Cypro-Minoan Inscriptions: Volume 1: Analysis

ISBN-13: 9780199607570 / Angielski / Twarda / 2012 / 344 str.

Silvia Ferrara

Opis

This volume offers the first comprehensive examination of an ancient writing system from Cyprus and Syria known as Cypro-Minoan. After Linear B was deciphered by Michael Ventris in 1952, other un-deciphered scripts of the second millennium B.C. from the Aegean world (Linear A) and the Eastern Mediterranean (Cypro-Minoan) became the focus of those trying to crack this ancient and historical code. Despite several attempts for both syllabaries, this prospect has remained unrealized. This is especially true for Cypro-Minoan, the script of Late Bronze Age Cyprus found also at Ugarit in Syria, which, counting no more than 250 inscriptions, remains not only poorly documented, but also insufficiently explored in previous scholarship.
Today progress in the study of this enigmatic script demands that we direct our attention to gaining new insight through a contextual analysis of Cypro-Minoan by tracing its life in the archaeological record and investigating its purpose and significance in the Cypriot and Syrian settlements that created and used it.
With a new methodology concentrating on a groundbreaking contextual approach, Ferrara presents the first large-scale study of Cypro-Minoan with an analysis of all the inscriptions through a multidisciplinary perspective that embraces aspects of archaeology, epigraphy, and palaeography.

Recenzje

make a substantial, much-needed contribution to the field of Cypriot epigraphy. Thanks to Silvia Ferrara, we can now see a large number of Cypro-Minoan inscriptions in context and understand their media in a more comprehensive manner. Moreover, the author vindicates a more unitary way of looking at the script, which might prove fruitful in future investigations ... Ultimately, all scholars working on the script, even those who are concerned mainly with deciphermentaimed work, have reason to praise the publication of Cypro-Minoan Inscriptions.

O autorze

Silvia Ferrara is Montalcini Research Fellow at the University of La Sapienza, Rome, Italy.