One of the most famous artifacts of antiquity is a clay disc found in 1908 near the city of Festus in Crete. This ancient monument dates from about 1700 BC. It is the first sample of printed matter - the hieroglyphs depicted on it were obtained by embossing impressions of metal seals on fresh clay; moreover, the hieroglyphs are arranged in a not quite standard way - in a spiral. The disk has not yet been decrypted, so the number of versions about its origin and the information it carries exceeds several dozen.
Initial assumptions that the archaeologist Federico Halberra, who found it, had made the disc himself were dispelled in 1965 by a carbon analysis that confirmed the disc's age.
What versions have not scientists put forward about its origin; in their opinion, the disc could be either a list of the rulers of Crete or just a toy for children. It could also be the text of a marriage contract. Or a prayer to Poseidon. Or … In general, the final version was not, and is not.
Initially, versions were put forward that the disc is of necritic origin. And they seem to be correct, since the Cretan script is strikingly different from what is written on the disc. The inhabitants of Crete, although they used a spiral form of writing, but their alphabet was not hieroglyphic. In Crete from the 20th century BC there was a primitive sign writing, even a lot of its remains have survived, however, it is not at all similar to the one presented on the Phaistos disc. The theory that the Cretans used a dual writing system - and the signs of letters and hieroglyphs at the same time did not find confirmation. In general, the use of semantic and phonetic writing (hieroglyphs and letters) was simultaneously characteristic only of the ancient Egyptians.
Perhaps one interesting circumstance may serve as the key to solving the disk mystery. In total, the disc contains 242 characters, the most common of which occurs 19 times. This is an image of the head of a man with a peculiar mohawk, which can often be seen in films about the Indians of North America. Such hairstyles were not popular in the 18th century BC among the inhabitants of the Mediterranean. However, Arthur Evans, one of the early researchers of the disc, suggested that it was a headdress. And perhaps he was right. At that time, the legendary biblical Philistines were the only people using helmets with feather crests.
Many are mistaken in considering the Philistines a Semitic people and the ancestors of modern Arabs. This, of course, is not so, and the enmity between the Philistines and the Jews should not be misleading. The Philistines come from the so-called "Sea Peoples" who migrated during the "Bronze Age Crisis" (17-14 centuries BC) from the Balkans to the Middle East.
It is believed that the Philistines did not have a single strong state, as they lived in five independent poleis on the Sinai Peninsula. The official history of the Philistines goes back about one and a half thousand years - from the formation of the first city of Ekron (1700 BC) to the moment of their conquest by the Jews in the 2nd century BC. However, it seems strange that a "weak" state could exist in that wild time for so long.
But the most interesting thing is something else. The "Middle Eastern" history of the Philistines is, in fact, the last stage of their existence. And what came before? It is possible that the state of the Philistines existed at different times in a variety of ways over a fairly extensive territory: they began in the Balkans, then they moved to the region of Greece, then to the islands of the Cretan Sea, then to the island of Cyprus, and, in the end, settled on The Middle East.
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Such a "journey", which lasted for at least 500 years, does not seem so implausible, if you look closely at the archaeological finds dating back to the 20-15th centuries BC. In them, a fairly large number of objects from that period appear as if out of nowhere.
Many cultures that later emerged in those places bear traces of the culture of the "late" Philistines, whom everyone remembers from their wars with the ancient Jews. For example, the Greek Mycenaean swords and copis copy the swords of the Philistines one by one. And the writing, devoid of vowel sounds, is also the heritage of the Philistines, and not the Etruscans at all, as previously thought.
It is possible that the Philistines, conquering one state after another that found themselves in their way, did not particularly bother assimilating with the local population, but took the place of the “cleansed” local aristocracy and acted in the conquered territories as the ruling class. Well, of course, as, for some reason, they were expelled from the conquered places, they moved further to the southeast.
As for the "sea" route from the Balkans to the Middle East, everything is quite simple. The Philistines could not pass by land through Asia Minor, because at that time there was a kingdom of the Hittites, who were too tough for even such an absolute and unsurpassed leader of that time as the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II the Great. You just need to remember that the battle of Kadesh, considered a "success" in Egypt, was a complete strategic failure of Ramses and stopped his expansion to the north.
It is possible that, arriving in Crete, and having contacts with Ancient Egypt, the Philistines tried to adopt their manner of hieroglyphic writing and the Phaistos disc is the result of such a "copying of technology."
Of course, a possible interpretation of the historical events of the end of the Bronze Age is quite bold, however, it fills many "dark places" of that time. And it is possible that future research will confirm its correctness. The idea that the impetus for the development of Ancient Greek culture was given by the conquest of Greece by the “savages” who came from the Balkans allows us to look at the whole history of Antiquity from a slightly different angle. And who knows, perhaps it is the Philistines that we owe all the heritage of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome …