The Phaistos Disc, also called the Phaistos Disk, is a clay disc found on the island of Crete, Greece. It may date to the Minoan Bronze Age, around the second millennium BC. The disc has writing in a language and script that are unknown. Scholars still debate its purpose and where it was first made. Today, it is displayed at the archaeological museum in Heraklion. The name is sometimes spelled as Phaestos or Festos.
The disc was discovered in 1908 by Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier during the excavation of the Minoan palace of Phaistos. It is about 16 cm (6.3 inches) wide and has a spiral of text on both sides. The text includes 241 total uses of 45 different symbols. These symbols were made by pressing individual stamps into soft clay before the clay was fired. At first, some scholars thought the disc might be a fake, but most now believe it is genuine.
The disc has interested many people who study ancient writing systems. Many have tried to decode its symbols. While it is unclear if the symbols form a script, most attempts assume they do. Some believe the symbols represent syllables, others think they might be letters or represent ideas directly.
Discovery
The Phaistos Disc was discovered at the Minoan palace-site of Phaistos, near Hagia Triada, on the south coast of Crete. It was found in the basement of room 8 in building 101, which is part of a group of buildings located to the northeast of the main palace. This group of four rooms also acted as the main entrance to the palace complex. Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier uncovered the complete "dish" on July 3, 1908, during his excavation of the first Minoan palace.
The disc was located in the main chamber of an underground "temple depository." These basement chambers could only be reached from above and were covered with a layer of fine plaster. The items inside were not rich in valuable artifacts but contained a lot of black soil and ashes mixed with burned cow bones. In the northern part of the main chamber, within the same black layer, about 50 cm (20 inches) above the floor and slightly to the southeast of the disc, a Linear A tablet labeled "PH-1" was also discovered.
Dating
Yves Duhoux (1977) estimates the disc's age as between 1850 BC and 1600 BC (MM III in Minoan chronology) based on Luigi Pernier's report, which states the disc was found in a Middle Minoan undisturbed context. Jeppesen (1963) places the disc's date after 1400 BC (LM II–LM III in Minoan chronology). Louis Godart (1990) questions the reliability of Pernier's report but acknowledges that archaeologically, the disc could be from any time during the Middle or Late Minoan periods (MM I–LM III, a time span covering most of the second millennium BC). Jan Best suggests the disc dates to the first half of the 14th century BC (LM IIIA) based on his dating of tablet PH-1.
Physical description
The disc is made of fine-grained clay. Some experts believe the clay may not be from Crete or nearby areas. It was intentionally and carefully fired, unlike tablets and seals that were accidentally baked.
The disc is roughly cylindrical, about 16 cm (6.3 in) wide and nearly 2 cm (0.8 in) thick, with rounded edges. More precisely, its shape is slightly oval, with the width ranging from 15.8 to 16.5 cm (6.2 to 6.5 in) and the thickness from 1.6 to 2.1 cm (0.63 to 0.83 in). One side is slightly curved inward, while the other is curved outward.
The most notable feature of the Phaistos disc is that the raised symbols on its surface were created by pressing individual stamps into soft clay before firing. This process makes the disc an early example of movable-type printing. Typesetter and linguist Herbert Brekle explains:
If the disc is a written text, it is a "printed" text that meets all the requirements of the typographic principle. The spiral arrangement of symbols, the fact that they are pressed into clay (blind printing) instead of being inked, and other details are simply different ways to create written text. The key point is that the same symbols were repeatedly stamped onto the clay.
A medieval example of a similar blind printing method is the Prüfening dedicatory inscription from 1119 AD.
Popular-science author Jared Diamond describes the disc as a technological innovation that did not spread widely because it was created at the wrong time in history. He compares this to the later development of Gutenberg’s printing press.
In addition to the stamped symbols, some marks were made by pressing a sharp tool into wet clay. Each side has a continuous spiral line that separates sections of the text. The space between these lines is divided into parts by short lines that go from the center to the edge, with each section containing a few symbols. The beginning of the text, near the edge, is marked by a similar line and five small dots pressed along it. Some symbols also have short diagonal lines beneath them.
