In a recent Cipher Mysteries post, I mentioned Peter Aleff’s theory that the Phaistos Disk was based on Senet, an Ancient Egyptian board game. All very fascinating… but something about it all triggered an old memory, one I couldn’t quite put my finger on. However, when yesterday I did finally manage to find what I had been reminded of – Mehen – it set a much larger train of thought in motion, that might point to a new Phaistos Disk board game theory. I’ll try to explain…

Five thousands years ago, board games started as Pharaonic courtly pursuits, only becoming accessible to a wider audience three thousand (!) years later when the idea of abstract gaming spread through the Roman upper middle class. With that basic framework in mind, Aleff theorizes that the Ancient Egyptian game Senet (a rectangular race game with pawns and various hazard squares) morphed – millennia later, and by routes entirely unknown – into the relatively modern Game of the Goose (a spiral race game with pawns and various hazard squares): Aleff proposes ingenious ways in which the spiral structure of the Phaistos Disk somehow fits into that mysteriously missing multi-millennia lineage. All the same, just about the only fragment of supporting near-evidence of the modern game’s ancient parentage comes from a throwaway line in Molière’s (1668) “The Miser”:-

La Flèche: Item: a trou-madame table, a draught-board, with the game of mother goose, restored from the Greeks, very agreeable to pass the time when one has nothing else to do.

Well… that’s one theory, with a lot of speculation to back-fill an inevitably enormous historical gap. But what I don’t really like about it is the lack of any cultural mechanism by which ideas were carried down the centuries. We have plenty of evidence of various Roman versions of Senet, such as Duodecim Scripta and Felix Sex (Lucky Sixes), which developed into a game called Tabula, which then developed (eventually) into modern Backgammon. The problem? These all use rectangular boards, very much like Senet and very much unlike the spiral Phaistos Disk. If you believe – wearing your Anthony Grafton-like Intellectual Historian hat – that ideas flow through time, it’s hard not to conclude that these particular ideas aren’t really flowing past the Phaistos Disk.

Yet as every X-Files-ophile knows, for every thesis, there’s an equal and opposite antithesis (let’s not talk about ‘syntheses’, they do complicate things so): so here’s my own theory. Of course, I doubt it’s new, and I’m entirely aware that there’s more than a whiff of Gavin Menzies to its intuitive leapery, but I’m generally pretty comfortable with it, feel free to disagree all you like. 🙂

While I think that Aleff’s basic idea – that the Phaistos Disk is probably a courtly board game for the Minoan palace set – is sound, I suspect the braided historical strand of games he’s trying to tie it into is the wrong one. In my opinion, if the Disk is the board for a race game such as Senet, it is far more likely to have derived from a quite different Ancient Egyptian race game, a spiral race game called Mehen (Mehen = “coiled one”, a serpent god who protected Ra at night).

Fascinatingly, there are numerous spiral Mehen game boards still extant: this illustrated list on the Jocari site is an exceptional resource. Aleff would be right to point out that these contain many more sections than the Phaistos Disk: but for me, the big question is: what happened next? Did Mehen – a game which seems to have flourished 3000BC to 2300BC during the Old Kingdom – just disappear, or might it, like Senet, have then morphed into other spiral race games on an equally winding passage through the centuries?

Fast forward to the present, and we can see a quite different race game based around snakes and hazard squares: yes, I really am referring to Snakes and Ladders. This has a direct Indian parentage going back to at least the 16th century under the names Moksha Patamu, Gyanbazi, etc: the V&A Museum has a nice game board here. According to this site, Harish Johari’s book “The Yoga of Snakes and Arrows” claims:

The origins of this game appear to be found in 2nd century BC documents from India. Some historians point out that the game may be a variation of the ancient game of dasapada played on a 10×10 grid.

Dasapada (10×10) and ashtapada (8×8) were both race games which it is reputed that Gautama Buddha would not play in the 5th century BC. Apparently, Ashtapada was played on a square board with crosses on certain squares: though intriguingly, the game’s race did not – according to famous board-game historian H. J. R. Murray – proceed in the kind of boustrophedon (alternate rows go forward and backwards) order we now associate with Snakes and Ladders, but in a spiral pattern, moving clockwise to enter/capture a castle and then anticlockwise to return. (Though here’s a link to a dissenting opinion on this that doubts Murray’s certainty.)

