Phaistos Disk: Was It A Tribute to Minoan Crete's Mother-Goddess?

The Phaistos Disk, whose decoding has puzzled experts for more than a century now, is actually a prayer to a mother, according to Erasmus coordinator at the Technological Educational Institute (TEI) of Crete, Gareth Owens, who was speaking at the TEI of Western Macedonia earlier this week.

Describing it as "the first Minoan CD-ROM," he said the disk was discovered in 1908 at the palace of Phaistos, in the northeastern part of the Aegean Island of Crete.

The round clay object, dated close to 1700 B.C., apparently displays an unknown language on both sides which is carved in a circular fashion, from outside to the centre.

Dr. Owens says that there is a complex of signs found in three parts of one side of the disk spelling I-QE-KU-RJA (YGEIAN + AGAPI), with I-QE meaning "great lady of importance" while a key word appears to be AKKA, or "pregnant mother." One side is devoted to a pregnant woman and the other to a woman giving birth, he noted.

     "The most stable word and value is 'mother'," and in particular the mother-goddess of the Minoan era, to whom the disk is dedicated, stressed Owens.

He then noted the institution's web site, www.teicrete.gr/daidalika, where more than 242 signs can be viewed from both sides of the disk, based on 45 different signs. Owens says that there are too many to constitute an alphabet and too few to constitute a truly ideographic script, as is the case with Chinese.

Whatever the case, one thing is certain. The disk will continue to puzzle and fascinate scholars for eons to come.