Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- List of text-figures
- Preface
- 36a The Greeks in the Near East
- 36b The Greeks in Egypt
- 36c Cyprus
- 36d The Cypriot syllabary
- 37 The colonial expansion of Greece
- 38 The western Greeks
- 39a The eastern Greeks
- 39b Crete
- 39c Cretan Laws and Society
- 39d Euboea and the Islands
- 40 Illyris, Epirus and Macedonia
- 41 Central Greece and Thessaly
- 42 The Peloponnese
- 43 The growth of the Athenian state
- 44 The Tyranny of Pisistratus
- 45a Economic and social conditions in the Greek world
- 45b The material culture of Archaic Greece
- Chronological Table
- BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Index
- References
36d - The Cypriot syllabary
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- List of text-figures
- Preface
- 36a The Greeks in the Near East
- 36b The Greeks in Egypt
- 36c Cyprus
- 36d The Cypriot syllabary
- 37 The colonial expansion of Greece
- 38 The western Greeks
- 39a The eastern Greeks
- 39b Crete
- 39c Cretan Laws and Society
- 39d Euboea and the Islands
- 40 Illyris, Epirus and Macedonia
- 41 Central Greece and Thessaly
- 42 The Peloponnese
- 43 The growth of the Athenian state
- 44 The Tyranny of Pisistratus
- 45a Economic and social conditions in the Greek world
- 45b The material culture of Archaic Greece
- Chronological Table
- BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Index
- References
Summary
Cyprus possesses in the Classical Syllabary a unique system of writing. Except for the Phoenician alphabet used by the Semitic element in the island's population, and for the Greek alphabet on certain coins and in the rare epitaphs of foreigners, the syllabary was in almost exclusive use throughout the Archaic and Classical periods. With two early exceptions (Marium, Golgi), only in the Hellenistic period do ‘digraphic’ inscriptions (with the same or a similar text in both alphabet and syllabary) occur, notably at Paphus and Soli, whose kings were among the earliest Cypriot allies of Ptolemy Soter. The syllabary, in the main or ‘Common’ variant and in the South-Western or ‘Paphian’ repertory, was the vehicle of the Cypriot dialect, the eastern branch of the Arcado-Cypriot group; in some parts of the island, especially at Amathus, the syllabary was also used for the still undeciphered ‘Eteo-Cypriot’ language. The Cypriot dialect and the syllabary are complementary, and (save for Eteo-Cypriot) they are not to be found the one without the other.
Decipherment, based on the Phoenician bilingual of Idalium (ICS no. 220) was ingeniously initiated in 1871 by George Smith, later assisted by S. Birch, and rapidly advanced by Brandis, M. Schmidt, Deecke and Siegismund. By 1876, the Bronze Tablet of Idalium (ICS no. 217; see Plates Volume), complete and very legible, with more than 1,000 signs, had received an established alphabetic text and full commentary, and it remains to this day without a rival as a source of knowledge alike of the dialect and of syllabic usage.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Ancient History , pp. 71 - 82Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1982