Footnotes :  

273  For a comparison between the myths of these figures, see Abram Smythe Palmer: “The Samson Saga and its place in comparative religion”, 1913, edition consulted Arno Press, New York, 1977.
 

274  See Figure 46-7 in R.W. Hutchison: “Prehistoric Crete”, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1968, page 248.
 

275  Abram Smythe Palmer: “The Samson Saga and its Place in Comparative Religion”, London, 1913, edition consulted Arno Press, New York, 1977, see “Weapons of Sun Gods” on page 127.

275A   http://www.charleslocksmith.
com/ancient_egyptian_locks.htm

   The Religious Board Game on the Phaistos Disk  

    by Peter Aleff         Scroll 40

6.6.4. Twelve disciples and some of their deeds

The ministry of Jesus began with that dove-enhanced baptism, and from then on he traveled with twelve disciples. This matches the twelve pairings of those two signs on the second side of the Disk, after the initiation.

Twelve, of course, was a common number for followers of a sun that ruled over twelve daylight hours and twelve months in its solar year, and that had or would get its path divided into twelve zodiac stations. 

For the same reasons, twelve was also the number of major deeds for many solar heroes, such as the twelve adventures of Gilgamesh, the twelve episodes of the Samson story, or the twelve labors of Herakles before he rose to Mount Olympus and its twelve gods²⁷³.

6.6.4.1. Judas fallen in Tartarus

One of the twelve disciples betrayed Jesus and went to hell.  This matches the twelfth sunhead- and- circle pair on the second Disk side which winds up in Tartarus, just as some solar heroes’ labors or adventures included a trip to the underworld, and just as the midwinter sun died in the twelfth month.

Phaistos field 59 :  the fallen head in "Tartarus"

One of the reports about that twelfth disciple’s punishment even mirrors exactly the fate of the head in that twelfth pair which the Tartarus field 59 shows as having fallen forward.

In Matthew 27:5, that disciple hanged himself, but Acts 1:18 gives a graphic description which could well reflect the same tradition as the icon on the Disk : “he fell forward on the ground, and burst open, so that his entrails poured out.”

6.6.4.2. The fisherman with sword and divine law

Another disciple, a fisherman and the only one who was reported to have carried and used a sword (John 18:10), was also the only one whom Jesus reprimanded several times.  On the Disk, the head in one other circle-and-sun pair does not look straight forward but halfway down, as if bowed in shame over those reprimands. 

This half- fallen or bowed head shares its field 38 with a fish and a human figure that carries a sickle or curved sword of a type then attested from Crete²⁷⁴.

Phaistos field 38

Weapons of sun gods: 1 and 2 of  Marduk, 3 of  Amun Ra, 4 of Gilgamesh, 5 of Shamash, and 6 a jawbone of an ass, as Samson used to slay Philistines.  Redrawn from a picture in A. Smythe Palmer: "The Samson Saga and its Place in Comparative Religion", London, 1913, and Arno Press, New York, 1977, page 127.

Said curved implement also resembles the weapon of many sun gods, as shown in ancient representations of Marduk, Amon-Ra, and Shamash, and it shares its shape with the “jawbone of an ass” that Samson used to slay a thousand Philistines²⁷⁵.

The disciple with the sword held the most prominent place within the Gospel group of twelve.  The sun-head looking halfway down occupies field 38, which is twice nineteen and presumably a prominent number in a world based on a nineteen- year cycle.

Said disciple got appointed to administer the divine law on earth, and also to guard the entrance to heaven.  His sword would have enabled him to carry out those jobs, just as the biblical cherubim who had earlier barred the entrance to the Garden of Eden did so with whirling and flaming swords. 

Moreover, this sword evokes also the shape of a primitive key, as used for the ancient Egyptian locks with moveable pins that are the ancestors of our modern tumbler locks^275A, and this resemblance could well have led to the most prominent emblem of that disciple which is now his large key to those Pearly Gates.

Accordingly, the bowed sun-head, the sword carrier, and the fish share their field with the sign for which its shape and the context in Field 12 suggested and fit a meaning of “divine law”, as discussed above.

If the “divine law” sign expressed indeed this concept in Phaistos, it would match here that sword-carrying fisherman's and disciple's biblical association with divine law and with its execution on earth.  It would also fit the gate-guarding function of admitting or rejecting those who wanted to enter -- a judging of the dead similar to those of Osiris and then Minos.

In other words, that disciple may well have acquired some of his traits from the traditional associations recorded in that field.  That sword- carrying man with the fish and the “divine law” sign in the field of the bowed sun- head would then be the first recorded predecessor of the Popes.