Description

The disk of Phaistos was discovered in the basement of the room of the Minoan palace of Phaistos, near Agia Triada, in southern Crete. Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier recovered this impressively intact disk, about 15 cm in diameter and uniformly just over 1 cm thick, on July 3, 1908.
It was found in the main cell of an underground “temple repository”. These basic cells, accessible only from above, were neatly covered with a layer of thin plaster. Their contents were poor in valuables, but rich in ashes, mixed with burnt cattle bones. In the northern part of the main cell, in the same black layer, a few centimeters southeast of the disk and about 20 cm (51 cm) above the floor, was also found a tile in Linear A ‘, which was numbered PH 1. The space apparently collapsed as a result of an earthquake, possibly associated with the eruption of the Santorini volcano that struck large parts of the Mediterranean region during the middle of the second millennium BC.