Phaistos: the palace and the myth of Rhadamanthys

Phaistos the great

The palace of Phaistos (Φαιστός) was one of the four great centres of Minoan civilisation and the most important of them in the south of Crete. It lies about 62 kilometres south-west of Heraklion on a hill some 100 metres high at the western edge of the fertile Messara Plain – the eastern tip of a ridge, in fact – above the river Geropotamos, the Lethaios of antiquity. From here the eye travels north to Psiloritis, the ancient Mount Ida, south to the Asterousia Mountains and east as far as the Lasithi massif; in the distance, less than six kilometres off, the Libyan Sea glints. Phaistos controlled the harbour towns of Kommos and Matala, through which trade with Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean passed, and the smaller palace of Agia Triada stands only about three kilometres away along the same ridge. People had settled the hill by about 3600 BC, long before any palace was built. Since July 2025 the palace has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site “Minoan Palatial Centres”, together with Knossos, Malia, Zakros, Zominthos and Kydonia.

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Introduction

Background: what we know about the Phaistos Disc

The Disc was found on 3 July 1908 in room 8 of building 101, in the north-eastern part of the palace hill. This disc of fired clay, about 16 centimetres across, bears 241 impressions – some counts arrive at 242 – made up of 45 different signs; they were pressed into both faces with stamps, in a spiral. The Disc is kept in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum. Neither its purpose nor its language has been worked out; interpretations of it as a hymn, a calendar or a magic spell therefore remain hypotheses.

Background: why Talos is not artificial intelligence

Talos is the mythical bronze guardian of Crete, not a historical description of a machine. The comparison with a robot helps the modern reader to picture a self-acting sentinel. The ancient story, however, speaks of divine origin, of ichor, the blood of the gods, and of a single vulnerable spot at the ankle – not of program code or electrical energy.

Around 1900 BC, at a time when the history of Europe’s high cultures had barely begun, the palace of Phaistos rose on Crete – a masterpiece of Minoan building. Powerful rulers walked its corridors and courts, and priests looked in sacred rites for signs from the gods. Homer already knows Phaistos: in the Catalogue of Ships in the Iliad it is among the well-peopled cities of Crete that sent ships against Troy, and in the Odyssey the winds drive part of Menelaus’ fleet on to the coast near Phaistos. Diodorus Siculus names it, with Knossos and Kydonia, as one of the three cities founded by Minos, while Pausanias derives its name from a hero Phaistos, a descendant of Heracles.

We begin, as is only proper, with the myths.

Rhadamanthys, ruler of Phaistos

Rhadamanthys (Ραδάμανθυς) is one of the most impressive figures in Greek mythology. He was one of the three sons whom Europa bore to Zeus, and so the brother of Minos and Sarpedon; all three were brought up by Europa’s husband, the Cretan king Asterion. He holds a special place as a wise lawgiver and judge – in the world of the living and in the hereafter. Tradition links him with Phaistos, where he is said to have ruled while his brother Minos reigned at Knossos. He was thought of as a just and shrewd prince who issued many laws that strengthened order and right in the community; one of them held that a man who defended himself against an aggressor should go unpunished, another that oaths should be sworn by animals rather than by the gods, and Plato, in the Laws, has the Spartans model their own code on his. As late as the Classical period a verdict that was incorruptible and severe was proverbially called “Rhadamanthine”.

His laws are described as strict but fair; according to legend they were written on the walls of the sanctuaries, so that everyone could read and obey them. One strand of the story has Minos, jealous of his brother’s popularity, drive him out of Crete; he fled to Boeotia and there married Alcmene, the mother of Heracles. After his death Rhadamanthys became one of the three judges of the dead in the underworld, together with his brother Minos and with Aiakos; in Plato’s Gorgias it is the souls from Asia that come before him. In this office he examined the souls of the departed and decided who deserved the eternal bliss of Elysium and who had to atone in Tartarus. In Homer “fair-haired Rhadamanthys” himself lives on the Elysian Plain at the end of the world, where there is neither snow nor storm – so the fourth book of the Odyssey has it.

Talos – the first artificial intelligence?

