/ 27-34-23-25 07-18-35 07-45-07/ 07-23-18-24 22-29-36-07-08/ 09-30-39-18-07 02-06-35-23-07 29-34-23-25 45-07/ The "plumed head" (02) only ever occurs word-initially, in 13 instances followed by the "shield" (12, which in some instances also occurs word-finally). Six words occur twice each: The three-word sequence 02-27-25-10-23-18 28-01/ 02-12-31-26/ occurs twice (A14-16, A20-22). 02-12-31-26/ recurs for a third time (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 (1995:99-107) 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. The borders of word B28 were also widened to make room for sign 02.

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. 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 (Bull's 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. If assuming that the rotations are completely randomly distributed, then the probability that they end up in only two (or three) signs is very small. This suggests that these rotations might be deliberate.

Signs in adjacent windings

There are several occurrences on side A where the same sign is at two places near each other in adjacent windings of the spiral, such as the Plumed Head (sign 02) in word A1 and the Plumed Head in word A14. Three patterns of such occurrences have been identified. A computer analysis of one of them (involving most of the Plumed Head signs on side A) has been performed with the conclusion that the probability of this pattern being coincidental is small. The existence of the two other patterns further decreases the probability of coincidence. Several occurrences were caused by a correction. The orientation of the signs so seems to be relevant: the two Hides (sign 27) in word A29 are upside down, with the "heads" pointing to the Hide sign in the adjacent winding in word A23. If these occurrences are not coincidental, this narrows the potential meanings of the Disc, as it would not be a one-dimensional text.

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 DECIPHER is a web-based resource and database of genomic variation data from analysis of patient DNA. It documents submicroscopic chromosome abnormalities ( microdeletions and duplications) and pathogenic sequence variants (single nucleotide ...

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 Board games are tabletop games that typically use . These pieces are moved or placed on a pre-marked board (playing surface) and often include elements of table, card, role-playing, and miniatures games as well. Many board games feature a comp ...

, and a geometric

theorem In mathematics, a theorem is a statement that has been proved, or can be proved. The ''proof'' of a theorem is a logical argument that uses the inference rules of a deductive system to establish that the theorem is a logical consequence of th ...

; some of these theories are considered to be

pseudoarchaeology Pseudoarchaeology—also known as alternative archaeology, fringe archaeology, fantastic archaeology, cult archaeology, and spooky archaeology—is the interpretation of the past from outside the archaeological science community, which rejects ...

, with little realistic chance of being accurate. Most linguistic interpretations assume a

syllabary In the linguistic study of written languages, a syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent the syllables or (more frequently) moras which make up words. A symbol in a syllabary, called a syllabogram, typically represents an (optiona ...

, 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 In a written language, a logogram, logograph, or lexigraph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced '' hanzi'' in Mandarin, ''kanji'' in Japanese, ''hanja'' in Korean) are generally logograms, a ...

symbols, a property of every known syllabary of the

Ancient Near East The ancient Near East was the home of early civilizations within a region roughly corresponding to the modern Middle East: Mesopotamia (modern Iraq, southeast Turkey, southwest Iran and northeastern Syria), ancient Egypt, ancient Iran ( Elam, ...

(

Linear B Linear B was a syllabic script used for writing in Mycenaean Greek, the earliest attested form of Greek. The script predates the Greek alphabet by several centuries. The oldest Mycenaean writing dates to about 1400 BC. It is descended from ...

as well as

cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedge-sha ...

and

hieroglyph A hieroglyph ( Greek for "sacred carvings") was a character of the ancient Egyptian writing system. Logographic scripts that are pictographic in form in a way reminiscent of ancient Egyptian are also sometimes called "hieroglyphs". In Neoplatoni ...

ic 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 script

Cretan or foreign origin

There are a few main theories about the origin of the signs. For the first few decades after its discovery most scholars argued strongly against the local origin of the artifact. Evans (1909:24f.) wrote that: Glotz (1925:381) claimed that the clay was not from Crete. Ipsen (1929:15) concluded that the disc was certainly from somewhere on the Aegean. Because of its differences from Linear A or B, Ipsen found it tempting to assume, like Evans, 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. The

Arkalochori Axe The Arkalochori Axe is a 2nd millennium BC Minoan bronze votive double axe (''labrys'') excavated by Spyridon Marinatos in 1934 in the Arkalochori cave on Crete, which is believed to have been used for religious rituals. It is inscribed with fifte ...

and other finds have made Cretan origin more popular: female images with pendulous breasts have also been found at Malia and Phaistos. (Godart 1995:125). Duhoux asserts the Cretan provenance of the Disc; in his review of current research, Trauth (1990:154) concludes that "Crete as hesource of the Disc can no longer be called into question." Andrew Robinson (2008), in a review in ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...

