Monday 11 June 2012

The Phaistos Disk

The Phaistos Disk

Just what the @#$% is it?





The Phaistos Disk seems to have been delibarately forgotten.

  It was found in a storeroom in an area of the Phaistos palace apparently a chapel or a storage area for religious activities. The disk seems to have been just placed against a wall on the floor and survived simply cos it was left there and possillbly other softer objects piled up around it protecting it against the fianl destruction of the room it was in.

I've seen several theories about it and the symbols some of which are roughly similar to Cretan Hieroglyphics and Linear A and B  and I've shown a graphic showing one guess at the symbols.

It certainly doesnt show the level of refinement you normally see in Minoan art?

So what is it? Here's my guess : a discarded test prototype for a series of stamps meant to be used on cloth or clay maybe as trademarks or syllable signs standing for abbreviated words as a shorthand  or even stamps for textiles?

Perhaps the sponsor of the experiment had it rejected in favor of a different graphic system that became linear B and donated the test piece to a shrine for storage and died causing a sigh of relief to embarassed relatives or the palace artisans refused to use the system set or the symbols were used but on metal objects that were melted down later?

We now know there was more than one script used in Crete but don't have transitional forms showing the whole sequence of developments from early symbols to Linear B.

This object may be an anomaly but an anomaly cos its out of context?

Imagien what an archaeologist might think if he find a typographers rough sketches for a font but no complete set of the font? Say the typographer cut out 3d models for some reason and then the studio was   destroyed and the one surviving object was removed to a store room?

That may be how the Phaistos Disk became an anomaly?






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