What is the importance of the Phaistos Disc?
SHORT ANSWER The ancient treasure may be the key to unlocking an unreadable script, if it can ever be deciphered
LONG ANSWER Much like the Rosetta Stone - which ended up being a rather dry royal decree - it is not what the Phaistos Disc recorded that’s important, but the challenge the artefact has inspired to decipher its symbols and so read an unreadable script. The fired clay disc, around 16cm in diameter, was made by the Minoans, a Bronze Age civilisation on the Mediterranean island of Crete, and when discovered in 1908 by Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier, it was dated to 1850-1550 BC.
Stamped on its surface like an old printing press are 242 symbols in a spiral: human figures, birds, plants, weapons, ships, beehives and combs, as well as dots, dashes and lines separating the pictures into groups. Their meaning has been debated ever since. While some share similarities to another Minoan writing system, Linear A, experts don’t even know if they are pictographie or alphabetic.
