The Phaistós disc. Printing-punching direction (from left to right)
The longest Cretan hieroglyphic inscription

1 - the disc of Phaistós is undoubtedly a Cretan artefact,
2 - the signs impressed on it belong to the Cretan hieroglyphic writing system (see Table A),
3 - For over three thousand years the singular writing by movable type printing has made the disc of Phaistós unique, but this is because the hieroglyphic text was transcribed along the spirals of a small clay disc,
4 - the text printed on a discoidal support, along a spiral-shaped layout, was accomplished manually according to technical criteria completely different from those befitting a rectangular or square support, such as clay tablets,
5 - the artist who created the document relied on a model, to print on the clay disc the fair copy of the typographic project to be reproduced,
6 - the writing direction is directly connected only to the linguistic-grammatical expression that the ancient scribe wanted to pass on,
7 - the correct writing direction can be identified from four details:
a) a tiny empty space at the end of the text, located to the right of the last two peripheral sections A I and B I,
b) four cases of error correction on the right side of some sections,
c) ) three cases of modification of the intersection line on the right of as many sections, in order to proceed with the necessary word corrections,
d) the line of intersection between A XIV and A XIII roughly retouched with the stylus, to close section A I with a special line in its own right, re-marked by five dots made with the stylus.
The research therefore was able to demonstrate how the hieroglyphic sequence of the Phaistós disc unfolds in a linear direction along the path of the spirals, starting from the centre towards the periphery, that is, from left to right, to end finally with the line marked with five stylus dots. The current vulgate on the right-to-left writing direction, from the outside towards the centre of the disc, deduced from 2 or 5 overlappings, is then definitively overcome by two details never considered up to now:
1) the deformations of some signs, caused by the punching of the sign on their right,
2) the retouching-scratch of the intersection line between A XIV and A XIII, with the series of parallel dashes interrupted by the countersinking of the five dots, placed on the presumed opening line, which the photographic enlargement reveals instead to be the text closing line.