Abstract

The modern discovery of a writing system unique to the island of Cyprus during the 1^st millennium BCE, the so-called Cypriot syllabary, as well as its successful decipherment, date back to the second half of the 19^th century AD. The writing system, which was of a syllabic type, was employed in Cyprus from the 8^th to the 3^rd century BCE, along with the Phoenician script and language and, from the 6^th century onwards, together with the Greek alphabet. The documentation of 1^st millennium BCE Cypriot syllabic inscriptions for the purpose of drafting a corpus, which the speaker and her collaborators initiated in 2007, has culminated in the production of the first corpus volume with inscriptions from Amathous, Kourion and Marion, due to appear at the end of this year.

Because the lecture will be held at the Cyprus Institute, which has proven over the years extremely keen on advancing new technologies and novel research methodologies in the humanities, it will focus on how the primary material is documented and how it has been documented since the 19^th century. Epigraphy is one of the oldest branches of archaeological research, it therefore has a rich history of documentation techniques and methodologies, which have undergone considerable revisions and even radical changes over the decades. Seeing as how our documentation technologies can even affect the way we view, study and interpret the material remains of the ancient world, a discussion on their advantages and possible disadvantages is always current.

About The Speaker

Artemis Karnava is a researcher at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, where she is one of the editors of the corpus of Cypriot syllabic inscriptions of the 1^st millennium BC for the series Inscriptiones Graecae. She has a BA from the Department of History and Archaeology of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece (1993), an MA from the Department of Archaeology of the University of Sheffield, UK (1995) and a PhD, with a thesis on the Cretan Hieroglyphic script of the 2^nd millennium BC, from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium (2000). Her research interests include archaeology and epigraphy of the eastern Mediterranean from the 3^rd to the 1^st millennium BC. She has excavated extensively in different sites in Greece as a contract employee of the Greek Ministry of Culture, she has taught undergraduate and graduate courses at the University of Crete and has done post-doctoral research at the universities of Cambridge and Vienna.

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