Cassandra Donnelly’s volume forms part of the ‘Cambridge Elements’ series, which integrates the strengths of both monographs and journal articles to produce concise, high-quality works of no more than ca. 30,000 words. It appears in the subseries ‘Writing in the Ancient World’, edited by Andréas Stauder. As its title indicates, the work examines the study and development of the Cypro-Minoan script, with particular attention to its users.
The work is organised into five chapters. The opening chapter, entitled ‘Introduction to Cypro-Minoan’, surveys the historiography of the field and outlines the origins, development, and usage of the script. Donnelly establishes that Cypro-Minoan is an undeciphered writing system of the Late Bronze Age (c. 1650–1050 BCE), employed on Cyprus—and abroad—until shortly after the so-called Bronze Age collapse. Following a discussion on the island’s geostrategic position, the author articulates the central thesis: Cypro-Minoan was not primarily used for inscribing clay tablets or monumental inscriptions but was instead applied to a variety of objects—such as vessel handles, weights, oxhide ingots, and other artefacts—most of which served mercantile purposes. On this basis, Donnelly argues that the combination of flexible conventions and the diversity of inscribed commercial media points to the absence of a formal scribal school or a standardized system of scholarly training.
It is worth adding that, while Cypriots employed various writing materials and practiced a degree of flexibility in their use, trained scribes should have existed on the island. The discovery of Cypro-Minoan tablets at Enkomi, alongside evidence that the script was canonized—albeit with several variants, as the author highlights—attests to the probable presence of professional scribes, at least in certain locations and periods. Nonetheless, likely Cypro-Minoan was predominantly used in mercantile contexts, a thesis that constitutes the core argument of the book and is both compelling and thought-provoking.
The second chapter examines the various approaches to its decipherment. The Cypro-Minoan script has been identified as a syllabary. A comparative analysis of nine to eleven signs with those in Linear A/B and Iron Age Cypriot-syllabic script has enabled the attribution of plausible phonetic values to them. Several methodologies have been employed in attempts to decipher the script, including computational approaches. However, none has yet produced definitive results, partly because scholars have not reached a consensus on the total number of signs, nor on whether certain forms represent mere graphic variants or an entirely distinct syllabogramme. Particularly valuable in this regard is Figure 7 of the book, where the author presents Polig’s and Donnelly’s ‘integrated signary’, comprising 112 identified signs along with their respective variants.[1]
Chapter 3, ‘Defining a Script’, is among the most engaging sections, clearly going beyond the concepts of ethnicity and scripts. The author is to be commended for demonstrating how the study of the Cypro-Minoan script has been influenced by Cyprus’s colonial history under the British Empire and by the enduring preoccupation with identifying the ethnicity of its users—a concern that evolved alongside the imperial administration’s political strategies. At Enkomi, for example, the two archaeologists who led excavations—Porphyrios Dikaios and Claude Schaeffer—became engaged in a scholarly dispute over whether certain palaeographic features of signs should be attributed to ‘Aegeans’ or to ‘Semites’.[2] This misleading interpretative framework ultimately resulted in the division of Cypro-Minoan into three subcategories, distinguished on palaeographic grounds and linked to different languages and ethnicities: CM1, considered more ‘Aegean’ in character; CM2, comprising the Enkomi tablets and attributed to immigrants; and CM3, corresponding to the palaeography of Cypro-Minoan documents found at Ugarit, later reinterpreted by E. Masson as representing Cypriots, Hurrians, and Ugaritians, respectively.
Chapter 4, ‘Mercantile Writers’ presents the book’s central thesis concerning the role of merchant-writers. Donnelly argues that merchants inscribed Cypro-Minoan labels on the goods they exported—primarily copper ingots, though not exclusively. This thesis is well-developed and plausible, especially given her hypothesis that merchant guilds may have existed, possibly under the leadership of a prominent figure, although direct evidence for such organizations remains lacking. It is even more likely, however, that Cypro-Minoan writing underwent a phase of development stimulated by an expansion in exports, which may have necessitated more systematic record-keeping. In this context, one might posit the emergence of a class of scribes—such as those responsible for the Enkomi tablets—with literacy later persisting primarily within the merchant class. The exact social status of these merchants, however, remains ambiguous, leading to a more detailed examination of their identity in Chapter 5.
This chapter, titled ‘Landlubbers’, seeks to explore the role of merchants within Cypriot society in relation to various non-trade objects discovered on the island. These include inscribed clay balls—possibly used for drawing lots—as well as cylindrical seals, bowls, and obeloi. The author highlights that, despite employing the same repertoire of symbols, mercantile texts and insular documents differ significantly in typology. However, she does not arrive at a definitive interpretation regarding the social role of merchants in relation to these island artifacts. The author rightly concludes that the contribution of Cypriots to the spread of writing in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Bronze Age has been largely overlooked. Cypriots were resilient and developed innovative forms that anticipated the wider expansion of alphabets in the Iron Age.
Overall, the book illuminates the role of writing during the still ambiguous transitional phase from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age, significantly advancing our understanding of this critical period in Cyprus, making a fundamental contribution to the field and beyond, and establishing itself as a key reference in the field of Cypriot studies. Written in clear and accessible language, it provides a thorough and detailed account of the use of the Cypro-Minoan script, highlighting its important role among merchants. Perhaps the author could have devoted more attention to the function of potential trained scribes at Enkomi in light of the exceptionality of the tablets. Nonetheless, the book deserves praise for its examination of the still-unclear role of merchants in Cypriot society during the Late Bronze Age—and, to a lesser extent, the Iron Age—providing valuable perspectives and opening exciting avenues for future research.
Notes
[1] Polig, M., Donnelly, C.M., ‘Between Frustration and Progress: An Integrated Cypro-Minoan Signary and Its Paleographic Diversity’, SMEA 8 2022, 41–62.
[2] Papasavvas, G. Trench warfare at Enkomi, Nicosia 2023; Kiely, T., Reeve, A., Crewe, L. Empire and excavation: Critical perspectives on archaeology in British-period Cyprus, 1878–1960, Leiden 2025.