What is it?![]()
This enigmatic fired-clay disc, dating to around 1700-1600 BC, was discovered in the palace of Phaistos on the Greek island of Crete. It is 16.5cm in diameter, 2.1cm thick, and its two faces bear 45 different pictographic signs – a total of 241 symbols – spiralling from the edge to the centre within incised bands. Vertical hand-carved lines group the symbols into sets of two to seven, probably forming single words or syllables.
The signs of the Phaistos Disc were impressed with individual stamps, as in modern typography, although in some instances the same symbol was produced multiple times using different stamps. The maker of the disc made a few mistakes on the fine-grained clay: some of the symbols were erased before reinscription, in other sections margins were widened to fit everything in.
Where was it found, and when?
As Arthur Evans was uncovering the Minoan palace of Knossos in north-central Crete, an Italian archaeological team – led by Federico Halbherr – began work to the south at what they hoped was just as grand a complex. Between 1900 and 1907, they revealed the palace of Phaistos, perched on a hill above the fertile Messara Plain. The Minoan palace, first established in 1900 BC, covered an area of around 8,000m² and had a labyrinthine architectural layout. Its multi-storey buildings – which included luxurious rooms with hypostyle halls, monumental gateways, and decorative façades – surrounded the grand, open-air Central Court. In 1908, excavating in one of the palace’s underground dependencies, Luigi Pernier found the inscribed clay disc in a layer of black earth and ash – remnants, experts suggest, of a great earthquake and fire following the eruption of Santorini during the mid 2nd millennium BC.
