Is the Phaistos Disk a Hoax?

In July of 1908, Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier was excavating at the Minoan site of Phaistos when he stumbled upon one of the great enigmas of archaeology: The Phaistos Disk.

The Phaistos Disk is a flat circular disk of about 15 centimeters (six inches) in diameter and made of fired clay. Both sides of this disk have been stamped with a series of mysterious symbols that have been compared to various languages over the last century, including at least ten symbols from Linear A, but also other languages from other times and places including Linear B, Proto-Ionian, Anatolian, Semitic, and Indo-European, among many others.

Jerome M. Eisenberg, writing in the July/August issue of the magazine Minerva, provides a compilation of the scholarly (and non-scholarly) ideas about and attempted translations of the disk, and concludes that the disk is a forgery.

Photo by D. Bachman
This detail of the Phaistos disk is from the A side. Adapted from Eisenberg: 18 (set square or boomerang; similar to Linear A sign AB37 or Egyptian sign); 23 (column or hammer; similar to Linear A sign AB06), 10 (arrow or shaft of grain, similar to Linear B ideogram), 25 (ship without mast; Egyptian symbol tilted at 90 degrees) 27 (animal hide, Linear B), 2 (head with plume of hair, similar to Luwian mu).

I'm no expert on Minoans or decipherment or any ancient language, heaven knows, but the article is, it must be said, hilarious. The translation compilation alone contains such entertainments, from the mystic ("Helmsman's-rhythm-beating-call of the blossoming radiant heaven's tree dweller"), to the romantic ("Blissful lady of the labyrinth, blissful Isonoia, lady of the coffins") to the political ("Hear ye Cretans! Quick, quick") to the instructional ("Enter the grove of Elaia: Ignite smoothened wood all around"), to the overtly sexual ("I want to wet, plow your field").

Is it a Fake?

Proving the Phaistos disk a fake is going to be difficult. Eisenberg points out that the purposely stamped and deliberately fired disk is unlike any other Minoan script. Those found at Knossos were drawn into soft clay and accidentally fired. The motives will need to be fleshed out as well. Eisenberg suggests that Phaistos excavator Pernier might have been jealous of Arthur Evans and his discoveries at Knossos, and created the disk to prove that Phaistos was just as interesting a site. I'd love to see a book investigating the possible perpetrators, such as those that have been written on the Piltdown man hoax, wouldn't you? What might resolve the issue would be a thermoluminescence date on the disk; but so far the Heraklion Museum who displays the disk today has been uninterested in doing that. I'm not sure I blame them.

Whether the Phaistos disk is a forgery or some inscrutably configured board game (which has been suggested) or indeed some ultimately decipherable text written by a polyglot in Phaistos, Eisenberg's article in Minerva this month is well worth the price of the magazine.

Sources and More Information

Eisenberg, Jerome M. 2008. The Phaistos Disk: One Hundred Year Old Hoax? Minerva July/August, pp. 9-24.

• The Phaistos Disk
• Deciphering Linear B
• Linear A
• Minoans
• Heraklion Museum
• Minerva magazine