Phaistos Disk *

Published May 30, 2010

The Phaistos Disk is the most famous ancient artefact ever found on Crete and as Axel Hausmann says, can be considered the world’s oldest ‘printed’ document, dated to around 1700 BC. This is because the characters were created using incised punches, similar in effect to movable type.

Noting that this ‘document’ was produced using some sort of character ‘punches’, brings to my mind three questions

(1) were these the only set of punches created? And

(2) have any other objects been discovered that show a similar use of punches? And

(3) if not, why not? These questions prompted some to claim that the Disk was a hoax! (See below)

Another artefact with characteristics remarkably similar to the Phaistos Disk is the inscribed Magliano Disk, made of lead, which was discovered in Magliano, Tuscany in the 188os^(ac). However, the two discs were very far apart in time and location and so similarities are just superficial. Like the Phaistos Disk, the one from Magliano has also presented translation problems as the Etruscan script in which it is written is still only partly decipherable.

In 2017 the academia.edu website published an illustrated paper by Lance Carlyle Carter comparing the Magliano Disc with the Phaistos

Magliano Disc

Disc. In it, he claims “to show how the Magliano Disc inscriptions appear to be based ancient asterisms, signs, or constellations and are compared to the Phaistos inscriptions. The Magliano Disc inscriptions appear to depict a way of drawing celestial signs that portray the northern sky. This paper shows that the Phaistos Disc may not be an isolated document.“⁽^am⁾

The Phaistos Disk was discovered around a hundred years ago by the Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier (1874-1937) and despite an amazing number of efforts⁽^a⁾, it has defied a definitive decipherment ever since. The interpretations so far have ranged from it being a prayer to a description of the eruption of Thera, while one writer in a light-headed moment went as far as to suggest that it might hold a message from extraterrestrials!

Frank Joseph contends^[⁶³⁶^.42] that it was ‘a sophisticated astrological chart’ and ‘is an example of Atlantean Bronze Age technology’.

One of the most fascinating suggestions is that the disk was a board game based on an ancient Egyptian game called Senet^(b)(o), which was proposed by Peter Aleff, an explanation later supported by Philip Coppens^(af). However, it seems that this idea was first proposed by Fernand Crombette at least half a century earlier^(r).

Over sixty years ago Marcel Homet discussed the Phaistos Disk in the last chapter of his Sons of the Sun ^[813] noting that “The totality of the ideograms or symbols on the disc – they are all as familiar in the prehistoric Mediterranean countries as in Ancient America (although of older date there) – leads us inevitably to search for a common origin, which can only be found in the northern part of the space which lies between the two continents (Eurasia and America), in other words: Atlantis!” ^[p193]

Alan Butler, who has written a book on the subject^[⁵⁰⁴^], provides a more conventional offering in which he sees the disk as being primarily an astronomical aid. Rosario Vieni has promoted the idea that the disk had a calendrical use and has published his reasons, in French, on the Internet⁽^c⁾. Paul Dunbavin has also suggested^(aj) that the disk may have been a spiral calendar^[^099.181^].

Naturally, Atlantis has not been excluded from this wide-ranging Phaistos speculation, although the linking of the disk with Atlantis is tenuous at best. Jean Louis Pagé has produced a bilingual offering^[⁵⁰¹^] that combines the Phaistos, Mayan and Aztec disks to locate Atlantis. Axel Hausmann, writing in German^[³⁷²^], has also done little to provide a clear connection between Atlantis and the disk.

Christian O’Brien and his wife Barbara Joy, in an appendix to their book The Genius of the Few, have identified the writing on the disk as an early form of Sumerian cuneiform writing. Based on this, O’Brien produced a complete translation of the Disk^(ag⁾!

The late Andis Kaulins published at least two papers on the decipherment of the Disk^(aq).

The disk is housed in the Iraklion Archaeological Museum which is home to the Akralochori Axe also found on Crete in 1934 by Spyridon Marinatos, that was inscribed with 15 characters that have been identified with the Linear A script as well as some of the Phaistos characters⁽^e⁾. The Museum also holds (#2646) a lesser-known disk called ‘The Disk of Chronos’ by Richard Heath, who has identified it as a Bronze Age calendar^(ah), which, according to him, among its other functions shows an early use of the seven-day-week. Heath has also written a paper on the Phaistos Disk, which he has interpreted as an eclipse predictor^(ai).