Talos, in Greek mythology a bronze giant said to have been made by the smith-god Hephaestus, is one of the earliest images of an artificial being anywhere and in a sense anticipates present-day ideas of robotics. In other versions of the legend he was a gift from Zeus to Europa or to Minos, or else the last survivor of the bronze race of men, sprung from ash trees. One can read him, figuratively, as an early sketch of what we now call artificial intelligence – or, if you like, as its distant ancestor in the imagination of the ancients. How closely the figure was tied to the south of Crete is shown by the silver coins of Phaistos from the late Classical and Hellenistic period: they carry the image of Talos, naked and winged, raising a stone to throw.

Talos had the task of protecting Crete and carried it out with great independence: three times a day he ran round the island, and foreign ships that approached uninvited he sank with boulders. A rationalising version in antiquity made him instead a kind of travelling magistrate, who went round the villages of Crete three times a year displaying the laws engraved on tablets of bronze. His vital force – today one might speak of self-renewal – he owed to ichor, the divine fluid that flowed through his single vein, which ran from the neck down to the ankle. That vein was closed at the ankle with a plug, or in another version of the myth with a bronze nail. In this sense he was, as it were, the first “bio-being” made of metal.

According to the myth the plug was drawn from Talos’ vein by Medea, the sorceress who was travelling with Jason and the Argonauts on their quest for the Golden Fleece. She did it so that the Argo could approach the coast of Crete in safety and continue its voyage. Talos, whose purpose was to keep every uninvited guest away from the island, did not ask why they had come – to him the strangers were simply a danger. Vase painters of about 400 BC were fond of the scene; on the most famous krater, now in the Jatta Museum at Ruvo, the dying giant sinks backwards into the arms of the Dioscuri.

How Medea went about it is told in different ways. In one version, set out at length by Apollonius of Rhodes in his Argonautica, she bewitched him with spells and the evil eye, calling up the spirits of death, so that he grazed his ankle on a rock and the ichor poured out – a rather quaint notion in a creature of bronze. In another version, preserved by the mythographer Apollodorus, she persuaded him that removing the plug would free him from his vulnerability and make him immortal; the same writer records yet another ending, in which the Argonaut Poeas simply shot him in the ankle with an arrow.

Like every artificial intelligence in the modern imagination, Talos feared one thing only: being cut off from his source of energy – a motif familiar to anyone who has seen films such as “The Matrix”. He was talked into believing that his fear of having the plug pulled was nothing but a fault in the system, and that in truth there was no danger. When Talos, endowed with that capacity for decisions of his own which present-day technology is striving for, removed the plug himself, his vital force, the ichor, ran out of him and he fell dead to the ground.

From the standpoint of Greek mythology, then, one might also answer the question that troubles many of our contemporaries: what happens when neural networks learn to decide for themselves – and therefore unpredictably? The myth’s answer is that it ends in the collapse of the technology.

Man, however, continues his voyage to the Golden Fleece. For he is a creature capable of dreaming, and the dream is at bottom nothing other than the capacity for mythical thought. It is a reading of the old myth that invites reflection – and one that every reader may test for himself.

The Phaistos Disc: from myth to reality

In a few words

The Phaistos Disc is one of the most enigmatic finds of Minoan civilisation. This unique object is dated to around 1700 to 1600 BC and so belongs to the Middle Minoan period. Its unusual form, the technique by which it was made and above all its script, undeciphered to this day, fascinate scholars and enthusiasts alike. Small wonder that it plays a special part in modern myth-making. The Disc itself, of course, is no myth – it really exists. The only question is: what is it?

The Disc was found in 1908 during the excavation of the palace complex of Phaistos, directed by the Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier. It is made of clay fired to the hardness of pottery and carries stamped signs arranged on both faces in a spiral running from the rim to the centre.

The diameter is about 16 centimetres, the thickness about 2 centimetres. On the surface are 241 signs, made up of 45 different symbols – people, animals, plants, implements and geometric shapes. Each sign was pressed into the soft clay with its own stamp, a procedure unique for its time. For that reason the Disc has often been called the oldest known example of printing with movable type; the German typographer Herbert Brekle argued that it meets every criterion of the typographic principle, and the nearest later parallel, a stamped dedicatory inscription from the abbey of Prüfening in Bavaria, dates only from 1119.

