The inscriptions of the Fest disc are one of the greatest mysteries of archeology. Here everything raises questions from specialists: from purpose and purpose to the place of creation. A mysterious clay plate was found in Greece, on the island of Crete, in the Minoan palace at Festus. Who could create it and what was it used for?
The Minoan civilization of the Bronze Age reached its peak in 1700 BC. e., and after three centuries, when most of the Minoan palaces were destroyed, fell into disrepair. 1903 - Among the ruins of the Minoan palace at Festa, an Italian archaeologist found the Fest disc. While researching the southeastern apartments of the palace, archaeologists stumbled upon a mysterious object in the foundation of one of the premises - a clay tablet with inscriptions made in linear writing (an undeciphered letter that was used in Crete until 1450 BC). Here they also found fragments of pottery from the late palaces period (1700-1600 BC).
The palace was destroyed during an earthquake, which some researchers associate with a terrible volcanic eruption on the nearby island of Thira in the Aegean Sea. The exact age of the fest disc today is a debatable issue. Judging by the archaeological layer, it is possible to make the assumption that the artifact appeared not later than 1700 BC. e., according to the latest data - in 1650 BC. e.
The Phaistos disc, 6.2 inches in diameter and 0.8 inches thick, is made of fired clay and covered with spiral hieroglyphics on both sides. The inscriptions are imprints made on wet clay using seals or stamps made of wood or ivory, which were then fired at a high temperature for strength. The researchers noticed that in some places on the disc the symbols are tilted to the right. This may indicate that the disc maker was imprinting from right to left in a spiral to the center of the plate. The Phaistos disc is the oldest seal in the world.
There are a total of 242 impressions on the disc, which are divided by vertical lines into 61 groups. The plate contains 45 different signs, including images of a running man, heads with feathers of birds, women, children, animals, birds, insects, tools, weapons and plants.
Some of the symbols are somewhat reminiscent of the Cretan hieroglyphs that were used at the beginning - the second half of the 1st millennium BC. e. But another thing is surprising: why representatives of the Minoan civilization used a primitive prehistoric language in parallel with linear writing, more perfect. Perhaps the primitiveness of the inscriptions on the disc indicates that it is older than commonly believed. However, this is optional. Archaic forms of writing often survive into later periods, mainly in the form of sacred and religious texts, as, for example, in Ancient Egypt.
45 signs of the Phaistos disc
It should also be noted that the inscriptions on the Fest disc are unique - not a single similar specimen has yet been found. Its uniqueness and brevity of the text make the task of translating even a small part of it incredibly difficult. Since the inscriptions were applied using stamps, it is possible to make the assumption that there was a mass production of objects with impressions of the signs of this letter, which for one reason or another have not yet been found by archaeologists.
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No one can say for sure how the characters on the disk are decoded, so it is very difficult to determine what role was assigned to the artifact itself. What kind of images on the disc are hieroglyphs or pictograms? Even this cannot be figured out in order to start decrypting. Although some of the drawings on the fest disc are images of familiar objects, an attempt to decipher them literally fails to find any logical meaning.
Many linguists believe that the text consists of a number of characters that are syllables (this type of writing is called the "syllabic alphabet"). Others believe that this is a collection of syllabic characters and graphic symbols that were used to display certain concepts or ideas (the so-called ideographic writing).
If the inscriptions were a combination of syllables and ideograms, they can be compared with all known syllabic alphabets of Greece and the Middle East, including the Minoan linear script, as well as hieroglyphic writing and cuneiform (the latter is a symbol applied to clay tablets with pointed reed sticks; originated in Sumer at the end of the 4th century BC).
An interesting example of such a text is the "Narmer palette", found by the British archaeologist James E. Quibell in 1894 in the ancient capital of pre-dynastic Egypt, the city of Nehen (modern Hierakonpolis). "Palette" dates back to 3200 BC. e. and contains some of the oldest hieroglyphic images known to science. The text of "Narmer's palette" is a collection of hieroglyphic and pictographic characters. To understand what the text is about, these signs must be taken literally.
Drawing parallels with the Fest disc, it is possible to assume that the inscriptions on the "palette" are a mixture of ancient Cretan hieroglyphs and pictograms. Despite the fact that translation is an incredibly difficult task without other examples of writing, neither scholars nor amateurs give up trying to solve this problem. On the contrary, the uniqueness of the text made the task mysterious and fascinating, and did not scare away researchers at all.
