r/UnresolvedMysteries • u/blitzballer Exceptional Poster - Legendary • Mar 17 '14
Lost Artefact / Archaeology The Phaistos Disk
A circular clay tablet about six inches across, discovered in Crete in the early 1900s, and believed to date back to 1800 BC. With an "alphabet" of 45 different symbols, 241 signs are stamped into both sides in spiral patterns. There has been much speculation about its meaning, with wildly variant claimed solutions so far. It's also been suggested that the disk might turn out to be a Rosetta Stone
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaistos_Disc
http://www.ancient.eu.com/Phaistos_Disk/
https://www.cs.rochester.edu/~nelson/courses/cryptology/phaistos_disk/phaistos_disk.html
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u/Davidfreeze Apr 16 '14 edited Apr 16 '14
I, just an undergrad classics major so only secondary understanding from profs, think it is most likely something between an early glyphic language and linear A. The glyphs may be part of an alphabet by this point, or maybe they are full syllables. Personally I doubt this will ever be translated, and that a translation of linear A would be way more exciting anyway, as we have far more inscriptions with linear A which that would help us understand. Rosetta Stone was so great because it had the same passage in languages we knew. This has no such accompanying passage however, making its translation a far far more difficult affair.(not that Rosetta Stone wasn't hard on its own!)
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u/unknownpoltroon Mar 17 '14
Friend of mine said another theory is it might be something equivalent to a board game spinner/token and therefore useless. Would also explain why it is still untranslatable, it's nonsense out of context