Cypro-Minoan Inscriptions, Volume 1: Analysis

Silvia Ferrara offers the first comprehensive large-scale analysis of Cypro-Minoan, the still-undeciphered writing system of Late Bronze Age Cyprus also attested at Ugarit in Syria. Rather than pursuing decipherment through speculative linguistic comparison, she treats inscriptions as archaeological objects and asks where, how and why writing was used.

The study combines contextual archaeology, epigraphy and palaeography, examining the distribution of inscriptions, their media, scribal practices and variation within the signary. This approach places writing within the social and material life of Late Bronze Age Cyprus and the eastern Mediterranean. Volume 1 is an analytical study rather than the corpus itself, making it a specialist work for readers of ancient writing systems, Cypriot archaeology and Bronze Age literacy.