The Beginning of the Alphabet

An alphabet is a standard set of letters (basic written symbols/graphemes) which is used to write one or more language based on the general principle that the letters represent phonemes (basic significant sounds) of the spoken language. This is in contrast to other types of writing systems, like aslogographies, in which each character represents aword, morpheme or semantic unit, syllabaries, in which each character represents a syllable.

A true alphabet has letters for the vowels of a language as well as the consonants. The first "true alphabet" in this sense is believed to be the  Greek alphebet, which is a modified form of the  Phoenician alphabet, but actually the history of the alphabet starts in ancient Egypt. The first pure alphabets (properly, "abjads", mapping single symbols to single phonemes, but not necessarily each phoneme to a symbol) appeared around 2000 Bc in Ancient Egypt, as a representation of language improved by Semitic workers in Egypt, but by then alphabetic principles had already been instilled into Egyptian hieroglyphs for a period of one thousand years. Most other alphabets in the world today either descended from this discovery, or were directly inspired by its design, including the Phoenician and Greek alphabet.

The Proto-Canaanite alphabet, like its Egyptian prototype, represent just the consonants, which is a system called, an abjad. It is possible to trace nearly all the alphabets ever used, most of which descend from the younger variant of the script. To illustrate it, the Aramatic alphabet, has evolved from Phoenician in the 7th century BC.

The Phaistos Disc

It is an archeological discovery nearly from the middle or late Minoan Bronze Age. Its target and meaning, and its original geographical place of manufacture, remain disputed, making it one of the most famous mysterious archeological find, which is now at the Archeological Museum of Herakleion in Crete, Greece.

More over, "the disc of Phaistos is the most important examle of hieroglyphic inscription from Crete and was discovered in 1903 in a small room near the depositories of the "archive chamber", iin the north-east apartements of the palace, together with a Linear A tablet and pottery dated to the beginning of the Neo-palatial period (1700-1600 B.C.)

The exact location of Phaitos was first determined in the middle of the19th century by the British admiral Spratt, while the archeological investigation of the palaca started in 1884 by the Italians F. Halbherr and A. Taramelli.

According to the mythology, Phaistos was the seat of king Radamantis, brother of king Minos. It was also the city that gave birth to the great wise man and soothsayer Epimenidis, one of the seven wise men of the ancient world. Excavations by archeologists have unearthed ruins of the Neolithic times (3000 B.C.). During the Minoan times, Phaistos was a very important city-state. Its dominion, as its peak, streched from Lithinon to Psychion and included the Paximadia islands. The city participated to Trojan war and later became one of the most important city-states of the Dorian period.

Phaistos continued to florish during Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic times. It was destored by the Gortynians during the 3rd century B.C. In spite of that, Phaistos continued to exist during the Roman period." (http://world-mysteries.com)

On the disc that was made of clay, hieroglyphes were arranged in a spiral zone. There are group of signs, which are separeted from each other with lines. Each of the group represents one word. Also there are 241 tokens (symbols) on the disc, including 45 unique signs, that symbolise every-day things. There are traces of corrections made by the scribe (the recorder).
Because of he disc a big speculation have been occured during the 20th century. Archeologists tried to decode the code behind the disc's signs.

Phaistos city-state