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PHAISTOS DISK AND THE MINOAN WORLD                    SITEMAP / SEARCH
Minoan LuniSolar Calendar Minoan Sothic Calendar 366-Day Year Dionysis and Jawa - the Name of God
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Phaistos Disk, Disk of the World

Phaistos Disk


MINOAN CALENDARS


Pomegranate/Star HoraiLong after the Phaistos Disk was created, the Greeks gave the name Helios to the god of the measurement of time. He had several sister goddesses called Horai. (right) They were goddesses of the cycles of Time, presiding over the revolution of the circling constellations by which the year was divided and measured. They were honored by farmers, who would hoe the ground, plant and tend their crops according to the location of the stars in the skies. (The Horai, right, hold pomegranates/stars, and left on the disk.) The passing seasons were measured by the position of the stars. Because the Horai surrounded and attended the throne of Helios, this method of timekeeping is a heliocentric horai-scope or horoscope, meaning to observe time or the seasons.

When all these identical pictographs of pomegranate/stars are connected with lines on side 1 of the Phaistos Disk, a constellation is revealed, the constellation Argo. This pomegranate/star pictograph, in association with the Horai, might therefore be a reference to timekeeping as well.

Constellation Argo Constellation Argo

Phaistos Disk Shield This method of keeping "star" time might point to the Sothic calendar, a wide-spread Egyptian method of keeping time by tracking the star Sirius instead of the sun. The identical shield pictographs, also on side 1, (left) when connected with lines reveal a pentagram inside a heptagon, perhaps the star Sirius surrounded by the seven planets. This might strongly indicate the Minoan use of a Sothic calendar.

Star Sirius and 7 Planets Phaistos Disk
MINOAN LUNISOLAR CALENDAR

If the two sides of the Phaistos Disk have application as Minoan integrated calendars, taken together they might be a Lunisolar calendar with 12 months and, every two years, the periodic intercalation of a 13th month, the interlinking line segments. Side 1, the solar calendar, keeps track of the three seasons, each of four months duration, along the 12 line segments of the outer edge. A count of the daylight hours or divisions of each day could also be kept on this side of the disk, counting 12 divisions/hours along the outside edge with the 12 months and the seasons of the year.

Side 2, the lunar calendar, keeps time in lunar months (moonths), a moonth being the time between each of the four phases of the moon - new, waxing, full and waning. The lunar calendar has 12 moonths of 30 days for a 360-day year. The first moonth and new year might begin in the summer on the heliacal rising of star Sirius in 1700 BCE, approximately the equivalent of our July 1. (Alternately, the Minoans may have had 30 months of 12 days – the 30 line segments each side, 12 of them on the outside spiral. Every two years the 13th month would occur and it would be only 2 days shorter than the others.)

The combined Lunisolar calendar might have worked this way; one month solar, one month lunar, moving from to side to side of the disk, until 24 months had passed, at which time the intercalary or 13th month would begin the biennial festival of Dionysis in Minoan Crete in which the drama of his life was re-enacted.

ZODIAC STELLAR CALENDAR

Side 2 might also contain a zodiac stellar calendar based on star groups. The star groups might be arranged in groups of 12, along the outer edge in the same location as the lunar months. These might be the 12 constellations we are familiar with today, which come to us from Greece, and also would include 18 more spiraling out from the center of Side 2, for a total of 36 groups or decans, each one rising above the dawn horizon for 10 days, totaling 360 days. On Side 2, the star groups spiral into the center as they begin their move into the underworld of Tartarus/Hades (go below the horizon) for 70 days/signs before they appear again.

With the addition of a 10 day intercalary month every two years, a 365-night stellar year can be accounted for. Observation of the movement of star groups would let the Minoans tell time at night because the decans would rise 40 minutes later each night. When reckoning time at night, only 12 decans (and annual divisions) were used (our signs of the zodiac), although 18 were taken into account, those in the center of the disk, Side 2.

Set all the calendars to the first sighting of Sirius each year to keep them current. The Sothic (Sirius) year lasted from one sighting of Sirius in the dawn of a new year until the next year on the same day. With these calendars working together, with Oceanus (the wave spirals below) connecting all these calendars together, and thus all time, in a neverending wave spiral, infinity is accounted for, and this may account for the infinity symbol created by interlocking both sides of the disk and also may indicate what the Minoan wave spirals in architecture symbolize.

Phaistos Disk

The integrated calendars may not have worked this way, but if we wanted to keep time in all these different ways we could if we had the Phaistos Disk. Another calendar possibility would be a Minoan Sothic Calendar with a 366-day year.

