Cypriot Syllable Lo

It is the syllable sign “lo” in the Cypriot syllabary.

𐠒 writes a sound, not a picture or word — one sign per consonant-plus-vowel, read with the signs around it in the inscription's language.

The script descends from an older island tradition — Cypro-Minoan, its still-undeciphered Late Bronze Age predecessor, dated about 1550–1050 BCE; the Classical syllabary itself ran about 800–200 BCE.

Why was the Cypriot syllabary made?

To write Cyprus's own languages in a local script.

It was a working tool: inscriptions cover stone, metal, coins, pottery, tablets — public, religious, administrative, commercial; one terracotta tablet even lists names and months.

The Cypriot dialect of Greek is the main language it records, but the same signs also wrote Eteocypriot, a separate island language still poorly understood — one script for two speech communities.

How is 𐠒 related to Linear A and Linear B?

A cousin, not a copy — it is not Linear B.

The link is genealogical: Cypro-Minoan grew from Bronze Age Crete's Linear A tradition, the Classical syllabary from Cypro-Minoan. Cousin Linear B also wrote Greek, but merged l and r into one series — this script keeps them apart.

Alphabetic Greek spread beside it in the 4th century BCE; during the Hellenistic period Ptolemaic rule pushed the alphabet into official use. Greek–Phoenician and Greek–syllabic bilingual inscriptions helped scholars recover the readings in the nineteenth century.