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The Phaistos Disc, or Phaistos Disk, is a disk of fired clay from the island of Crete, Greece, possibly from the middle or late Minoan Bronze Age (second millennium BC), bearing a text in an unknown script and language. Its purpose and its original place of manufacture remain disputed.
Phaistos Disc, side A Phaistos Disc, side B Hempl's translation of the opening lines of the disc, from Harper's Magazine [1]: p.196 Many people have claimed to have deciphered the Phaistos Disc. The claims may be categorized into linguistic decipherments, identifying the language of the inscription, and non-linguistic decipherments.
The Phaistos disc was suggested to be a hoax by "some scholars" (one guy, in 2008), but that was short-lived. (Our reference for "the Disc is now generally accepted as authentic" is a publication from 2006, so two years before the hypothesis of forgery, which is impressive foresight?) Card Zero 06:41, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
A symposium was convoked to discuss the Disc in autumn 2008. [4] Eisenberg argues that the disc can be dated by a thermoluminescence test, but in 2009 the Greek curators would not permit the disc to be examined. [3] The authenticity of the Phaistos disc is supported by multiple discoveries made after the disc was excavated in 1908.
seal fragment HM 992, showing a single symbol, identical to Phaistos Disk glyph 21. [8] The relation of the last two items with the script of the main corpus is uncertain; the Malia altar is listed as part of the Hieroglyphic corpus by most researchers. [9] Since the publication of the CHIC in 1996 refinements and changes have been proposed.
The difficulty in deciphering these systems can arise from a lack of known language descendants or from the languages being entirely isolated, from insufficient examples of text having been found and even (such as in the case of Vinča) from the question of whether the symbols actually constitute a writing system at all.
The combination of elaborate clothes that leave the breasts completely bare, and "snake-wrangling", [3] attracted considerable publicity, not to mention various fakes, and the smaller figure in particular remains a popular icon for Minoan art and religion, now also generally referred to as a "Snake Goddess".
It is inscribed with fifteen symbols. It has been suggested that these symbols might be Linear A, although some scholars disagree. [3] The Arkalochori axe and the Phaistos Disc are exhibited at the Heraklion Archaeological Museum (Galleries V and VII, respectively). They share some symbols.