MINOAN SOTHIC CALENDAR

Sothic is the Greek word for Sirius, which the Egyptians called Sopdet or Sopdu. A Minoan calendar/Phaistos Disk would be unique in that it may have solved the problem of keeping accurate time when tracking star Sirius.

Sirius rises with the sun on about the same day every year, July 19th. Just like we add one day in February every leap year to make our calendar and our sun work in conjunction, the Egyptians added 5 days at the end of their year and tracked the movement of a star rather than the sun. The star's movement is so close to that of the sun that the star calendar worked the same as a sun calendar. One is a lunar calendar and the other is a solar calendar. And just like night follows day, the Egyptians and perhaps the Minoans had calendars with solar months and lunar months.

All Sothic calendars were known to have 12 months of 30 days. Some Sothic calendars may have had 30 months of 12 days. That presented the timekeepers with a problem -- a year of 360 days -- so they had to add 5 days at the end of the year to have a 365-day year so that the calendar would work right.

The Egyptians had a whole mythology that went with these 5 extra days, which were festival days in Egypt and perhaps Crete, when the birth of these gods was celebrated. With the extra 5 days added, the Egyptian Sothic calendar would start again the following year on or about the same important day -- the heliacal rising of Sirius -- July 19th or 20th, the day the star first rises with the sun. But the S othic cycle was 1468 years because that is how long it takes for the calendar to recoup that day that was lost every 4 years from having a 365 day year.

How the Phaistos Disk comes into it is this: the Phaistos Disk may be a Sothic calendar that keeps accurate star time, and it may be the only physical one in existence. There may be something unique about this Sothic calendar. Instead of having 12 months of 30 days, it may have alternating months of 30 and 31 days, (counting the connecting line segment as a day of the month rather than an intercalary month) more like our calendar than like the Egyptian calendar. Around the outside edge of the disk are the 12 solar and the 12 lunar months. This is how one knows which month we are in when using this calendar. The solar months have 31 days and the lunar months have 30 days. The 2-sided disk/calendar represents a two-year period, at the end of which was held the festival of Dionysis in which is life was celebrated.

This method of keeping time is incredible if you consider what is known about Sothic calendars. It means that the Minoans may have figured out how to adjust a Sothic calendar so it kept proper star time and avoided the "Sothic cycle" of 1468 years.

MINOAN 366-DAY YEAR

If you look at our calendar you see something odd about it. The months don't alternate 30 and 31 days every time, and February has only 28 days. Then, every four years we add a day to make up for the fact that our year is really 365 and 1/4 days, and that ends our cycle. But since our sun rises each and every day and since our calendar is only off by a 1/4 of a day each year, we are unaffected by that as long as we correct periodically.

The Minoans may have taken exactly the same approach. The difference is, while the Egyptians had years of 360 days and we have years of 365 days, the Minoans may have had years of 366 days. Rather than add 5 days at the end of the year and then have a calendar that rights itself every 1468 years, the Minoans had alternate months of 30 and 31 days, and then they subtracted a day at the end of every two years. That kept them within a 1/2 day of accuracy. The heliacal rising of Sirius would always occur for them on or about July 1. At the end of 4 years they subtracted 2 days, and that ended their cycle. Their lunar months of 30 days followed their solar months of 31 days. Then, instead of adding 5 festival days at the end of the year, like the Egyptians and their civil calendar, they celebrated them as festival days that occurred for them at the beginning of their year with the heliacal rising of Sirius, and every 2 years they held the festival of Dionysis.

By this subtraction method of timekeeping, the Minoan calendar was simple and correct. This would have given them a huge advantage over the rest of the Aegean world and would explain in part their fantastic civilization. Their calendar was always a little ahead instead of a lot behind. Additional to their world-view might have been this grand idea that when we command the power of Time, we can reinvent the world.

DIONYSIS AND JAWA - THE NAME OF GOD

Dionysis and Zeus The Minotaur, son of Zeus and King Minos and child of Pasiphae, was destroyed by Theseus with the help of his half-sister, Ariadne. Likewise Dionysis, son of Zeus and the king of Crete and the child of Persephone, was destroyed by Titans with the help of his sister. His mother had been seduced by Zeus, who appeared to her in the form of a serpent. After his birth and the strange death of his mother (she was burned to a crisp upon glimpsing Zeus), Dionysis as a fetus was rescued by Zeus from the ashes. Zeus slashed a hole in his thigh and stowed the fetus away in the wound. This is portrayed on a facted stone of green Jasper from Siteia, Crete, where we see the fetus inside the thigh. (left, Footnote, Evans, p.21 In nine months a baby was born from the thigh of his father.