Of course, you’ve already worked out where all this is, errrm, racing towards: that the Phaistos Disk probably fits not into the whole Senet…Backgammon game development line, but into an entirely different line moving from [spiral snake race] Mehen to [spiral race] Ashtapada/Dasapada to [boustrophedon race] Moksha Patamu to [boustrophedon race] Snakes & Ladders.

Perhaps the “snake” in the modern game was some kind of long-standing memory of (or some long-lost cultural reference to) to the Egyptian snake god Mehen, or perhaps just the snake-like Mehen game board: I don’t know, but wouldn’t it be nice if it were true?

Ultimately, however, I can’t prove a single thing of this whole tenuous chain (you know that, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise). And there’s the the awkward issue of the awkward gap between Phaistos and India to fill: how did idea in place A travel to place B?

The Menzies-like lateral ‘bridging’ step is the observation that it’s entirely possible that the Minoans were trading with India circa 1500 BC. For instance, chapter 17 of Gavin Menzies’ Bronze Age speculatiathon “The Lost Empire of Atlantis” (called “Indian Ocean Trade in the Bronze Age”) wonders whether the ancient Indus civilization’s port of Lothal (built around 2400BC) was connected with the Minoans (hint: Menzies concludes ‘yes’). However, my suggestion is rather more modest in scope than Menzies: it’s merely the story of a single idea, travelling with the flow of Bronze Age trade traffic.

Ultimately, for the Minoan palace elite, was the Phaistos Disk the ultimate board game, insofar as (like Mehen) might it have been a way of improving your odds in the afterlife? And if we now play Snakes & Ladders, are we not merely recapitulating 16th century Jain morality but also travelling in time on the back of a serpent to the Old Kingdom of Ancient Egypt? When our counter lands on a snake, is it Mehen we’re landing on? Just a thought!

A Happy Cipher Mysteries Christmas to you all! 🙂

29 thoughts on “The Ultimate Christmas Game… the Phaistos Disk?

  1. diane o'Donovan on December 25, 2011 at 11:00 pm said:

    Nick, we sometimes get overdependent on “evolution” to explain dispersion and variant forms.

    It only takes one Indian trader to bring a Pachisi cloth – perhaps to while away time in the caravanseri – and one Arab willing to buy the cloth and there you have it: an ancient Indian game leaps space and time, and – perhaps the original rules being too obscure, or culture-dependent – as a morphed game played a bit differently and called something else.

  2. Diane: most of human history can indeed be reduced to random misunderstandings between travellers well met on the road. For the Phaistos Disk, I’m just suggesting which roads it might have been, is all. 🙂

  3. diane o'Donovan on December 25, 2011 at 11:17 pm said:

    Sorry – I forgot to mention that the key to transmission might also be philosophical, religious or technical information. Most old games were intended that way. Anyway, you get a coiled snake in some objects that are supposed Pythagorean. Usually show a bath-sort of thing with people ranged around the rim and “il-serpentio” in the middle.
    Couldn’t find a picture of one online. But this is much more in keeping with a Christmas day post.
    http://www.southgateschools.com/web/?idpage=2020&iduser=130

  4. Diane: sorry if I sound disbelieving, to get to the end line on this post I had to wade through countless webpages claiming that (for example) the Knights Templar encoded secret heretical information in board games X, Y, and Z. You wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone, I’m sure. 🙂

  5. Diane o'Donovan on December 26, 2011 at 4:23 am said:

    I was thinking something more ordinary, with ‘technical’ as something like practicing arithmetic and ‘religious and philosophical’ a Tibetan game of rebirth. But I must say that chapters entitled “Allegorical ludic symbolism” and “tropological ludic symbolism” have a certain beer-and-cream cakes appeal.

  6. Hi Nick.
    Dorabella cipher is Latin.
    1/ sings – letters.
    2/ letters – numbers.
    3/ numbers – letters.
    4/ letters – words.
    5/ words – Latin.

    The third line translation Latin :
    EDE,,AT,,SEA,,DET,,SEA,,V,,DEM,,ET,,TEME,,DEUM.

    ( EDE = Edward).