'', wrote "Most scholars today, including Duhoux, think it a plausible working hypothesis that the disc was made in Crete."

Original invention or derivation

Ipsen (1929:11) also speaks against an entirely independent origin of the scripts, arguing that its inventors did not leap from no knowledge of writing to a syllabic script with these elegant signs. He goes on to cite

Hieroglyphic Luwian Hieroglyphic Luwian (''luwili'') is a variant of the Luwian language, recorded in official and royal seals and a small number of monumental inscriptions. It is written in a hieroglyphic script known as Anatolian hieroglyphs. A decipherment was pr ...

as a "perfect parallel" (Ipsen 1929:17) of an original script inspired under the direct influence of other scripts (its symbol values inspired by

cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedge-sha ...

, its shapes by Egyptian hieroglyphs). Schwartz (1956:108) asserts a genetic relationship between the Phaistos Disc script and the Cretan linear scripts. Among the known scripts, there are three main candidates for being related to the Disc's script, all of them partly syllabic, partly logographic:

Linear A Linear A is a writing system that was used by the Minoans of Crete from 1800 to 1450 BC to write the hypothesized Minoan language or languages. Linear A was the primary script used in palace and religious writings of the Minoan civil ...

,

Anatolian hieroglyph 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 ter ...

s and Egyptian hieroglyphs. More remote possibilities are comparison with the Phoenician abjad or the

Byblos syllabary 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 inscription ...

.

Linear A

Some signs are close enough to both

Linear A Linear A is a writing system that was used by the Minoans of Crete from 1800 to 1450 BC to write the hypothesized Minoan language or languages. Linear A was the primary script used in palace and religious writings of the Minoan civil ...

and

Linear B Linear B was a syllabic script used for writing in Mycenaean Greek, the earliest attested form of Greek. The script predates the Greek alphabet by several centuries. The oldest Mycenaean writing dates to about 1400 BC. It is descended from ...

that they may have the same phonetic values, such as glyph 12 = 'qe', glyph 43 = 'ta'₂, or glyph 31 = 'ku'. However, this opinion is not shared by all specialists of the Aegean Scripts. A recent systematic comparison with Linear A is that of Torsten Timm, 2004. Based on the

Linear A Linear A is a writing system that was used by the Minoans of Crete from 1800 to 1450 BC to write the hypothesized Minoan language or languages. Linear A was the primary script used in palace and religious writings of the Minoan civil ...

character distribution patterns collected by Facchetti, Timm concludes that the language of the disc inscription is the same as the language of Linear A. Timm identifies 20 of the 45 characters with Linear signs, assigning Linear B phonetic values to 16.

Anatolian hieroglyphs

Achterberg et al. (2004) present a systematic comparison with

Anatolian hieroglyph 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 ter ...

s, resulting in a full decipherment claim. In particular, they consider the stroke symbol cognate to the

Luwian The Luwians were a group of Anatolian peoples who lived in central, western, and southern Anatolia, in present-day Turkey, during the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. They spoke the Luwian language, an Indo-European language of the Anatolian sub-fa ...

'r(a/i)' symbol, but assign it the value '-ti'. The stroke on A3 is identified as the personal name determinative. Phaistos glyph 01 is compared to the

logogram In a written language, a logogram, logograph, or lexigraph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced ''hanzi'' in Mandarin, ''kanji'' in Japanese, ''hanja'' in Korean) are generally logograms, as ...

'SARU', a walking man or walking legs in Luwian. 02 is compared to word-initial 'a₂', a head with a crown in Luwian. The "bow" 11 is identified as the logogram 'sol suus', the

winged sun The winged sun is a solar symbol associated with divinity, royalty, and power in the Ancient Near East (Egypt, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and Persia). Ancient Egypt In ancient Egypt, the symbol is attested from the Old Kingdom (Sneferu, 26th cen ...

known from Luwian royal seals. The "shield" 12 is compared to the near identical Luwian logogram 'TURPI' "bread" and assigned the value 'tu'. Phaistos glyph 39 is read as the "

thunderbolt A thunderbolt or lightning bolt is a symbolic representation of lightning when accompanied by a loud thunderclap. In Indo-European mythology, the thunderbolt was identified with the 'Sky Father'; this association is also found in later Hell ...

", logogram of Tarhunt, in Luwian a W-shaped hieroglyph.

