Friday, February 24, 2017
Faistos disk
This most famous example of Minoan pictographic script, unique in its kind, was discovered inside a small room of the Phaistos palace. It dates to the early Neopalatial period and is preserved intact. Both sides of the disc have signs impressed in a single spiraling line beginning at the edge and ending in the centre. The inscription uses forty-five different signs, which are repeated and grouped together to form words separated by vertical incisions. The signs were impressed on the unbaked clay using seals and for this reason the disc is considered as the earliest known example of typography. Until now several different interpretations of the text have been suggested, none of which is entirely convincing. Modern scholars believe it to be a religious text or hymn. It is noteworthy that several signs of this inscription appear on an axe from Arkalochori.
The Antikythera Mechanism
Τhe recovery of the Mechanism among
the other objects from the cargo of the ship that sank off Antikythera (1900-1901) makes this shipwreck unique and
of major importance. Seven large fragments (Α-G) and 75 minor pieces
(1-75) have survived. Their exact position and the original structure of the Mechanism
are still a matter of intense investigation. It contained at least 30
gearwheelsas well as dials, scales, axles and pointers.
The Greek, astronomical inscriptions on the surface of the Mechanism
refer to astronomical and calendar calculations, while the
inscriptions on its metal protective plates contain instructions for its
use. The Mechanism was protected by a wooden case, which had a bronze plaque on
the front and the back side.
The Antikythera Mechanism is the
earliest preserved portable astronomical calculator. It displayed the positions
of the Sun, the Moon and most probably the five planets known in
antiquity, Mercury, Venus, Mars,Jupiter and Saturn. It
was used to predict solar and lunar eclipses, it kept an accurate calendar
of many years, and displayed the date of Pan-Hellenic games that took
place at Nemea, at Isthmia, at Delphi, at Dodona and at
Olympia.
Its construction dates to the second half
of the 2nd century BC. Its technology, which recalls the successors of Archimedes and
the school of Poseidonius on the island of Rhodes
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