Cypriot Syllable We

It writes the syllable conventionally transliterated “we.”

Here, “we” is a scholarly spelling of the sign’s syllable value, not the English pronoun. Words in the Cypriot syllabary were built from syllable signs. The script wrote Arcado-Cypriot Greek and Eteocypriot, a local Cypriot language whose inscriptions remain undeciphered as of 2026. It was usually written from right to left.

Where did the Cypriot syllabary come from?

The Cypriot syllabary is generally thought to descend from Cypro-Minoan, a script that remains undeciphered as of 2026. Cypro-Minoan was used in the late Bronze Age (about 1550–1050 BCE) on Cyprus and at Ugarit and Tiryns. It belongs to the Aegean writing tradition; Linear B is a related script, while Cypro-Minoan is usually proposed as the direct ancestor of the later Cypriot system.

An early Cypriot syllabic inscription is dated to the 11th century BCE; the main surviving corpus runs from the 8th to the 3rd or 2nd century BCE. The signs were used to write Greek and Eteocypriot, especially in texts dedicated as offerings or for funerals, as well as on pottery, metal, and coins.

Why did the Cypriot syllabary give way to the Greek alphabet?

The syllabary’s use declined in the second half of the 4th century BCE as alphabetic Greek gained dominance in Cyprus. Bilingual and dual-script inscriptions record the transition to the Greek alphabet for official writing.

The 5th-century BCE Tablet of Idalion, a bronze public inscription, records an agreement about physicians who treated wounded soldiers. It shows the script could serve civic records as well as votive and funerary writing.