Born with horns or bull-born and with his fathers powers, he was invested with the throne right away and he held it when his father went away on a journey. Now it is Zeus who gives his son into the protection of the guards, rather than Rhea. In this new version of an old myth, the danger to the child is from the wife of the god rather than the husband of the goddess. But Hera, wife of Zeus, is determined to destroy Dionysis, who avoids death by changing into a kind of serpent with horns. But when Hera distracted him with a sistrum or rattle, the guards rushed in and killed him like he was a rattlesnake, cutting him up into pieces.

Marsh Grass Shell Trumpet BullfootEvery two years the Cretans celebrated the birth and death of Dionysis. They built a casket, which was supposed to contain his heart. They carried it around in front of them during their celebrations. They summoned him from the marshes (1) with sea-shell trumpets, (2) calling for the God with the bull's foot (3) to come to them. They sang, Come hither, Dionysis, to thy holy temple by the sea; come with the Graces to thy temple, rushing with thy bull's foot, O goodly bull, O goodly bull!

Dionysis ThyrsoiThe thyrsoi, the long wand topped by a pine cone, was carried in his festivals. Dionysis was considered a diety of corn. He is supposed to have been the first to yoke oxen to the plough. He was pictured in the company of dogs. He seems half-human in many ways. He encouraged the love of writing and art and he often appeared as materialized spirit to those who invoked him. When summoned, he brings with him divine inspiration and the opportunity for work well done in the service of the goddess.

Pomegranate/Star Sacred IvyWhen Dionysis died, pomegranates (1) sprang from his blood. They boiled him in herbs and ate him, but his sister, who betrayed him, kept his heart, (2) and Zeus built a temple in his honor. Dionysis became the 13th Olympian.

Dionysis and the Minotaur According to Will Durant, in Life of Greece the Minoan name for Zeus was Velchanos (Vel-ka-nos), but was it? Whatever name they gave god, it surely acknowledged the feminine and might have meant movement and infinity. The symbols, left, that preceed the fetus in the thigh are catalogued by Sir Arthur Evans many times because they recur so often and with so many various or alternate depictions. They look like a comb (Evans originally called it a fence) and a smoking cucumber. Then the thigh is surrounded by three images, all similar, that appear to be nails but that probably are stars. Most likely, this grouping indicates a constellation, possibly Taurus, and the comb and smoking cucumber spell out the name of the constellation which also could be the Minoan names, whatever they were, for Zeus and Dionysis.

We think of the constellation Taurus as a bull, but classical Greeks apparently thought of it as Zeus disguised as a bull. Perhaps the Minoans thought of the constellation as Dionysis concealed in the thigh of Zeus, who was disguised as a serpent. Suppose this is the fetus of Dionysis (said to have been called Rhadamanthus by the Minoans) in the thigh of his father Zeus or Velchanos. This picture writing sign therefore shows something about the merger of these two gods, written in early script as the merger of the comb with the cucumber. In nine months a baby was born from the thigh of his father, and perhaps the comb and cucumber indicate nine months time, as well. Perhaps this series of pictographs shows how long one expects to be with child, although it seems pretty remarkable that it has to do with two men, one of them pregnant with the other.

JaThe "comb" in Linear B has been deciphered as Ja. To make the sound, bring the "fence of the teeth" together to pronouce "Ja." Next, bring the lips together and blow a little, like the smoking cucumber, to say "Wa." What is produced is the Biblical name of God - Jahwah - or Jehovah. Now we see what perhaps was originally meant by Jahwah - Father-Son or Zeus (Jah)-Dionysis (Wah) and the beginnings of the patriarchy - the beginning of His-story - both in civilization and in religion. In Crete, therefore, the patriarchy and His-story is born from the matriarchy and Her-story.

Jawa. Now that we know the name of God perhaps we can escape the maze of life and take our place as immortal Olympians in Mt. Olympus. We will introduce ourselves as Icarus so the gods will realize that we comprehend the ordeal of our journey and have transcended it. Flying far away from the maze we arrive in Olympus, where there is always room for one more and where perhaps we will learn the name of the Mother.


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"Phaistos Disk - The Minoan World" Copyright Notice - Text and images copyrighted March 21, 1997-2010, Claire Grace Watson, B.A., M.S.T., U.S. Copyright and under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, Claire Grace Watson, B.A., M.S.T. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, including the web page itself and the html/dhtml programming.

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Minoan LuniSolar Calendar Minoan Sothic Calendar 366-Day Year Dionysis and Jawa - the Name of God
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