This ancient script has remained unsolved for over a century

This ancient script has remained unsolved for over a century

This ancient script has remained unsolved for over a century 7 Minutes Read 1489 Words EN In 1908, an archaeologist in Crete discovered a small clay disk bearing unknown symbols. Now known as the Phaistos disk, it remains a modern enigma. The Phaistos disk from circa 1700 B.C. The signs were not engraved using a stylus but rather pressed onto the wet clay using molds or seals in a kind of ancient typesetting. Scala, Florence By Francisco del Río Published September 26, 2024 One of the great enigmas of modern archaeology has created an ongoing debate among scholars who argue about the function and meaning of an ancient clay disk the size of a hand. On July 3, 1908, Italian archaeologist Federico Halbherr, his student Luigi Pernier, and a team were excavating the site of a Minoan palace at Phaistos, in southern Crete, when they came across an underground deposit among the ruins. Inside the deposit, Pernier could make out charred bones and ashes and among them, half-buried, a golden brown clay disk…