To this day the Phaistos Disc has not been deciphered, in spite of countless attempts. As early as 1911 it was being read as Ionic or Homeric Greek; later proposals have looked to Mycenaean Greek, to Anatolian hieroglyphs and to the Luwian language. There are several theories about the meaning of the signs – ranging from a religious text and a calendar to a kind of musical notation. None of these interpretations, however, has won broad acceptance among scholars, who generally hold that so short a text cannot be cracked without further inscriptions in the same script to check it against.

More about the Disc

The find and the course of events

According to the excavation diary of the director, Luigi Pernier, Zacharias Iliakis found the Disc on 3 July 1908 at about seven in the evening. Iliakis was foreman and trusted man of the Italian mission at Phaistos; his father, Manolis Iliakis, had once assisted Federico Halbherr in the discovery of the great law code inscription of Gortyn. That evening Zacharias was supervising the work, while Pernier had gone back to the mission house at Vori to write a letter to the director of the School. He had no sooner finished and signed it than Iliakis appeared with the object. Dusk was already falling, and Pernier, examining the piece in the dim light while it was still partly covered in earth, noticed writing on one side only. Deeply moved, he added a paragraph to his letter: “I am happy to inform you that this evening, in the new excavations in the north-east of the acropolis plateau of Phaistos, we have found a clay disc (diam. 0.16) covered with Minoan pictorial signs (more than a hundred), impressed with a stamp in concentric circles. We are in the presence of one of the most important monuments of early Cretan writing.” This postscript is regarded as the earliest written mention of the find. The next day Pernier went to the excavation, had Iliakis show him the find spot and recorded everything in the excavation diary. Only after cleaning did it emerge that the second side was inscribed as well.

The find spot of the Phaistos Disc

Luigi Pernier between Salvatore Aurigemma and Antonio Minto; on the right stands the foreman Zacharias Iliakis. Gortyn, before 1911 (archive of the Italian Archaeological School).

Distinctive features

The Disc is made of very pure, fine-grained clay, of the kind also used for the wafer-thin “eggshell ware” of Minoan vessels – a speciality of the Phaistos potters, who used it to imitate vessels of metal. Its shape is not a perfect circle: the diameter varies between 158 and 165 millimetres. Nor is the surface entirely flat, and the thickness lies between 16 and 21 millimetres, for the disc was shaped by hand, by pressing a lump of clay on to a smooth surface, and not pressed in a mould. The edges are rounded, and the two faces differ slightly, one being a little hollow and the other a little domed.

The written signs – 242 by this count, 123 on one face and 119 on the other – unfold within a spiral frame that the maker had drawn beforehand with an awl and that served him as a guideline; they run from the rim to the centre and were pressed into the soft clay with stamps. In all, 45 different signs form 61 groups of two to seven signs, which are separated from one another by vertical strokes and evidently correspond to words. The commonest is a head with a feathered crest, which occurs nineteen times; a helmeted head and a round shield follow, and in thirteen cases the shield stands directly beside the plumed head, so the arrangement is anything but random. In several places a sign was rubbed out and stamped afresh, proof that the text was checked and corrected as it was made. Reading presumably proceeded from the rim to the centre, starting at a vertical line with five dots.

Side A was probably made first. Once the text had been stamped in completely, the Disc was fired. The firing was presumably deliberate – ordinary clay tablets of the period were merely dried and survive only where a fire baked them by accident – for it succeeded so perfectly that the surface took on a smooth texture and a fine yellowish colour. Its makers evidently wanted to preserve it for a long time.

Authenticity and dating

The Disc lay in room 8 of house 101, on the north-eastern plateau of the palace hill – a basement compartment, where it rested about half a metre above the floor in a layer of dark earth mixed with ash and burnt animal bones. Together with it were found a tablet in Linear A and, above all, pottery in the Kamares style – named after the Kamares cave on Psiloritis, which can be seen from Phaistos. These circumstances suggest that the Disc should be dated to around 1700 to 1650 BC. Since no comparable piece exists, its authenticity has occasionally been called into question – most insistently by the American dealer Jerome Eisenberg, and the clay has never been tested by thermoluminescence – but the archaeological evidence supports it, and archaeologists today generally accept the Disc as genuine.