Dutch linguists Jan Best and the late Fred Woudhuizen co-authored a paper^(ao) on the Phaistos Disc and concluded that “Not only the script but the language, too, is very similar to Luwian.” If their reading is correct,” the text on the disc intends to settle an ownership dispute in a place called Rhytion near Pyrgos in the southwest of the plain of Messara: The Greek king Nestor has a principality in Crete that includes Knossos and parts of the plain of Lasithi and of the Messara.”

Two American academic twins, Keith and Kevin Massey have made available a 72-page pdf file^(k) outlining their interpretation of the disk. They concluded that the disk was probably a receipt for goods deposited in a temple!

2008 was a busy year for Phaistos Disk studies. Panagiotes D. Gregoriades delivered three papers to the Atlantis Conference in Athens in which he identified the disk as a calendrical device used on land and sea. He subsequently published his ideas in book form in 2010 entitled The Creation of Prototypes^[¹⁴¹⁶^]. In 2008 a major international Phaistos Disk Conference was held in London^(h)to celebrate the 100^th anniversary of its discovery.

Unfortunately, in 1999 a professional ‘wet blanket’ in the form of Dr Jerome Eisenberg declared the disk to be a fake when he wrote to The Economist declaring that the disk was “a joke perpetrated by a clever archaeologist from the Italian mission to Crete upon his fellow excavators.” He expanded on this in a detailed, fully illustrated paper^(z) in 2008. Brian E. Colless responded by pointing out^(d) that such a hoax would first have required the “making 45 little stamps to imprint on clay, on both sides of the object, and printing 30 clusters of signs (words or phrases ?) on one side and 31 on the other.”

The Greek authorities have refused to allow the disk, which is just 16cm across, to be removed for testing, on the grounds of its extreme fragility. The idea of fraud has been suggested because of the lack of other documents ‘printed’ in the same manner and because none of the punches was ever found. Fortunately, that argument has now been refuted^(u). My response would be to point out that singularity is not necessarily a sign of a hoax. Otherwise, we would have to reject other artefacts such as the Antikythera Mechanism or Nebra Sky Disk, which are also unique items with no objects of any intermediate sophistication discovered so far.

Dr Marco Guido Corsini, who has also written about Atlantis, has widely promoted his interpretation of the Phaistos Disk^(o).

Ukrainian professor Iurii Mosenkis, a linguistics expert, has proposed in his Hellenic Origin of Europe^(ak) that the Phaistos Disk was an astronomical instrument for sailors!

Mark Newbrook, who has studied linguistics, gave a good overview of the various attempts to decipher the disk at the 2008 Phaistos Conference. An even more extensive site (currently suspended) was offered by the Georgian mathematician Gia Kvashilavathat includes a very comprehensive bibliography. Kvashilava offers his interpretation based on the Colchian (Proto-Kartvelian) language printed in the unique Colchian syllabo-logogramic Goldscript. His paper is quite technical and more suited to advanced students of the subject.

Reinoud de Jong has now entered this particular fray with a decipherment that he claims offers a description of the religion of Crete⁽ⁱ⁾. However, this is rather strange as in a 2012 paper^(ae), de Jonge claimed that the Disk contains details of the Bronze Age importation of copper and tin from the Americas. In the same paper, he also claimed that the Egyptians discovered America around 2500 BC and for good measure he slips in that the Empire of Atlantis existed from 2500 to 1200 BC, without any reference or explanation whatsoever! It is implied that there is a connection between Egypt, Atlantis and the exploitation of the Michigan copper. The level of detailed speculation on offer here is truly spectacular.

Steven Roger Fischer, who claims to have deciphered the rongorongo script of Easter Island has also offered a translation of the Phaistos Disk in his book, Glyphbreaker^[¹⁵²⁰^].

By way of complete contrast, Gary Vey claims that the disk is merely some sort of inventory and also gives an overview of the difficulties attached to deciphering the disk as well as some interesting features overlooked by some researchers^(j).