Unfortunately, the uniqueness of the Fest disc gave rise to a number of far-fetched and unfounded translations and interpretations of the text. Perhaps the most absurd assumption is that the disc contains a message left to future generations thousands of years ago by aliens or representatives of an ancient civilization - Atlantis. Of course, there are no answers to the questions about what the message says and why the aliens (or Atlanteans) used such a primitive letter.
Over the past 100 years, many attempts have been made to decipher the language used to create the disc. 1975 Jean Faucono published his translation of this text. He argued that this language originated before the advent of Greek culture and that syllabic writing belongs to a proto-ionic culture, whose representatives are more connected with Troy than with Crete. According to Fokono's decoding, the Fest disc tells about the successes of the protoionic king Arion. However, his version of the translation was ignored by most of the scientists specializing in this field.
2000 - Efi Poligiannakis published (in Greek) a book called "Disc Speaks Greek". He claims that the inscriptions on the disc are in syllabic script, which is an ancient Greek dialect. Dr. Stephen Fischer, in Signs of a Greek Dialect on the Fest Disc (1988), also indicated that the text was written in a syllabic script of the Greek dialect.
Items found with it may be a clue to the disc's purpose. Because the Phaistos disc was found in an underground temple vault, some of the researchers concluded that it had a cult purpose. They assumed that the text was a sacred hymn or ritual incantation. Some iconic groups are repeated in the text, which may be a chorus. Maybe each side of the disc displays a verse of a song, hymn, or ritual incantation.
In fact, Sir Arthur Evans, who excavated at Knossos (the ceremonial and political center of the Minoan civilization), concluded that the disc contained part of the text of a sacred song. The discoverer of the disc, the Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier, agreed with the opinion that it had a religious significance. However, although the Festa disc was found in a Minoan palace, there is no complete certainty that it is of Cretan origin. The disc could have been shipped from anywhere in the Mediterranean or even the Middle East.
The ritual purpose of the disc is more likely, but this version is only one of many others: an ancient entertaining story, an incantation written in the Hittite language (the language that was used on the territory of modern Turkey in the 17th-12th centuries BC), a legal document, an agricultural calendar, an inventory of palace events, or a board for games.
1980 - German researcher Andis Coline in the book "Phaistos disc: Greek hieroglyphs about Euclidean quantities" claims to have deciphered a mysterious letter. According to him, the inscriptions on the disc are made in Greek and the text contains a proof of the geometric theorem. Be that as it may, Colins' translation was not widely adopted, only a few archaeologists and linguists agreed with it.
1999 - in the book “Computer of the Bronze Age. Deciphering the Fest Disc”Alan Butler suggested that the disc could serve as an incredibly accurate astronomical calendar for making calculations. To date, there is no exact data that would indicate that the representatives of the Minoan civilization had deep knowledge in the field of astronomy. It should be admitted that even the knowledge of astronomy possessed by the Egyptian civilization of those times is not enough to confirm Butler's hypothesis.
For 100 years of excavations in Greece, not a single item has been found containing texts printed or printed, as in the case of the Fest disc. The lack of materials, thanks to which it would be possible to carry out a comparative analysis of the inscriptions, gave rise to doubts about the authenticity of the disc, which increase from year to year, because specialists in the archeology of the Mediterranean and the Middle East, apparently, do not want to enter into a debate over this artifact.
Dating the disc through thermoluminescence analysis would help determine if the object was created over the past hundreds of years or if it actually belongs to the period of the Minoan civilization. But until now, the Greek authorities have not been willing to provide a disk for such a study.
The version that the disc is a fake of the early XX century, in the creation of which they used the well-known at that time, rather limited knowledge about the Minoan culture, may look far-fetched, but should not be ruled out. An amazing find discovered in 1992 in the foundations of a house in the Russian city of Vladikavkaz is associated with the hypothesis of a forgery. This is a fragment of a clay disc, which was smaller than the Fest one and, as you can see, was a copy of it, although the symbols on the disc were rather carved rather than squeezed out. There was a rumor about a fake, but after a few years the Russian disc mysteriously disappeared, and after that nothing was heard about it.
Despite the futility of efforts, many of the researchers around the world continue to work hard trying to decipher the inscriptions on the disc. However, the declared translations raise doubts among scientists about the successful decryption of the inscriptions on the disk in the future, moreover, while this sample is the only one of its kind, the exact meaning of the disk cannot be established.
One can only hope that in the future, archaeological excavations on the island of Crete or elsewhere in the Mediterranean will reveal other examples of this mysterious writing. Until then, the Festa disc, now exhibited at the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion in Crete, will remain a unique and mysterious artifact.
Houghton Brian