  7. Correction .( 1 )
    Character – a letter.

  8. Pingback: La arqueología del misterio (III) | Viajes con mi tía

  9. shazghost on March 19, 2012 at 9:09 am said:

    Phaistos disk: i think the disk is an ancient form of counting goods for sale or trade in monetary ways , much in the same way the chinese used the abbacus

  10. Chris Cobb on January 22, 2014 at 6:01 pm said:

    I was searching for info on the Phaistos disk and just stumbled upon your site. You’re right up my alley.

    After seeing the disk last November in Iraklion I decided to research it. None of the various attempts to explain or translate it were at all satisfactory to me – until I came upon a laundry list of all the proposed theories. There I came upon ‘. . . board game . . .’ and the penny dropped. A royal game board just felt intuitively right.

    I mentioned the disk to my friend Irving Finkel at the British Museum without mentioning the game board theory and he dismissed it as a fraud. I am now marshaling my arguments for authenticity to present to him next time.

    Thank you for the ammunition.

    Chris

  11. Chris Cobb: the notion that Luigi Pernier concocted the Phaistos Disk has been growing in popularity over the last few years, though personally I think the existence of the Arkalochori Axe is probably the most persuasive evidence that Pernier genuinely found it, one that Eisenberg rather skims over:-
    http://www.utexas.edu/research/pasp/publications/pdf/disk.pdf

    Oh, and there’s a shouty email exchange online here with Eisenberg:-
    http://sci.lang.narkive.com/PU57BkZy/minerva-paper-on-the-phaistos-disk-a-big-step-backwards

  12. Gregory on January 22, 2014 at 9:34 pm said:

    Disk of Phaistos, your encrypted knowledge equals greatest achievements of human genius, such as the Pyramids of Giza and even the Bible. In a symbolic way is stored in the whole history of the creation of life on Earth, Evolution of Man, as well as in the broader aspect of the whole Megacykl – from the Big Bang, until its final collapse , which is the beginning of a “new cycle ” .
    In my opinion, the drive to be read from the center to the shore. Side A – ” talks ” about the beginning of the creation of the universe (rosette in the center of the disk) – the Big Bang until the reign of the Age of Mammals in the extinction of the dinosaurs ( 65 million years ago ). Side B disc – ” talks ” about Human Evolution from apes through the present , to the inevitable future – that is the end of Our Universe.
    Knowledge ” encrypted ” in the disk of Phaistos in a surprising way correlates with that knowledge which is encoded in the Voynich Manuscript, which thread on VMS try to prove it .

  13. SirHubert on January 23, 2014 at 12:08 am said:

    Make that ‘shouty and somewhat ill-informed’, in my opinion.

    I do wish the Iraklion Museum would have this thing thermoluminescence tested. If it checks out, at least people could spend their time arguing about what it is rather than whether it’s real. Not that I think we’re going to get a accepted answer, but at least the question is more interesting.

  14. SirHubert: it didn’t seem to me as though either side of the shouty debate was doing itself a lot of justice. But I completely agree that thermoluminescence testing would indeed be such a positive contribution to the discourse, it’s just awful that it hasn’t been performed so far.

  15. Минойцы поклонялись Луне! Структурирование текста Фестского диска показывает, что он скопирован изготовителем диска, или с надписей, выполненных в форме трех двусторонних секир, или с надписей на самих подобных секирах (лабрисах) из дворцовых или пещерных святилищ. Текст — это перечень посвящений основных правителей Крита лунному божеству. Одна из этих секир, самая большая, четырехлезвийная, возможно, использовалась и как своеобразный лунный календарь. Сам диск, — Луна в полнолуние, — своего рода переносной вариант этих посвящений и календаря. Эти посвящения делались для того, чтобы получить благословение бога Луны. Возможно, что количество посвящений каждого правителя зависело от количества у него строений (дворцов и вилл). Отсюда, и ещё одно предназначение Фестского диска — оберег в виде клубка змеи (надписи на диске ведь по спирали) для этих строений и всех живущих в них, т.к. у минойцев считалось, что змея в доме приносит Божье благословение. Фестский диск был изготовлен до крупнейшего землетрясения в 1700 г. до н.э. разрушившего ранний дворец. Так как диск, как оберег, не уберёг этот дворец от разрушения, то его позднее “наказали” — замаскировали под слоем штукатурки в главной ячейке тайника постройки. Подробнее смотри сайт: http://phaestos-disk.at.ua

