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 ...

The present paper explores theoretical aspects of the study of writing systems and practices. It approaches the mesh that constitutes writing practice through one type of agent: the writing instrument used to write clay documents in the Bronze Age Aegean and Cyprus. On the one hand, this investigation will use types of writing implements and their distribution to think through wider issues concerning the development of writing practices across the Bronze Age Aegean and Cyprus. On the other, it will attempt to establish the place of writing implements within a broader conceptual framework of the people, things and actions that constitute writing practices in this area and period.

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This pioneering volume approaches the languages and scripts of ancient Cyprus from an interdisciplinary point of view, with a primarily linguistic and epigraphic approach supplemented by a consideration of their historical and cultural context. The focus is on furthering our knowledge of the non-Greek languages/scripts, as well as appreciating their place in relation to the much better understood Greek language on the island. Following on from recent advances in Cypro-Minoan studies, these difficult, mostly Late Bronze Age inscriptions are reassessed from first principles. The same approach is taken for non-Greek languages written in the Cypriot Syllabic script during the first millennium BC, chiefly the one usually referred to as Eteocypriot. The final section is then dedicated to the Phoenician language, which was in use on Cyprus for some hundreds of years. The result is a careful reappraisal of these languages/scripts after more than a century of sometimes controversial scholarship.

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