Signs
There are 45 different signs on the disc, appearing a total of 242 times—123 on side A and 119 on side B. In addition, a small diagonal line was carved with a stylus (not stamped) under some signs, a total of 18 times. The 45 symbols were numbered from 01 to 45 by Sir Arthur Evans, and this numbering is still used by most researchers.
The signs were added to the Unicode character set in 2008 after a 2006 proposal by Michael Everson and John H. Jenkins. In the table below, the "No." column shows the Evans number for each sign; the "Glyph" column shows a modern drawing of the symbol; and the "Font" column uses the Unicode font available in the browser. The Unicode names are "PHAISTOS DISC SIGN" followed by names from a 1995 book by Louis Godart.
One sign on side A is too damaged to identify. According to Godart, it may be sign 03 (TATTOOED HEAD) or 20 (DOLIUM), or less likely 08 (GAUNTLET) or 44 (SMALL AXE). It could also be a 46th distinct sign.
The sign images below are reversed left-to-right compared to their appearance on the disc, to match how they are shown in most Western books and articles.
Some signs appear in different orientations on the disc, rotated by 90 or 180 degrees. It is generally believed that these rotations do not change the meaning of the symbols, so the "normal" orientation is unknown and may have been chosen freely by the scribe.
Many signs show recognizable objects, such as humans, birds, plants, or parts of them (like heads or hides). However, the exact nature of most objects remains unknown as of 2023. The names assigned to signs by scholars, including Godart and the Unicode group, are often based on minor shape similarities.
Symbol 21 (Godart's "COMB") was once thought to represent a palace floorplan. This idea was questioned after a vase with a nearly identical symbol was found, likely used as a potter’s mark.
Symbol 20 ("DOLIUM") was believed to depict a type of sea snail shell, such as Tonna dolium or similar species. A shell of this kind was found at Phaistos and is thought to have been used as a musical instrument for rituals.
The distribution of symbols is not random and differs greatly between the two sides. Evans’s symbol 02 (PLUMED HEAD) appears most frequently, 19 times—14 on side A. The next most frequent are symbol 07 (HELMET), with 18 occurrences (mostly on side B); symbol 12 (SHIELD), with 17 (mostly on side A); and symbol 27 (HIDE), with 15 (10 on side A).
Of the 45 symbols, 26 appear on both sides at least once. The most common symbols found only on one side are 31 (EAGLE) on side A and 22 (SLING) on side B, each appearing five times.
The table below shows how many distinct signs (Sign count) have the same number of occurrences (Frequency). The third number in each column is the product of the two numbers above, showing the total number of occurrences (Token count) for those signs.
There are nine symbols that appear only once (hapaxes): 04 (A5), 05 (B3), 11 (A13), 15 (B8), 17 (A24), 30 (B27), 42 (B9), 43 (B4), 44 (A7). Of the eight symbols that appear twice, four (03, 21, 28, 41) are only on side A; three (09, 16, 20) are only on side B; and one (14) appears on both sides.
The distribution of symbol pairs is also uneven. For example, of the 17 occurrences of sign 12 (SHIELD), 13 appear immediately after sign 02 (PLUMED HEAD).
Text
The image shows the text "unrolled." The order of the characters is reversed from left to right, but the signs themselves remain in their original orientation.
Evans once claimed the disc's text should be read from the center outward, as it would have been easier to write the inscription first and then shape the disc to fit the text. However, most scholars agree this was incorrect. Evans later changed his view, stating the text should be read clockwise, starting from the outside and moving toward the center, similar to the spiral inscription on the Lead Plaque of Magliano.
The signs on each side of the disc form a single spiral text, divided into groups by radial strokes. These groups are called "words," even though their exact meaning is unknown. Both ends of the text on each side are considered "word" boundaries. There are 61 "words" total: 31 on side A and 30 on side B. These are numbered A1 to A31 and B1 to B30, read from right to left (clockwise, edge-to-center).
A possible additional radial stroke near the center of side A may exist, but it is often ignored. Scholars instead count the last three symbols (signs 10, 03, and 38) as one "word," which also appears near the same position on the next-to-last turn.
On both sides, a radial line with five dots is located before the text begins. These dots were made using a sharp, round stylus.
