Crete 7: Phaistos

 

Homer called Crete the island of 100 cities. That was more poetic license than census geography, but Crete certainly had more cities in the Minoan age than comparable parts of the  mainland.

 

One of those cities was Phaistos.  The site today is fascinating and, unlike Knossos, has not been "repaired" by Evans or one of his ilk.

That picture on the left shows an example of a so-called "mason's mark," found on many stones near the storage chambers.  They were named after similar carvings in medieval cathedrals, used by mason's to indicate where certain stones went, but no one knows if that's the purpose of these.  

By the way, if my memory is right, that particular symbol  looks a lot like the "button," the symbol in Linear B which indicates a suffix.  Linear B, of course, is from the Mycenean era.  I don't know if it also appeared in the Minoan's Linear A.

Those rectangular platforms were frames for retractable doors which could be used to control light, wind, etc.

Unlike Evans, who rebuilt Knossos as his fancy took him, the Italian excavators at Phaistos were careful to indicate the date of any repairs they needed to do. That says 1932, if it isn't clear.

And speaking of those excavators, Luigi Pernier was managing the site in 1908 when he suffered an archaeologist's nightmare scenario: He left the site for a few hours.  When he came back his workers showed him a box they found while unsupervised, containing an assortment of objects whose origin covered more than a thousand years, from the Minoan era to the Romans. 

Phaistos Disc.  Heraklion Museum.

 One item was like nothing that anyone had seen before: the so-called Phaistos Disc.  It is a piece of fired clay about six inches in diameter, embossed on both sides with symbols.  No one knows what they mean.  

Is it real? A modern (1908) fake?  A Roman-era fake? 

And notice one symbol that appears on the disc exactly once.  Tell me that doesn't look like a flying saucer!

Next stop: Chania