Exploring The Enduring Mystery Of Crete’s Phaistos Disc
April 14, 2022
ON THE OLD CONTINENT, ON Crete, hidden among the ancient Aegean scripts from 4,000 years ago, is another script, perhaps an isolate, perhaps not, but certainly the most mysterious of all. And like all the most hidden and impenetrable mysteries, it’s right there before our eyes, hiding in plain sight. Along with Cretan Hieroglyphic and Linear A, there’s a script that’s infamous among experts and wildly famous to everyone else… Phaistos is one of the great Minoan palaces, and its disc was retrieved there in the early 20th century by an Italian archaeologist, Luigi Pernier. No archives were found in the palace—nothing like the grand archives excavated at Knossos, in the island’s north, brimming with tablets of Linear A and Linear B; nor like the archives of Linear A tablets found at the Hagia Triada site, a settlement just to the south of, and contiguous with, Phaistos. At Phaistos there seemed to be no trace of writing at all. Though how could that be possible, Pernier asked himself: How could such an imposing and monumental palace, with its regal and grandiose staircases, contain only a few scattered inscriptions? (READ MORE)