Value of the record on the Phaistos Disk

Footnotes :

285 As cited in Georges Roux: “Ancient Iraq”, 1964, edition consulted Penguin Books, London, 1992, pages 151 and 152.

286 Abram Smythe Palmer: “The Samson Saga and its place in comparative religion”, London, 1913, edition consulted Arno Press, New York, 1977, pages 215 and 231.

The Religious Board Game on the Phaistos Disk.

6.7. The value of the record on the Phaistos Disk

All these similarities could be merely coincidences, but here again, the number and precision of the correspondences make that appear unlikely.

They suggest an accretion of traits and deeds from earlier stories to later figures, a common phenomenon in many mythologies.

A good example is the popular story of the baby abandoned in a reed basket floating down the river. We find it not only in the life of the biblical Moses but also in a 7th century BCE biography of king Sargon (2334 to 2279 BCE), founder of the Akkadian Dynasty²⁸⁵, and in various other myths.

Similarly, the Athenian propagandists who promoted their monster- slaying and underworld- escaping town champion Theseus adapted many chapters of his story from the exploits of the earlier Herakles. This older sun hero, in turn, as well as his Canaanite version Samson, had borrowed heavily from Gilgamesh, and probably also from the sun head on the Disk.

In his book about “The Samson Saga and its place in comparative religion”, the mythologist Abram Smythe Palmer described how this works:

“The myth is a parasite which is ready to twine around any stem; and the very ancient elements of tradition embodied in the adventures of Gilgamesh were woven together by the scribes or narrators round the name of their own national hero or demi- god. Among the Canaanites they gravitated towards Samson, the mighty man of valor, the sun man, whom the people held in honor. (...)

Old myths come to be fastened on persons or localities that strike the popular imagination, and are made the centers of tradition. Around the founder of a faith like Buddha, or a king and conqueror like Charlemagne, there gather the tales that have descended from the past, and form a mythical Buddha and a mythical Charlemagne by the side of the historical ones.”²⁸⁶

The same process appears to have influenced the story of Jesus, the founder of a faith who became soon prominent in the popular imagination and tradition and who was therefore a prime target for such mythical accretion.

Seen in this context, the path on the Disk appears to be among the earliest records of some major and long-lived mythological themes which survive in succeeding religions, just as the theme of its game survives in the Goose’s path to heaven. The information it contains has the potential to change our understanding of the sources behind many early beliefs that still influence our modern world.

The Phaistos Disk now supplies the oldest surviving coherent account of the ancient Near Eastern cosmology on which those beliefs were founded, and it also sheds new light on many early Hebrew ideas.


Two beautiful wood or canvas versions of this reconstructed Game of the Goose and of the Labyrinth are available from Kadon Enterprises, a longtime supplier of quality board games and puzzles at gamepuzzles.com. Each version has the "Labyrinth" board silk screened on one side and that for the "Game of the Goose" on the other.

Kadon also offers the mahagony- framed collectors' edition of our Quantumgame, a modern update of the ancient world- simulating game from the Phaistos Disk that follows the same tradition.

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Examine also our website at www.recoveredscience.com for other hard-to-forget surprises. Thank you for your interest.