Phaistos (, ; Ancient Greek: , , Linear B:  Pa-i-to; Linear A: Pa-i-to)), also transliterated as Phaestos, Festos and Latin Phaestus, is a Bronze Age archaeological site at modern Faistos, a municipality in south central Crete. Ancient Phaistos was located about  east of the Mediterranean Sea and  south of Heraklion, the second largest city of Minoan Crete. The name Phaistos survives from ancient Greek references to a city in Crete of that name at or near the current ruins.

History

Bronze Age

Phaistos was inhabited by about 3600 BC, slightly later than other early sites such as Knossos. During the Early Minoan period, the site's hills were terraced and monumental buildings constructed on them. The first palace was built in the Middle Minoan IB period, around 1900 BC. Like other palaces, it was built in an area that had been used earlier for communal feasting. This initial palace was destroyed and rebuilt three times in period of about three centuries. After the first and second disaster, reconstruction and repairs were made, so its history is divided into three construction phases.

Several artifacts with Linear A inscriptions were excavated at this site. The name of the site also appears in partially deciphered Linear A texts, and is probably similar to Mycenaean 'PA-I-TO' as written in Linear B. Several kouloura structures (subsurface pits) have been found at Phaistos. Pottery has been recovered at Phaistos from in the Middle and Late Minoan periods, including polychrome items and embossing in imitation of metal work. Bronze Age works from Phaistos include bridge spouted bowls, eggshell cups, tall jars and large pithoi.

The levels of the theater area, in conjunction with two splendid staircases, gave a grand access to the main hall of the propylaea through high doors. A twin gate led directly to the central courtyard through a wide street. The floors and walls of the interior rooms were decorated with plates of sand and white gypsum stone. Upper floors of the west sector had spacious ceremonial rooms, although their exact restoration was not possible.

A brilliant entrance from the central courtyard led to the royal apartments in the north part of the palace, with a view of the tops of Psiloritis. The rooms were constructed from alabaster and other materials. The rooms for princes were smaller and less luxurious than the rooms of the royal departments.

The palace was destroyed around 1400 BC and not rebuilt.

Classical and Roman era

The site was reinhabited during the Geometric Age (8th century BC). Phaistos had its own currency and had created an alliance with other autonomous Cretan cities, and with the king of Pergamon Eumenes II. Around the end of the 3rd century BC, Phaestos was destroyed by the Gortynians and since then ceased to exist in the history of Crete. Scotia Aphrodite and goddess Leto, who was also called Phytia, were worshiped there. The people of Phaistos were distinguished for their funny adages. Epimenides, the wise man invited by the Athenians to clean the city after the Cylonian affair (Cyloneio agos) in the 6th century BC, was of Phaistian descent.

Excavation 

Phaistos was located in 1853 by Thomas Abel Brimage Spratt, a ship captain who surveyed sites around the Mediterranean. Spratt's identification drew on Strabo, who reported that Phaistos was sixty stadia from Gortyn, forty from Matalum, and twenty from the coast. Spratt triangulated this location to a hill then known as Kastri ("fort", "small castle"). A village of 16 houses remained on the ridge, but the vestiges of fortification walls indicated a city had once existed there.

Excavations began in 1900 and continue to the present day. In 1908, the Phaistos Disc was found in a basement room on the northern side of the palace.

After 1955 the place name, , pa-i-to, interpreted as Phaistos (written in Mycenaean Greek), began to turn up in the Linear B tablets at Knossos.

The tombs of the rulers of Phaistos were found in a cemetery 20 minutes away from the palace remains.

In literature and myth 

References to Phaistos in ancient Greek literature are quite frequent. Phaistos is first referenced by Homer as "well populated", and the Homeric epics indicate its participation in the Trojan War. The historian Diodorus Siculus indicates that Phaistos, together with Knossos and Kydonia, are the three towns that were founded by King Minos on Crete. Instead, Pausanias and Stephanus of Byzantium supported in their texts that the founder of the city was Phaestos, son of Hercules or Ropalus. The city of Phaistos is associated with the mythical king of Crete Rhadamanthys.

See also
 Amari Valley
 Hagia Triada
 Kamares Cave
 Kommos
 Monastiraki, Crete

References

Further reading 
 Adams, E. (2007). "Approaching Monuments in the Prehistoric Built Environment: New Light on the Minoan Palaces." Oxford Journal Of Archaeology, 26(4), 359–394.
 Borgna, Elisabetta. (2004). "Social Meanings of Food and Drink Consumption at LM III Phaistos." In Food, Cuisine and Society in Prehistoric Greece. Edited by Paul Halstead and John C. Barrett. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 174–195.
 Driessen, Jan, and Florence Gaignerot-Driessen. (2015). Cretan Cities: Formation and Transformation. Aegis, 7. Louvain-La-Neuve: Presses universitaires de Louvain.
 Leitao, David D. (1995). The Perils of Leukippos. Initiatory Transvestism and Male Gender Ideology in the Ekdusia at Phaistos. Classical Antiquity 14:130–163.
 Levi, Doro. (1976–1981). Festòs e la civiltà minoica. 6 vols. Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo.
 Myers, J. Wilson, Eleanor Emlen Myers, and Gerald Cadogan, eds. (1992). The Aerial Atlas of Ancient Crete. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press; London: Thames and Hudson.
 Shaw, Joseph W. (2015). Elite Minoan Architecture: Its Development at Knossos, Phaistos, and Malia. Prehistory monographs, 49. Philadelphia: INSTAP Academic Press.
 Shelmerdine, Cynthia W., ed. (2008). The Cambridge Companion to the Aegean Bronze Age. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
 Vansteenhuyse, Klaas. (2011). "Centralisation and the Political Institution of Late Minoan IA Crete." In State Formation in Italy and Greece: Questioning the Neoevolutionist Paradigm. Edited by Nicola Terrenato and Donald C. Haggis. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 61–74.
 Watrous, L. Vance, Despoina Hadzi-Vallianou, and Harriet Blitzer. (2004). The Plain of Phaistos: Cycles of Social Complexity in the Mesara Region of Crete. Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, Univ. of California.
Davaras, Costis. (2003).  Führer zu den Altertümern Kretas, Athen, pp. 274–282.

External links 

 
 
 Architecture of Minoan Crete: constructing identity in the Aegean Bronze Age, John C. McEnroe, University of Texas Press, 2010. 202 pages
 Phaistos Project: Italo-Greek archaeological surveys in the city and territory of Phaistos

Heraklion (regional unit)
Minoan sites in Crete
Aegean palaces of the Bronze Age
Ancient Greek archaeological sites in Crete
Cretan city-states
Populated places in ancient Greece
Former populated places in Greece