List of decipherment claims

The decipherment claims listed are 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

*

George Hempl George may refer to: People * George (given name) * George (surname) * George (singer), American-Canadian singer George Nozuka, known by the mononym George * George Washington, First President of the United States * George W. Bush, 43rd Presid ...

, 1911 (interpretation as

Ionic Greek Ionic Greek ( grc, Ἑλληνικὴ Ἰωνική, Hellēnikē Iōnikē) was a subdialect of the Attic–Ionic or Eastern dialect group of Ancient Greek. History The Ionic dialect appears to have originally spread from the Greek mainland ac ...

, syllabic writing); A-side first; reading inward *

Florence Stawell Florence Melian Stawell (2 May 1869 – 9 June 1936) was a classical scholar. Career Florence Melian Stawell, youngest daughter of Sir William Foster Stawell, was born at Melbourne on 2 May 1869. She was named for the Melians, ancient Greek ...

, 1911 (interpretation as

Homeric Greek Homeric Greek is the form of the Greek language that was used by Homer in the ''Iliad'', ''Odyssey'', and Homeric Hymns. It is a literary dialect of Ancient Greek consisting mainly of Ionic, with some Aeolic forms, a few from Arcadocypriot, and ...

, syllabic writing); B-side first; reading inward *

Albert Cuny __NOTOC__ Albert Cuny (16 May 1869 – 21 March 1947) was a French linguist known for his attempts to establish phonological correspondences between the Indo-European and Semitic languages and for his contributions to the laryngeal theory. He w ...

, 1914 (interpretation as an ancient

Egyptian Egyptian describes something of, from, or related to Egypt. Egyptian or Egyptians may refer to: Nations and ethnic groups * Egyptians, a national group in North Africa ** Egyptian culture, a complex and stable culture with thousands of years of ...

document, syllabic-logographic writing) *

Benjamin Schwarz Benjamin Schwarz (born 10 July 1986) is a German footballer who most recently played for Preußen Münster, as a left back. Career Born in Munich, Schwarz began his career 1991 with SV Ludwigsvorstadt and played here four years before signed fo ...

, 1959 (interpretation as Mycenean Greek, syllabic writing, comparison to Linear B); A-side first; reading inward * Jean Faucounau, 1975, (interpretation as " proto-Ionic" Greek, syllabic writing; A-side first; reading inward * Vladimir I. Georgiev, 1976 (interpretation as

Hittite language Hittite (natively / "the language of Neša", or ''nešumnili'' / "the language of the people of Neša"), also known as Nesite (''Nešite'' / Neshite, Nessite), is an extinct Indo-European language that was spoken by the Hittites, a people ...

, syllabic writing); A-side first; reading outward *

Steven R. Fischer Steven Roger Fischer (born 1947) is a New Zealand linguist. He is the former Director of the Institute of Polynesian Languages and Literatures in Auckland, New Zealand. Fischer is the author of more than 150 books and articles on linguistics, man ...

, 1988 (interpretation as a Greek dialect, syllabic writing); A-side first; reading inward * Kjell Aartun, 1992 (interpretation as a

Semitic language The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigrant a ...

, syllabic writing); A-side first; reading outward *

Derk Ohlenroth Derk may refer to: * Derk (given name), a Dutch masculine given name * Derk, Kohgiluyeh * and Boyer-Ahmad, a village in Iran See also * Dərk * Derk-Elsko * Dirk (disambiguation) * Durk * DYRK * Jaap-Derk Jaap-Derk Buma (born 27 August 19 ...

, 1996 (interpretation as a Greek dialect, alphabetic writing); A-side first; reading outward; numerous homophonic signs * Adam Martin, 2000 (interpretation as a Greek-Minoan bilingual text, alphabetic writing); reading outward, side A as Greek, side B as Minoan * Achterberg et al., 2004 (interpreted as

Luwian The Luwians were a group of Anatolian peoples who lived in central, western, and southern Anatolia, in present-day Turkey, during the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. They spoke the Luwian language, an Indo-European language of the Anatolian sub-fa ...

); A-side first; reading inward * Torsten Timm, 2005 (syllabic writing, comparison to Linear A) B-side first; reading inward * Gareth Alun Owens, 2007 (interpretation as Indo-European, syllabic writing, comparison to Linear A) A-side first; reading inward

Non-linguistic or logographic

* Paolo Ballotta, 1974 (interpretation as logographic writing) *

Leon Pomerance Leon, Léon (French) or León (Spanish) may refer to: Places Europe * León, Spain, capital city of the Province of León * Province of León, Spain * Kingdom of León, an independent state in the Iberian Peninsula from 910 to 1230 and again fro ...