Short, slanted strokes drawn with a stylus (not stamped) are always attached to the last sign of a "word" when reading from the outside inward. Their purpose is debated. One theory, supported by Evans, suggests they divide the text into "paragraphs."
All transcriptions of the text assume a right-to-left (clockwise, edge-to-center) reading direction, starting at the radial line with five dots. However, in these transcriptions, the order of characters is reversed so they can be read left-to-right and top-to-bottom. The slanted stroke is used to mark the end of a "paragraph," and a horizontal line is added after each paragraph for clarity.
For consistency with published sources, transcriptions include an oblique stroke at the end of word A24, even though high-resolution images show it to be a crack.
The Phaistos Disc inscription is rendered in Unicode characters from the Phaistos code block (code points +101D0 to +101FC). Radial strokes are represented by the ASCII character "|" (+7C), and the slanted stroke is shown as the PHAISTOS DISK COMBINING OBLIQUE STROKE (+101FD) after the affected symbol. The radial stroke with five dots, marking the start of the text, is denoted by the ISO Latin 1 character "¦" (+A6). The boxed question mark "⍰" (+2370) represents the illegible sign in word A8. The appearance of the signs depends on the browser's font, but they are typically flipped left-to-right compared to their appearance on the disc.
Transcriptions use modern drawings of the signs, which are reversed left-to-right relative to their appearance on the disc. The labels A1-A31 and B1-B30 are traditional word numbers.
Another transcription uses the Evans numbers for the signs. The vertical bar "¦" represents the start of the text, and "|" represents word-separating radial lines. The slash "/" marks the slanted stroke under a sign. The caret "^" indicates the transition from the outer edge of the text to the inner turns, and "??” represents an unreadable sign.
The disc shows signs of corrections, with some signs erased and replaced by others.
Godart notes corrections occurred in the following words: A1 (signs 02-12-13-01), A4 (29-29-34) and 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 whether a sign was corrected.
The borders of word B28 were widened to accommodate sign 02.
In word A29, the two signs 27 (HIDE) are rotated 180 degrees compared to other occurrences of this sign, with "heads" pointing downward instead of upward. This may be due to limited space in A29.
Arie Cate observed that if sign rotations were random, the chance of only two (or three) signs being rotated is very low.
On side A, there are locations where the same sign appears near each other in adjacent spiral turns, such as sign 02 (PLUMED HEAD) in word A1 and A14. The two 27 (HIDE) signs in word A29 are upside down, with their "heads" pointing toward the HIDE sign in word A23, which is in the adjacent turn. Arie Cate suggests the likelihood of these alignments being accidental is very small.
Origin of the artifact
For the first few decades after its discovery, most scholars believed the artifact did not come from the local area. Evans wrote that when comparing the images on the Phaistos Disk to those used by the Minoans, many differences were noticeable. Out of the 45 symbols on the disk, only about 10 looked somewhat similar to symbols used in Crete. The human figures on the disk had different shapes and clothing than those found in Minoan art. The image of a ship on the disk also looked different from ships shown in other Minoan writings.
Gustave Glotz argued that the clay used to make the disk was not from Crete. Ipsen believed the disk came from somewhere in the Aegean Sea. However, because the disk’s symbols did not match those of Linear A or B, he, like Evans, thought it was not from Crete. He noted that Linear A was used widely in the Aegean, so this idea did not fully explain the disk’s unique features.
Later, as more similar artifacts were found on Crete, many scholars began to believe the disk had a Cretan origin. For example, a vase found at Knossos had a symbol that matched the disk’s 25 SHIELD symbol (a circle with seven dots). A bowl discovered in 1965 at Phaistos had a symbol on its bottom that closely resembled the disk’s 21 COMB symbol. A similar symbol was also found on a sealing from administrative documents discovered in 1955. Images of women with long, hanging breasts were also found at Malia and Phaistos. The Arkalochori Axe had a short inscription with symbols similar to those on the disk.
These discoveries led more scholars to support the idea that the disk originated in Crete. This view was shared by Michael Trauth in 1990, Yves Duhoux in 2000, and Andrew Robinson in 2008.
