Phaistos Disc Saw Sign

No; “saw” is a modern picture label, not a recovered ancient reading. It describes the sign’s pictured shape, not what a Bronze Age reader called it. Religious and calendar readings have been proposed for the whole inscription; they are theories about the text, not established meanings for this one sign.

When was the Phaistos Disc made?

The disc was found at the Palace of Phaistos on Crete in 1908. Its findspot contained material from different periods, so it has no precise layer date; comparisons with local pottery and seals place it broadly in the 18th–17th centuries BCE, during Crete’s Bronze Age palace era.

Signs were pressed into fresh clay with prepared stamps and arranged in spirals on both faces. The small sign set has led scholars to propose a syllabary—a writing system in which signs represent spoken syllables. Some signs resemble those in Cretan hieroglyphic and Linear A, two other Bronze Age scripts used on Crete, but the similarities are uncertain and do not establish descent. Resemblances between disc signs and local Bronze Age objects and motifs support a possible Cretan origin for the writing.