, 1976 (interpretation as astronomical document) *

Reiner J. van Meerten Reiner may refer to: * Reiner (crater), a crater on the Moon, named after Vincentio Reiner *Reiner Braun, a fictional character in the anime/manga series ''Attack on Titan'' People with the given name Reiner * Reiner Knizia, a board game designer * ...

, 1977 (interpretation as documentation of a gift to

Minos In Greek mythology, Minos (; grc-gre, Μίνως, ) was a King of Crete, son of Zeus and Europa. Every nine years, he made King Aegeus pick seven young boys and seven young girls to be sent to Daedalus's creation, the labyrinth, to be eaten ...

) * Peter Aleff, 1982 * Ole Hagen, 1988 *

Harald Haarmann Harald Haarmann (born 1946) is a German linguist and cultural scientist who lives and works in Finland. Haarmann studied general linguistics, various philological disciplines and prehistory at the universities of Hamburg, Bonn, Coimbra and Ban ...

, 1990 (interpretation as logographic writing) * Bernd Schomburg, 1997 *

Patrick Berlingame Patrick may refer to: *Patrick (given name), list of people and fictional characters with this name * Patrick (surname), list of people with this name People *Saint Patrick (c. 385–c. 461), Christian saint * Gilla Pátraic (died 1084), Patrick ...

, 2010 (interpretation as the mythical labyrinth) * Hermann Wenzel, 1998 * Alan Butler, 1999 (interpretation as

calendar A calendar is a system of organizing days. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months and years. A date is the designation of a single and specific day within such a system. A calendar is also a physi ...

) * Friedhelm Will, 2000 (interpretation as number-philosophically-document of "Atlantean" origin) * Axel Hausmann, 2002 (document from

Atlantis Atlantis ( grc, Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος, , island of Atlas (mythology), Atlas) is a fictional island mentioned in an allegory on the hubris of nations in Plato's works ''Timaeus (dialogue), Timaeus'' and ''Critias (dialogue), Critias'' ...

, dated to 4400 B.C., logographic reading) * Helène Whittaker, 2005 (a votive miniature version of a game board similar to the Egyptian ''

Mehen In Egyptian mythology, the name Mehen ( cop, Ⲙⲉϩⲉⲛ), meaning 'coiled one', referred to a mythological snake-god and to a board game. Snake god The earliest references to Mehen occur in the Coffin Texts. Mehen is a protective deity who i ...

'') * Wolfgang Reczko, 2009interpretation as sun-eclipse information and dating
/ref>

Comparison with other scripts

Unicode

A set of 46 Phaistos Disc characters, comprising 45 signs and one combining oblique stroke, have been encoded in

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...

since April 2008 (Unicode version 5.1). They are assigned to the range 101D0–101FF in Plane 1 (the

Supplementary Multilingual Plane In the Unicode standard, a plane is a continuous group of 65,536 (216) code points. There are 17 planes, identified by the numbers 0 to 16, which corresponds with the possible values 00–1016 of the first two positions in six position hexadecimal ...

). Phaistos Disc 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 Forth or FORTH may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''forth'' magazine, an Internet magazine * ''Forth'' (album), by The Verve, 2008 * ''Forth'', a 2011 album by Proto-Kaw * Radio Forth, a group of independent local radio stations in Scotla ...

, one of the largest research centers in Greece.

References

External links

* * * *
Exploring the Enduring Mystery of Crete’s Phaistos Disc – AtlasObscura – 2022
{{Authority control 2nd-millennium BC inscriptions 1908 archaeological discoveries Ancient pottery Archaeological artifacts Archaeological discoveries in Greece Art discs and ovals Cretan hieroglyphs Heraklion Archaeological Museum History of printing Individual ceramics Inscriptions in undeciphered writing systems Inscriptions in unknown languages Minoan archaeological artifacts

Discovery

Authenticity

Dating

Typography

Inscription

Signs

Oblique stroke signs

Directionality

Inscription text

Side A

Side B

Sides A and B left-to-right orientation

Numerical transcription

Side A

Side B

Corrections

Rotations

Signs in adjacent windings

Decipherment attempts

Origin of the script

Cretan or foreign origin

Original invention or derivation

Linear A

Anatolian hieroglyphs

List of decipherment claims

Linguistic

Non-linguistic or logographic

Comparison with other scripts

Unicode

Modern use

See also

References

Further reading

General

Attempted decipherments

External links