The dating of the layer excavated by L. Pernier has also been confirmed by more recent investigations by P. Militello at the same spot, in the course of which a further fragment of a Linear A tablet came to light. An important contribution is made, moreover, by a clay sealing with the “comb” sign from a layer containing seals and Linear A tablets beneath the floor of room 25. According to the new data this is the destruction layer of the last phase of use of the Old Palace (Middle Minoan IIB).

To the same period, or to Middle Minoan IIIA, belongs a vessel with the seal impression of the “comb” sign from the house “south of the ramp”. Further objects with inscriptions arranged in a spiral – the gold ring from Mavro Spilio, the “Black Cave” near Knossos (Middle Minoan III / Late Minoan I), two conical cups from Knossos (Middle Minoan III) and a Neopalatial cup from Tsoutsouros – confirm the dating of the Disc and its connection with the artistic centres of central Crete. Early scholars, Arthur Evans among them, had thought the Disc an import, since so few of its signs resembled Cretan hieroglyphs; finds such as these, and the related signs on the bronze axe from Arkalochori, have swung opinion firmly towards a Cretan origin.

The script

The script of the Disc is contemporary with Cretan Hieroglyphic and with Linear A, two writing systems that developed side by side in the Old Palace period – either in different regions or for different purposes. From Phaistos itself come more than sixty documents inscribed in Linear A, tablets and sealings together. Cretan Hieroglyphic, so called because of its outward resemblance to Egyptian hieroglyphs, was in reality a syllabic script: each sign stood for a syllable and not for a concept, just as in Linear A and later in Linear B. Accordingly the pictorial signs of the Phaistos Disc are not ideograms either but syllables which, joined in groups, form words – 45 signs being about the number one would expect of a syllabary.

There are 61 such sign groups in all, that is, 61 words: 31 on side A and 30 on side B; the text of the two sides is different. The differences from Cretan Hieroglyphic are explained in part by the fact that the signs were not incised but impressed with stamps. Under some signs, usually the last of a word, a short slanting stroke was added with a stylus, whose meaning is unknown. The direction of reading is debated – Evans at first read outwards from the centre and later changed his mind – but most scholars assume that it follows the direction in which the frame was incised: clockwise round the spiral, from the rim to the centre.

Symbols and signs

The signs on the Disc depict mainly people, animals, plants and objects. There are 45 different signs in all, most of them easy to recognise. Arthur Evans gave them the numbers 01 to 45 that are still in use, and since 2008 they have had a block of their own in the Unicode standard, so that the text can be set on any computer.

The interpretation of the signs that follows is based on the monograph by Louis Godart, “The Phaistos Disc. The Enigma of an Aegean Script” (1985); the meanings attached to them are cautious associations, not established readings.

A walking man – perhaps an emblem of movement or travel.

A head with a peculiar hairstyle or headdress, often called the “plumed head” – possibly a pointer to rank or role in the community. With nineteen occurrences it is the most frequent sign on the Disc.

A face with a tattoo on the cheek – perhaps a mark of belonging to a particular group.

A captive with his hands bound behind his back – perhaps an image of captivity or subjection.

A child, presumably naked – perhaps an emblem of innocence or the beginning of life.

A woman with bare breasts and a skirt – possibly a symbol of fertility or female power.

A sign that probably represents a cap, and is often described as a helmet – perhaps an expression of status or occupation. It appears eighteen times.

A hand with a bandage or a thong round the fist, rather like a boxing glove – possibly a reference to combat or protection.

According to Evans a kind of tiara – perhaps a symbol of power or priestly dignity.

An arrow – emblem of hunting or war.

A bow, likewise connected with hunting or fighting.

A shield or a wax tablet – perhaps for protection or for a message. The round, dotted sign occurs seventeen times, thirteen of them directly beside the plumed head, and has a close counterpart in Linear A.

A club – possibly a sign of power or strength.

An uncertain sign: according to Evans manacles, according to Pernier the image of a mountain.

A mattock or some other implement for working the soil.

An object for which a similar bronze piece has been found at Phaistos – a tool or a weapon.

A saw, a tool for working wood.

A lid or stopper.

A set square or boomerang – a tool or a weapon.

A kind of carpenter’s plane.

The shell of a tun snail (Dolium) – perhaps a reference to water or seafaring.

A comb – perhaps a symbol of purity or of ritual.