  16. Greg Turner on November 10, 2018 at 6:44 am said:

    I entirely agree with your assessment. That’s exactly what I thought as soon as I saw it. I will add a few things though. As the player travels across the board he picks up what he needs as Gilgamesh/Orion to kill the Bull of Heaven. I believe he starts off with a shield and a club. If he lands on a space with the ox back, for example, he has a chance to attack that part of the animal but attacking the ox’s butt with a club is not the story of Orion. The player must land on the spaces with the arrow and the bow before he has the proper weapons to attack the bull. There are other things on the path to attack the hero/player so he can protect himself by collecting more shields if he lost his shield from a previous attack. In some versions of Sekmet, there’s fire, netting and water which get the player into trouble. In Phaistos disc there’s also the bull’s horn. In Senet there are versions with more than the usual symbols and is very reminiscent of the Phaistos disk and Mehen. In Mehen the children are going to the well in the center to fetch water but they don’t want the Hiyenas to kill their mothers. The Phaistos disk has old women with pendulous breasts which I believe represent the mothers. In Senet, when landing on the space with the water symbol you are either stuck losing a turn or are sent back to the beginning. Phaistos disc also has the symbol of being captured and manacles which minimally mean losing a turn or two respectively. It also has a water symbol. In Senet there is a symbol for libation and in Phaistos Disc there is a handled vase. It probably means something like move ahead one space because you feel better now that you’ve had a drink. The running figure may mean something like dropping/losing all your weapons and armor. On the Senet board there are the knot and pillar together representing the power of the unity of opposites female and male, giving the player/hero some magic to pull out when needed. Senet also has Wadjyt which is the serpent protector nurse symbolized by a snake around a pole just like the snake that protects Osiris on his journey through the underworld on the barque of the sun god Ra which all these games symbolize. The pole being Osiris’s/Gilgamesh’s/Orion’s phallus. And in fact Phaistos disc has a column which I believe represents Osiris/phallus and it happens to have barques too. In Senet there is an icon for Mut the vulture headed mother goddess but one of her other Visage is as a lioness which the cat HAS to represent. Too many coincidences. The fish as nourishment probably advances the player just like the libation, and loaves of bread that appear in Senet. So what do you do if you’ve put a few arrows into the leg and back of the ox in Phaistos disc once you have a bow and arrow? (Or maybe you used the sling) You must collect the tools for skinning and processing it involving the grater, strainer, small, ax, Orion’ knife, and the lid which is actually the symbol for the tool used to scrape the hide. But the hide isn’t finished until you land on one of the hides. The only things that are not clear are the vine, papyrus, rosette, and Lilly. Maybe those are the vegetables you eat with the meat of the bull of Heaven, and the bee hives and bee are for honey. In Mehen you must go to the center and come back releasing the jackyls/lions representing the sun god destroying the night demon who is your opposing player going from tail to head back to tail. The B side of Phaistos disc ends in a tail which is the end of the game. So fun.

  17. Greg Turner on November 10, 2018 at 7:45 am said:

    Oh, and the reason Senet goes side to side in an “s” shape is because the serpent of the underworld, Apep or whichever, is slithering back and forth instead of spiralling as with Mehen or the Phaistos disc’s spiral. Same snake though.

  18. Greg Turner on November 10, 2018 at 8:43 am said:

    Another thought is the reason why Mehen disappeared from Egypt and was replaced by Senet is because the serpent had been coiled into a spiral so as to have a disc which also symbolized the sun as with the Phaistos disc. Egypt went through the ordeal of the monotheism of Atenism. Aten means disc and hey were trying to get back the previous multiple gods of their pantheon. So, the Aten disk of Mehen reminded them too much of the overblown use of the Aten disc symbolism they now needed to play down. They didn’t really get rid of serpent of Mehen, they just changed it into the “s” shape of Senet essentially the same game though.

  19. Greg Turner on November 10, 2018 at 8:53 am said:

    Landing on a space in Phaistos disc containing a barque would effectively grant you to keep your turn next time you landed on a space with water. If you hadn’t landed on a barque before reaching a space with water then you would at least lose a turn. Similarly, one of Orion’s mythical variations has him as one who can walk on water.

