The Phaistos Disc was discovered in the Minoan palace-site of Phaistos, near Hagia Triada, on the south coast of Crete; … See more

Yves Duhoux (1977) dates the disc to between 1850 B.C. and 1600 B.C. (MMIII in Minoan chronology) on the basis of Luigi Pernier's report, which says that the disc was in a Middle Minoan undisturbed context. Je… See more

The disk is made of fine-grained clay. Some authors have stated that the clay does not appear to be of local origin, perhaps not even from Crete. It was intentionally and properly fired, unlike tablets and seals that were bake… See more

There are 45 distinct signs on the disk, occurring a total of 242 times — 123 on side A and 119 on side B. In addition to these, a small diagonal line was incised with a stylus (not stamped) underneath some signs… See more

The following is a single image of the text "unrolled". While the order of the characters is left-to-right reversed, the signs themselves are in the original orientation.
Evans, at one point, published an assertion that the dis… See more

For the first few decades after its discovery most scholars argued strongly against the local origin of the artifact. Evans wrote that:
...when one comes to compare the figures in detail with those of the Minoan hieroglyphi… See more