Here’s the most fascinating artefact I have seen in a museum in a while (and I am a bit of a museum rat): the Phaistos Disc, currently on display at the Heraklion Archeological Museum.
Discovered in 1908 by Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier in the Minoan palace-site of Phaistos, the disc has retained its mystery for over a century. Here are some super cool facts about the disc that trigger the imagination of the linguist in me:
- The disc features 241 tokens, comprising 45 distinct signs;
- The signs were apparently made by pressing hieroglyphic “seals” into a disc of soft clay;
- The signs follow a clockwise sequence spiralling toward the centre of the disk;
- It was written in what Sir Arthur Evans (the first entrepreneur who started digging up Knossos) identified as “Linear B,” a type of script descended from Linear A (or “Cretan hieroglyphics”), with which it shares a few symbols;
- It was made in the 2nd millennium BC.
One of the most enduring mysteries of both linguistics and archaeology, the Phaistos Disc contains many symbols that refer to animals and plants, but it also shows human figures and faces (if you look closely, you can see a head with a mohawk on every row).
The reason why it is so difficult to decipher is that there is very little context and even fewer similar examples of Linear B, but Welsh-born Greek linguist Gareth Owens has recently declared that he had translated 50% of the Phaistos Disc and that the text might be about the Minoan Pregnant Goddess Aphaia.
Ain’t it cool?