  20. Greg Turner on November 10, 2018 at 9:19 am said:

    Another interesting point is that the version of Senet with more than the normal symbols has a space with bread, another with a jug and 2 loaves, and another space with three numeric symbols for ten with a loaf among them. This last one can mean either 30 or 31 which unsurprisingly is the number of spaces which Phaistos disc and Senet have. In Senet it probably means go straight to the last space. Now about that flute. There is a relationship between Hercules, Orion, Gilgamesh, Odysseus, and Krishna. Hercules has many tasks some of which map to Krishna’s labors. Krishna defeats a snake and a bull just like Hercules and Orion respectively dealing as we are with ranchers/herders.

    Egyptians also had a current where people can be born into heaven from lotuses which is where the Buddhists get the idea to be born into the Sukavati heaven from lotuses. Interestingly Phaistos disc has lily’s which are Egyptian lotuses .

  21. Greg Turner on November 10, 2018 at 9:31 am said:

    Mithra also has the head of a lion with a snake wrapped around. Either that snake is attempting to kill him or is protecting him as in the Egyptian myth where Ra is protected by a serpent from the attempts to kill him by Apep. Likewise, in Hinduism, Narasimha, the lion headed god kills a demon while the 7 headed serpent Vasuki/Anantashesha/etc… protects him, the same way Buddha is protected by Vasuki when it rains. The serpent is the mother of the sun god because the sun can only ever be born out of the darkness. And mothers protect their children of course.

  22. Greg Turner on November 10, 2018 at 9:38 am said:

    The other gods in the barque with the sun god Ra help to bear him through the underworld to his rebirth from the underworld. In Borobudur (largest Buddhist structure in the world) on the island of Java, there are throne bearers flying the Buddha to his incarnation as Shakyamuni. Gilgamesh, Orion, Hercules, Odysseus, Krishna, Jesus, and Buddha are all based on the same foundational story.

  23. Greg Turner on November 10, 2018 at 9:43 am said:

    Even the kundalini rising to the thousand petalled lotus at the crown chakra ties in because the last space at the head of the snake on side A of Phaistos disc ends with a rosette flower.

  24. Greg Turner on November 10, 2018 at 9:57 am said:

    The reason we’re dealing with Krishna’s cattle herding flute is because of Cain and Abel where the preferred offering to God is the best of the cattle, not the worst of the vegetables this goes back to winning the hand of the goddess who initially preferred the farmer and even further back to Manu the first man killing his brother Yemo and creating the world with his body. Notice that Yemo is cognate with Yama the Hindu God of death and Yair, the frost giant in Norse mythology whose body was used to create the world.

    Also, did you remember that kundalini is a “COILED” serpent just like Mehen and the Phaistos Disc?

  25. Greg Turner on November 10, 2018 at 10:42 am said:

    In Mesopotamia there are two interesting representations of Tiamat in this context. One is a sculpture where she’s depicted as an animal somewhat like a lion standing on her hind legs peering from behind a panel with only her head over the top. The panel is of the underworld. In Buddhism, there is a representation of the Buddhist heavens and hells with Yama peering from behind over the top. In Tiamat case she’s being born over the earth after the death of the God of life and light. she will not remain peering over the wall but will climb over the wall as if rising from the edge of the earth at the horizon to bring darkness, death, and sleep across the land in the absence of goodness that is the sun.

    The other is a bas relief that shows the underworld with tiamat as a long snake trailing along the left side of the underworld with her head rising just over the to in the upper left corner. Again it represents the birth of darkness after the banishment of the sun.

    Thanks for your attention.

  26. Greg Turner on November 10, 2018 at 4:34 pm said:

    I also imagine the “papyrus” palm has to do with the tree of life in the garden of paradise. In Greek myth it’s tended by the Hesperides but they sometimes ate the fruit so the goddess placed a serpent/dragon around it to protect it. I believe it may be a coconut palm or a date palm. In Norse myth it’s tended by the norms while Jomorogundr gnaws at the roots.. Innana had moved the tree to the garden so she could carve it into a throne but Lilitu (Lilith), a bird, and a snake came to live in it which disturbed her. The hero chases them off and cuts down the tree and has his helper Enkidu carve the throne for her.

