Distinguishing between Cypriot scripts: Steps towards establishing a methodology

Abstract

The surviving Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age inscriptions from Cyprus, usually labelled 'Cypro-Minoan' and numbering more than 200,¹ are almost certainly written in more than one script. It was É. Masson who first laid out this theory in detail, proposing that different groups of inscriptions be labelled by a numerical classification: CM1, CM2 and CM3.² Each of these groups was suggested to represent a different script with a different repertoire of signs. CM2 and CM3 were special terms referring to a limited number of texts, with CM2 designating three clay tablets with long inscriptions found at Enkomi, and CM3 designating * Thanks are owed to the reader who provided helpful and incisive comments on the first draft of this paper, to Jean-Pierre Olivier for the use of his Cypro-Minoan fonts, and to several scholars who kindly shared pre-publication versions of their work (especially Silvia Ferrara and Miguel Valé rio). I am also grateful to the British Academy for their funding of my current research. 1 The total number of Cypro-Minoan inscriptions depends on our classification of an inscription. Olivier in HoChyMin lists 217 items (from Cyprus and Ugarit), two of which are uninscribed clay balls (##019 and ##073) and the rest consisting of two signs or more. Single-sign inscriptions are excluded (see HoChyMin p16 for the rationale, as much practical as analytical; a singlesign inscription could still be a 'true' inscription but the many isolated Cypriot potmarks, for example, are very difficult to analyse as reflexes of Cypro-Minoan writing). In Ferrara's Corpus (Ferrara 2012/13 vol. 2), 244 items are listed: Olivier's 217 items, 25 further items from Cyprus, one further from Ugarit, plus one added as an addendum (the recently discovered clay ball from postpalatial Tiryns: see Vetters 2011/12); of the 25 Cypriot items that do not appear in HoChyMin, some are inscribed with only one sign (##219, ##222, ##223) and others should perhaps be excluded as dubious examples of writing (##221, surely a series of '+' and line markings acting as a potmark rather than an inscription; ##227, where possible 'signs' may be part of the seal's decorative repertoire; ##228, an adze with one possible sign marked as probably not being an example of writing; ##232, a seal with two possible signs marked out as 'very doubtful', and with a disclaimer that it was only included 'because the past literature deemed it a bona fide inscription'). If we exclude uninscribed items, inscriptions with a single sign and dubia, we are left with 235 known and published Cypro-Minoan inscriptions. Seven further Cypro-Minoan inscriptions are published by Valé rio in this volume, and one more has been published by Hirschfeld and Smith (2012), bringing the total to 243. A recent fi nd of two inscribed tablets from Pyla will raise the number to 245 when they have been published (information from Athanasia Kanta and Massimo Perna). 2 See generally É. Masson 1972, 1974. 3 See Steele 2012. 4 HoChyMin ##001. 5 Palaima 1989. 6 Daniel 1941. Daniel's work on ...

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