Discovery of the Phaistos Disc
Descubrimiento del disco de Festos
- Date
- 3 de julio de 1908 · confidence high
- Place
- Phaistos, Crete, Greece
- Credited to
- Luigi Pernier
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier found this clay disc in an underground deposit of the Minoan palace at Phaistos, with 45 distinct signs stamped in a spiral using individual seals, a technique reminiscent of movable-type printing millennia before Gutenberg. Its script remains undeciphered and has generated intense scholarly debate.
The milestone is the 1908 archaeological find by Pernier, not the manufacture of the disc itself (Minoan-era, with no agreed date); its script remains undeciphered and some scholars have even questioned its authenticity.
What it led to
- Numerous scholarly decipherment attempts
- Inclusion of its signs in Unicode in 2008
Built on
- Systematic excavation of the first Minoan palace at Phaistos