  27. Greg Turner on November 10, 2018 at 5:49 pm said:

    *Norns

  28. Greg Turner on November 13, 2018 at 8:53 pm said:

    Getting the ram means you’ve gotten the golden fleece and have proved you are the rightful king of Iolcus in Thessaly which is why it appears with the tiara crown.

    I think the line coming off the man’s front foot means to advance a step or two. The man with a line on the back leg means to go back one or two spaces.

    The bird symbol may mean safe like a bird. The upsidedown bird may mean safety taken away.

    The hide with some dots on it means scraping begun. The two hides on black with dots means all the shavings have been removed.

    The manacles might mean lose 2 turns. The manacles with dotted lines across it might mean you find manacles on the trail and can use them on your opponent.

    The flower only appears where there are turns on the path so may mean to exchange places with the other player.

    The column of Osiris may mean resurrection and the palm too but perhaps a different quality or amount. I think now the different branches may represent different amounts of healing.

    Whereas the different knives represent different amounts of injury.

    The y and upside down y mean coming together or moving apart causing your “dice rolls to make you go backwards depending on where the other player is.

    * * * * * *

    Forgot to mention some symbols are oriented differently. I think the sideways boats mean you’re building it. Whereas the right side up boat means you completed it. You probably must land on a sideways boat first before you can benefit from the right side up boat when you land on water.

    There was probably a score keeping system so everyone knew how many shields, helmets etc… they’d collected or if they had manacles or knives.

    * * * * * *

    The labors of hercules has him which may be the cat. He also must kill birds and one of the birds on Phaistos disc is upside down. The cat heads are also oriented differently. I think you have to kill the birds with the sling. Then he must kill the Bull. Maybe you must kill the lion and the birds before you kill the Bull. Landing on the tree may represent stealing the fruit of the Hesperides.

    * * * * * *

    The item referred to as a comb has been speculated elsewhere to be a number. In Senet, the third space from the end is where you must have exact throws to reach the end and this is where the comb symbol appears on the Phaistos disc. So I believe it’s not a specific number. It means this is where you need to start counting

  29. Greg Turner on November 13, 2018 at 10:44 pm said:

    Since we’re supposed to attack the birds it makes sense that they appear with weapons. One has dotted lines to the bird like you see them on the trail. Next is a bird with a knife which means you have the bird and are ready to cut. The bird knife combo that has a line coming off the knife means you started cutting. The upsidedown bird either means you killed it or finished cutting so you probably must visit each space containing those symbols in the order they appear.

    * * * * * *

    In the hyena game from the Sudan which is similar to mehen, you can kill the opponents playing pieces which are their mothers. In Phaistos disc there’s one mother with no additional but the last mother on side B has dots nearby and a line coming off her head which we saw before means cutting.

    Similarly, one of the triangular graters has a line coming off of it and dots nearby meaning use of the grater.

    One of the sideways boats has many dots between it and the tool used to hollow out the wood for making it. I see the chevron exists in the same context as the column where the chevron is touching thr column and the dots are falling down from the place where the column is being scraped which, after reading Homer, makes me believe it’s the mast for the boat leaving only the palm tree for the resurrection symbolism.

    The previous stuff about lines coming off meaning it’s being used also applies to the glove, helmet and possibly the shield where it seems to have a line traveling behind it right down the middle.

    * * * * * *

    I now think that the man walking and the children have similar meanings because the child also has a line coming off his leg so a line coming off a child’s back leg means go back one space but a line coming off a man’s back leg means go back 2 spaces.

    * * * * * *

    Hercules kills the hydra with a club in the story of his labors and there’s a club symbol on the Phaistos disc. One of the clubs has dots coming off of it like it’s doing work. Although there’s no snake symbol in any of the panels, the entire game board is a snake.

    * * * * * *

    It seems probable to me that the head referred to as possessing a crest is Sampson of the Sampson and Delilah myth. There are dots above his head and there are a whole bunch of dots pouring off his head. The slash that spills blood from the head of the mother also touches the top of the crest of hair in one of the panels.

    * * * * * *

    The dots coming out of the the nose of the head with the crest of hair probably isn’a sneeze. It is probably blood coming out when Sampson pulled the pillars killing everyone in the temple including himself.

    * * * * * *

    In the Royal game of Ur the rosettes are places to be safe from attack.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Post navigation