Hoax hypothesis
The special features of the script, the spiral design, and the way the symbols were made (using individual stamps) have caused some experts to question whether the Phaistos disc was created in 1908 as a fake or trick. It has been noted that the time when the disc was made has not been confirmed using thermoluminescence dating. Andrew Robinson agrees that this type of dating would be very helpful but does not support the idea that the disc is a forgery. Similarities between the disc and other Minoan objects found later support its realness. For example, the "comb" symbol (sign 21) matches symbols found on a sealing from 1955 and a bowl from 1965. The spiral pattern on the disc is similar to that of a ring discovered in 1926 at Knossos. Also, several symbols on the disc match those found on pieces of Impressed Fine Ware from Phaistos.
Decipherment attempts
During the 20th century, many people speculated about the meaning of the Phaistos Disc, which interested amateur archaeologists. Many attempts were made to understand the symbols on the disc, with theories suggesting they might represent prayers, stories, a game, or even a mathematical idea. Some of these ideas are considered pseudoarchaeology, meaning they are not widely accepted by experts as reliable.
Most experts believe the symbols form a syllabary, a writing system where symbols represent syllables. This idea is based on the 45 symbols found in a text of 241 characters, which is typical for syllabaries used in the Ancient Near East, such as Linear B, cuneiform, and hieroglyphs. However, some experts suggest the symbols might also include logographic elements, where symbols represent whole words, or an alphabetic system, where symbols represent individual sounds.
Many people still hope the mystery of the disc can be solved, but scholars believe it is unlikely without more examples of the symbols found elsewhere. Experts generally agree that the lack of context makes it difficult to analyze the script meaningfully. Any attempt to decipher the script without confirmation from other inscriptions is unlikely to be accepted as accurate.
The writing system on the Phaistos Disc is very different from other known scripts, but some scholars believe it was not created entirely on its own. Gunther Ipsen suggested the creator may have been influenced by other writing systems, such as Hieroglyphic Luwian, which combined elements from cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Some experts have proposed that the symbols on the disc are older or alternate forms of Linear A characters. Others have noted similarities between the symbols and Anatolian Luwian hieroglyphs or Egyptian hieroglyphs. Less likely comparisons include the Phoenician alphabet or the Byblos syllabary.
The idea that the Phaistos Disc script is related to Linear A was first suggested by Arthur Evans in 1909. In 1959, Benjamin Schwartz claimed the disc’s script shares a common origin with Cretan linear scripts. Similar ideas were later supported by Werner Nahm, Torsten Timm, and others.
Some scholars have noted that certain symbols on the disc, such as 12 (SHIELD), 43 (STRAINER), and 31 (EAGLE), resemble Linear A and Linear B characters. They suggest these symbols may represent similar sounds, such as "qe," "ta," and "ku." Based on patterns in Linear A, Torsten Timm identified 20 of the 45 symbols as possibly matching Linear A or Linear B signs.
Scholars have also compared the Phaistos Disc to Anatolian hieroglyphs. In 1961, S. Davis proposed such a connection, and in 1988, Jan Best and Fred Woudhuizen supported it. In 2004, Winfried Achterberg and others claimed a detailed match between the disc’s symbols and Anatolian hieroglyphs, leading to a full decipherment. A revised version of their research was published in 2021.
Summary table
The table below shows possible matches between Phaistos signs and other ancient writing systems, including Linear A/B, the Arkalochori Axe symbols, and Luwian hieroglyphs.
List of decipherment claims
Decipherment efforts can be divided into two types: linguistic decipherments, which determine the language used in the inscription, and non-linguistic decipherments, which do not focus on language. A purely logographical approach, which uses symbols to represent meanings directly, is not considered a linguistic decipherment. While this method can explain the message of the inscription, it does not reveal the language it was written in.
Unless stated otherwise, the following attempts assume the text is read from right to left, moving clockwise around the edges, starting at side A.
Unicode
A group of 46 symbols from the Phaistos Disc, including 45 signs identified by Evans and one special diagonal line, were added to Unicode in April 2008 (Unicode version 5.1). These symbols are placed in the range 101D0–101FF within Plane 1, also known as the Supplementary Multilingual Plane. The symbols are written from left to right, so in charts and text, they appear as mirror images compared to their original appearance on the disc.
Modern use
The side labeled A of the Phaistos Disc is used as the logo of FORTH, which is one of the largest research centers in Greece.