The Phaistos disc remains a great archaeological mystery

The signs correspond to clearly identifiable images, such as humans, animals, plants or tools, almost all of which relate to elements of daily life and some of which reflect the historical context of the time. Several symbols represent, for example, a warrior whose features recall those of the Sea Peoples as they were represented in the iconography of ancient Egypt. Also engraved are a feathered head, an arrow, a helmet and a round shield, as well as what look like depictions of ancient Sumerian figures, such as the tattooed head of a slave and a topless woman. Finally, other signs represent animals and plants from the agricultural world: a dove, a cat, a goat, a bee and a beehive, a daisy, a vine and an olive tree. The 45 signs are divided into 61 sequences of 2 to 5 signs each. The front shows 30 and the back 31 of these sequences, and the writing would follow a clockwise direction and progress in a spiral from the edges to the center of the disc.

According to the researchers, the 45 signs belong to an Aegean-style syllabic writing system and the groups of 2 to 5 signs composing the different sequences constitute words. The symbols bear a slight resemblance to those of “Cretan hieroglyphics” and Linear A, but the text also shows differences with the latter. Because the inscription on the Phaistos disk is short, it is possible that the complete writing system includes more signs than the 45 used on the disk, perhaps as many as 55 or 60 different signs. This assumes, of course, that the inscription is written in an unknown language. We still don’t know for sure what language the Cretans spoke during the Bronze Age.