The Czech WM magazine has an extensive 2011 article on the decipherment of the Phaistos Disk^(p), giving prominence to the work of Petr Kovar, who claims that the language is Proto-Slavic!^(y⁾

Stephen E. Franklin has claimed that the Disk is a king-list of Cretan rulers and also that it had a calendrical function^(ab).

Barbara Gagliano raised a few eyebrows with her claim that the Disk contained DNA information^(q)!

Late 2014 saw another translation attempt published^(s) by Dr Gareth Owens of the Technological Educational Institute of Crete, in which he claimed that the disk “contains a prayer to the mother goddess of the Minoan era.” Owens’ contribution provoked further controversy including further suggestions that the Disk might be a fake^(t⁾.In a 2021 recycling of his claim, Owens “said he believes, moreover, that one side of the Phaistos Disc is dedicated to a pregnant mother goddess and the other to the Minoan goddess Astarte.” ^(al)

Linear B was the basis of Owens’ study, which was the result of a collaboration with John Coleman at Oxford University. They claim to have translated 80% of the text with certainty, along with another possible 15%, leaving just 5% undeciphered^(w). In 2018, Owens claimed that^(ar)the percentage of the text that was now deciphered had risen to 99%!

Robert Bradford Lewis (RBL), an American commentator, has offered a detailed illustrated forensic study of the Disk, based on his view that the language used was Ugaritic, a long-extinct Semitic tongue. However, while the language may be Ugaritic, the script is not! Uniquely RBL has proposed a connection between the content of the Disk and the Genesis Flood story.^(an)

The number of theories relating to the Disk seems to rival the range of speculation relating to Atlantis. My selection here can be fruitfully augmented by the Wikipedia entry^(x) on the subject.

Silvia Ferrara, a Professor of Aegean Philology, is the author of a 2019 book, The Greatest Invention: A History of the World in Nine Mysterious Scripts ^[²⁰⁸³^]. This well-received work, not unexpectedly, includes an overview of the Phaistos Disk- an excerpt from which is available online^(as).

A list of decipherment claims as well as a useful bibliography up to 2008 is available^(y)and Charles River Editors has recently (2018) published two Kindle books ^[¹⁵⁸⁵^][¹⁵⁸⁶^] offering more information about the many attempts to solve the mystery of the disk.

Brent Davis is one of the world’s leading experts on Bronze Age Aegean scripts and languages. In 2018, he published an article “in which, based on a close statistical analysis, shows that while both the Phaistos Disc and Linear A are undeciphered writing systems, he can demonstrate that both are, with a high degree of certainty, encode the same language!”^(ad)

Robin Ashdown in a 2021 article offered a new interpretation that suggested that the Disk had a calendrical function, possibly overseen by priests. This complicated theory, apart from being difficult to understand comes with a very candid warning: the ideas presented are based on nothing more than guesswork and speculation. I have no evidence to either support or refute these explanatory ideas. Nevertheless, by logically piecing together harmonious ideas, we can build a compelling picture of what might lie behind the pictograms in the Phaistos Disc.”^(ap)

^(a) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaistos_Disc_decipherment_claims

⁽^b⁾ https://www.recoveredscience.com/Phaistos1summary.htm (link broken) See link (o)

^(c) https://web.archive.org/web/20150423071528/https://www.world-mysteries.com/LeDisquedePhaestos.pdf

^(d) https://sites.google.com/site/collesseum/phaistosdisc

⁽^e⁾ https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arkalochori_Axe&printable=yes

^(h) https://web.archive.org/web/20120419010351/https://www.csad.ox.ac.uk/bes/phaistos.pdf

⁽ⁱ⁾https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?year=2012&id=320

^(j)https://www.viewzone.com/phaistosx.html

^(k)https://web.archive.org/web/20160331171116/https://www.keithmassey.com/files/ThePhaistosDisk-Massey.pdf

^(l) https://web.archive.org/web/20141201114928/https://www.we-love-crete.com/phaistos.html

⁽ⁿ⁾ https://www.goldenageproject.org.uk/969.php

^(o)Index (archive.org) (3 papers)