Minoan Ancient Artifacts: Cypro-Minoan script

 

Chlorite amphoriskos (small jar) early 12th century B.C.

Cypriot  On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 173

Three signs engraved on the base of the vase are thought to be in Cypro-Minoan script or a very early example of Archaic Phoenician script. Cypro-Minoan script was the form of writing used on Cyprus in the Late Bronze Age. The language is thought to be derived from the Minoan Linear A script of Crete but, like Linear A, it remains undeciphered.

Other Linear A texts from other sites can be viewed here. 

BOOK References

Cesnola, Luigi Palma di. 1877. Cyprus: Its Ancient Cities, Tombs, and Temples. A Narrative of Researches and Excavations During Ten Years' Residence in That Island. p. 247, London: John Murray.

Cesnola, Luigi Palma di. 1894. A Descriptive Atlas of the Cesnola Collection of Cypriote Antiquities in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Vol. 2. pl. CXLI.1050, Boston: James R. Osgood and Company.

Myres, John L. 1914. Handbook of the Cesnola Collection of Antiquities from Cyprus. no. 1540, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Masson, Olivier. 1961. Les Inscriptions Chypriotes Syllabiques: Recueil Critique et Commenté. no. 2, p. 40, Paris: E. de Boccard.