A sling or a musical instrument – emblem of hunting or of art.

A piece of wooden furniture, a cage or a beehive – possibly a reference to the house or to a trade.

A ship – emblem of travel or trade.

A horn, which may have served as a signalling instrument.

An animal hide – perhaps a sign for hunting or sacrifice. It is stamped fifteen times, and in one word the stamp was turned upside down, apparently to fit the space.

A bull’s horn, symbol of strength or fertility.

A cat’s head – perhaps for grace or protection.

A ram’s head – a sacrificial animal or a cult object.

A flying bird, symbol of freedom or of the spiritual.

A sitting dove – perhaps for peace or a message.

A fish, possibly a tunny – emblem of fertility or abundance.

A bee, symbol of industry or community.

A leafy branch or a tree – a sign of life and growth.

A shrub – perhaps for nature or for medicinal herbs.

Papyrus, a symbol of writing or knowledge.

A rosette, interpreted as a water wheel or a flower – emblem of technical skill or of beauty.

A lily, symbol of purity or of death.

A bull’s leg, perhaps to be read as a backbone – symbol of strength or of stock-raising.

A flute, emblem of music and festivity.

A grater, an implement for preparing food.

A sieve or strainer – perhaps a utensil for cleansing or for a rite. This sign, too, has a parallel among those of Linear A.

A small axe, a tool or a weapon.

A wavy band – perhaps a symbol of water or movement.

Problems of interpretation

The Minoan language recorded on the Disc is still unknown to us, and that is the greatest obstacle to understanding its content. All the same there have been innumerable attempts to crack the script and interpret the inscription; many of them belong rather to the realm of fantasy. A few observations can nevertheless be set down. Eleven of the 61 sign groups begin with the same signs, the head with the distinctive hairstyle and the circle with seven dots. Certain sequences of signs also recur, such as bull’s leg and walking man, flying bird and bull’s horns, or oar, head and rosette. These repetitions have led some scholars to suppose that this is a religious hymn or a magical text, whose word sequences echo one another almost like verse. An astronomical calendar has been proposed as well. The plain difficulty is one of quantity: 242 signs are far too few to test any reading, which is why specialists insist that a solution will need confirmation from other inscriptions. A real interpretation of the text will become possible only when Cretan Hieroglyphic and Linear A have been understood and deciphered.

The history of Phaistos at a glance

Neolithic (7000–3000 BC)

In the Neolithic the first settlements arose on the site of the later Phaistos; the hill was occupied from about 3600 BC, a little later than Knossos. Beneath the palace stone foundations, tools, figurines and potsherds have been found. Simple dwellings of branches and clay grew by degrees into ordered communities that lived by farming and stock-raising.

Early Minoan period (3000–2100 BC)

In the Early Minoan period the first stone buildings went up and the art of metalworking developed. Phaistos became one of the centres of Minoan culture, as finds of pottery and luxury goods demonstrate.

Middle Minoan period (2100–1600 BC)

The Middle Minoan period was the heyday of Phaistos. Around 1900 BC a magnificent palace was built which, in the view of scholars, was not only the seat of the ruler but also a religious, administrative and economic centre. From its rooms come superb vessels in the Kamares style, with polychrome spirals and floral motifs on a dark ground, which rank among the high points of the Minoan potter’s art – bridge-spouted jars, tall storage jars and cups with walls as thin as eggshell, made in imitation of metalwork. Thousands of clay sealings and more than sixty documents in Linear A show how closely the stores were administered, and grape pips found in storage vessels are evidence of wine. Around 1700 BC a severe earthquake destroyed the Old Palace; over its ruins, at a somewhat higher level, a new and still more generous building arose. To this era, too, belongs the famous Phaistos Disc, to this day one of the greatest puzzles of archaeology.

Late Minoan period (1600–1100 BC)

The Late Minoan period brought the destruction of many Minoan palaces, including that of Phaistos around 1450 BC, probably as a result of earthquakes and the unrest that followed. The building was not used as a palace again; only individual parts of it were later lived in as private dwellings. Unlike some other places, however, the settlement of Phaistos recovered quickly and remained important in Mycenaean times as well; its influence continued to reach out across the Messara.

