The introduction of the Greek alphabet in Ancient Cyprus: Guest post by Dr Beatrice Pestarino

Hi there! I am Beatrice Pestarino, an Ancient Historian specialised in Ancient Cyprus. I am interested in the socio-economic development of the Cypriot city-kingdoms into which the island was subdivided in the Archaic and Classical periods. I have recently submitted to publication the final version of my first book Kypriōn Politeia, the political ad administrative systems of the Classical Cypriot city-kingdoms – actually my PhD thesis (UCL) dressed to the nines – which reconstructs the political and administrative systems of these centres in the 5^th and 4^th cent. BC (forthcoming in the Brill series Mnemosyne Supplements).

My research is based on the study of inscriptions written in different languages and scripts such as Cypriot-syllabic Greek and Eteocypriot, a Cypriot autochthonous language, Phoenician, and alphabetic Greek, which were all used on the island. These inscriptions are written on different support materials, mostly stones and ostraka, but also clay/bronze tablets, pottery, and coins for which I provide new textual readings and interpretations. Their texts concern kings and officials employed by local governments or accounts of the headquarters of the main administrative centres – for example, palace archives, tax collection hubs, and workshops for processing copper, purple, and agricultural products.

The Idalion Bronze tablet (5^th cent. BC), a decree which concerns a honorary payment to the physician Onasilos and his brothers, written in Greek, in the common Cypriot syllabary (to be read from right to left). BnF Cabinet des médailles, Paris.

A Cypriot art project: Guest post by Charles (Pico) Rickleton

Hello, I’m Pico and I’m very excited to be joining the CREWS project in Cambridge for Michaelmas term. I am coming to CREWS through a fairly unusual route, as my practice is primarily that of an art director and designer not an academic. I can usually be found working at Flying Object, a creative studio based in London, as their in-house art director or at Studio Forage, an experimental design collective, focussed on storytelling through critical design. My personal practice is concerned with reading experiences, language, ethnographic objects and speculative thinking. During my time with CREWS I will be working on a research project that deals with the confluence of these interests in the context of an extinct writing system.

Limestone fragment with a Cypriot syllabic inscription, c.5th C BC. Met Museum New York.

Beyond Cyprus conference – with videos

Back in December we had to pleasure to be involved in a conference organised by CREWS Visiting Fellow Giorgos Bourogiannis, Beyond Cyprus: Investigating Cypriot Connectivity in the Mediterranean from the Late Bronze Age to the End of the Classical Period. This was an impressive four-day event, organised as part of Giorgos’s project on Cypriot Connectivity in the Mediterranean (CyCoMed), which is affiliated with the CREWS project.

New article by Pippa on writing in the ancient world

Pippa has written a post for the Magdalene College website about writing in the ancient world, thinking about the distinctiveness and vitality of writing systems.

You can read the article HERE.

CyCoMed-iation (or why are we so fond of ancient Cyprus)

Guest post by CREWS Visiting Fellow Giorgos Bourogiannis

After three weeks in Cambridge, I am still feeling delighted to have been given the chance to work closely with the research team of the CREWS project. I am particularly thankful to the project’s director and principal investigator, Dr Pippa Steele for her hospitality and kindness. I am an archaeologist, rather than a linguist or epigraphist by training, but there is something I share with all members of the CREWS team: a very strong scholarly interest in ancient Cyprus.

This post has two main goals: The first one is to briefly view Cyprus through archaeological spectacles and to explain the island’s eminent position in the archaeology of the Mediterranean. The second goal is to present a summary of my own research project, CyCoMed (Cypriot Connectivity in the Mediterranean from the Late Bronze Age to the end of the Classical Period), which is what generated my visit to Cambridge and my collaboration with the researchers of the CREWS project.

Map of the Mediterranean marking the position of Cyprus.

Writing indigenous languages

Did you know that 2019 is the UN’s International Year of Indigenous Languages? There are thousands of languages spoken in the world today, but many of them are strongly localised and in danger of dying out because of the small size of their speech communities, and because their speakers often choose to use successful global languages over their local languages. IYIL sets out to raise awareness of indigenous languages in order to benefit their speakers and to bring about a better appreciation of their important contribution to the world’s cultural diversity.

What I want to talk about briefly in this post is the writing down of indigenous languages, in the ancient world as well as the modern – really just a few collected thoughts on diversity of experience.

New CREWS Visiting Fellow announcement

It won’t be long now before we advertise the new round of our Visiting Fellowship competition, but in the meantime we have some other news – we are delighted to tell you that we will be welcoming Dr Giorgos Bourogiannis to Cambridge as an externally-funded CREWS Visiting Fellow next term! Read more about his project below.

Giorgos Bourogiannis (National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens)

Giorgos is an archaeologist and postdoctoral research associate at the National Hellenic Research Foundation in Athens. Since his PhD (2008) he has worked as a curator for the Naukratis project at the British Museum, Department of Greece and Rome, and has held the A.G. Leventis postdoctoral position at the Museum of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities (Medelhavsmuseet) in Stockholm, studying the unpublished evidence from the sanctuary of Ayia Irini on Cyprus (you can see a video about his work HERE).

Writing and Society in Ancient Cyprus – Pippa’s new book

A couple of months ago my new book, Writing and Society in Ancient Cyprus, was published with Cambridge University Press. This was a long-term project, beginning with a series of lectures given at All Souls College, Oxford, in 2014 and culminating in a work that underpins the research undertaken at CREWS. In fact, it was in writing this book that the whole idea for the CREWS project began…

Please note that you can now read the first chapter for free with open access HERE.

CREWS Display: A Cypriot Seal with a Fish-man

We have finally come to the last object in our special display at the Fitzwilliam Museum. Don’t be too sad yet though, because there is still more than a month to come and see it (until 10th June 2018) if you have a chance to visit Cambridge.

This week’s object is a little stamp seal from ancient Cyprus, featuring a fish-man with Cypriot Syllabic writing behind him to the top-left, probably 7th-6th C BC. At just 2.1 x 1.2 cm, it’s the second smallest item of our set. Now part of the Fitzwilliam Museum’s own collection, we do not know exactly where it came from but its Cypriot provenance can be confirmed because of its Cypriot Syllabic inscription.

CREWS Display: A Cypriot Figurine with a Greek Alphabetic Inscription

Our next object, from our special CREWS-themed display at the Fitzwilliam Museum, has a privileged position in the Cypriot gallery: standing in its own cabinet in the centre of the room. At first glance, you wouldn’t guess why this Cypriot statuette is included in an exhibition about writing, but if you move around it, you may see that it has some scratches on the back side.

Although it would seem that these are random damage to the stone, they conceal a votive inscription written in the Greek alphabet. This is the perfect excuse to talk about the presence of the Greek alphabet in Cyprus and also about how epigraphists work with problematic inscriptions like this one to untangle the text behind them.