Cypriot Syllable Lu

It records “lu” as one syllable inside a word.

Each Cypriot sign combines a starting consonant with a vowel; here l is followed by u. The sign supplies a syllable, not a whole word or translation by itself.

How did Cypriot writing develop?

It took shape on Cyprus as a syllabic writing system.

The earliest surviving evidence for the script is an inscription from the 11th century BCE, incised on bronze spits found in a tomb at Skales near ancient Paphos. Main surviving texts date from the 8th century BCE through the 3rd or 2nd century BCE.

It wrote the Cypriot dialect of Greek and, at Amathus, Eteocypriot, a local language whose texts remain undeciphered. The syllabary is related to Linear B, an older syllabic script for Greek, and to Cypro-Minoan, a Bronze Age script for an unidentified language. Unlike Linear B, Cypriot writing keeps l and r syllables distinct. During the Hellenistic period, the Greek alphabet replaced it in official records, though it survived in religious dedications. A surviving Cypriot-syllabic relief dedicated to Apollo is one example.

Which way does Cypriot writing run?

It was usually written from right to left.

In mixed-direction text, the layout can make the sign’s position look misplaced beside left-to-right writing. That is a display effect; it does not change the syllable.