After the end of Minoan civilisation

Phaistos remained inhabited after 1100 BC too, after the arrival of the Mycenaeans and equally after the immigration of the Dorians. Each culture left its traces: in the Geometric period, in the 8th century BC, there were substantial stone houses and paved streets here; in Archaic and Classical times the city spread beyond its Minoan limits, and on its fortified acropolis stood a temple of Rhea, whose foundations lie at the southern end of the palace site. Phaistos struck its own coins, silver staters among them, worshipped Aphrodite and Leto, and was regarded by some ancient authors as the home of the seer Epimenides, the Cretan sage who was summoned to Athens in the 6th century BC. The Hellenistic city was prosperous and extensive, with well-built houses, and concluded alliances with other Cretan cities and with King Eumenes II of Pergamon. About 160 BC, however, its powerful neighbour Gortyn conquered the city and subjugated it. With that Phaistos finally lost its former importance as a great cultural and economic centre, and it drops out of the historical record.

A description of the palace of Phaistos

Architecture and plan

Like the other Minoan palaces, that of Phaistos is distinguished by an intricate plan, with numerous rooms linked to one another by corridors and small courts. It was built of dressed limestone and gypsum blocks, with mud brick, rubble and timber for the upper parts.

Although it is among the largest archaeological monuments of the Minoan era, it differs in some essential respects from its more famous counterpart at Knossos. Unlike Knossos, Phaistos was not built over to the same extent after the destructions, and above all it has scarcely been reconstructed in modern times: the Italian excavators confined themselves to consolidating what they found. Its plan therefore seems less convoluted, but gives a clearer view of Minoan building in particular periods. The absence of labyrinthine passages and the restraint of the restoration make Phaistos a unique place in which to study Minoan culture in its earlier stages of development: because the New Palace was put up at a higher level over the ruins of the old one – the later west court lies some six metres above the earlier pavement – the two building phases can be made out side by side here particularly well.

The heart of the palace is the central court, about 46 by 22 metres, which served as the setting for ceremonies and assemblies; some scholars suppose that ritual games such as bull-leaping took place here too. Around this court were grouped living quarters and domestic rooms, storerooms, workshops and shrines. To the west lies the paved west court, first laid out with the Old Palace around 2000 BC, with a raised processional causeway and a kind of theatre: eight shallow steps about 22 metres long, from which spectators could follow ceremonies – a larger theatral area than the one at Knossos. On the same side are a small shrine of three connecting rooms with benches for cult objects and a row of circular stone-lined pits like wells, the so-called kouloures. From here the monumental open-air staircase of the New Palace, some 14 metres wide and with treads cut on a slight slope so that rainwater runs off, leads up to the propylaea, an entrance with a single central column. In the west wing storerooms follow one another in a row, in which large storage jars, pithoi, stood; in some cult rooms double axes are incised on the walls. To the north, somewhat lower down and looking towards Psiloritis, lay the stately apartments: a hall with an alabaster floor and wall paintings, a room laid with marble slabs and joints picked out in red, often called the Queen’s Megaron, a lustral basin and a peristyle court with a surrounding colonnade. To the east was a workshop quarter with a furnace for metalworking, and a carefully planned system of channels carried away the rainwater.

Excavations and visiting

The first to recognise the position of ancient Phaistos was the English captain Thomas Spratt, who fixed it in 1853 by taking bearings from Gortyn, Matala and the coast. In 1894 Antonio Taramelli collected pottery here on Halbherr’s behalf, and from 1900 Federico Halbherr and Luigi Pernier systematically uncovered the palace for the Italian Archaeological School; between 1950 and 1971 Doro Levi continued the work and explored above all the Old Palace and parts of the surrounding town. Vincenzo La Rosa directed further campaigns from 2000, and since 2007 the Phaistos Project under Fausto Longo has been studying the ancient city as a whole. At present the site is being modernised at a cost of about 2.5 million euros: slopes are being stabilised, the paths made more accessible and the protective roofs of the 1960s replaced with new ones. The finds from Phaistos, including the Disc, are on display in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum. About three kilometres to the west lies the Minoan villa of Agia Triada, which combines well with a visit, as do Gortyn and the beach at Matala. In summer it is advisable to come early in the morning, when the light over the Messara is still soft and the heat on the shadeless hill remains bearable.