2539: Cypro-Minoan Syllabary: Linear C Nov 25, 2021

Early forms of Greek used their own early forms of writing known as Linear A and Linear B. At one point the term "Linear C" was in use, though that has now basically been usurped by "Cypro-Minoan syllabary". This was, too, used for what has been deduced as an early variety of Greek, with most inscriptions in this writing system found on the island of Cyprus with others found one location of the Syrian coast. This was brought by Minoan settlers from Crete. Although this early writing had existed in its evolved forms for at least 14 centuries from the creation of Linear A to the decline of its final descendants, these characters did not survive.

2538: Cypriot Syllabary Nov 24, 2021

The Republic of Cyprus is the only other country to officially use the Greek alphabet, but in the ancient world it had its own writing system for its particular dialect of Greek. Developed from the Cypro-Minoan syllabary, the Cypriot syllabary is a unique system, unrelated to the later Greek alphabet or its predecessors. The oldest known inscriptions were found from about 1500BC and other fragments indicate it was in use nearly a millennium later. Eventually, this would be replaced by foreign systems and end that particular chain of writing systems descended from Linear A.

2487: Cuneiform and Linear A Oct 3, 2021

Cuneiform, arguably the first writing system, was based in wedges pressed into clay from the corners of a stylus, hence the triangular formation, and was used for many languages, both Semitic and otherwise. These two factors help to explain why there is such a volume of known texts—hundreds of thousands of tablets—to survive. In the transition to other writing systems, such as Linear A, named because its lines were cut or pulled, like with a pen, as opposed to pressed that it would allow for more flexibility of writing overall. Cuneiform was not the only pressed form of writing, as this practice is also found from Ugaritic alphabet (technically an abjad), and despite how widespread this was, being used across the whole of the Middle East from Anatolia to Persia, it was not as easy, nor useful for non-clay media, and was eventually replaced having once been the replacement for drawn glyphs too.

2486: Linear A & B Oct 2, 2021

The Greek alphabet was ultimately derived from Phoenician (a.k.a. Punic; a.k.a. Canaanite), but considering the shapes of the letters, the inclusion of vowels, and changing direction of the writing itself, this was not an immediate process. Two writing systems, known as Linear A and Linear B, emerged in the eastern Mediterranean. Linear A was used from about 1800–1450 BC with no decipherable texts to date, but was used by the Mycenaeans (Minoans): early Greeks based in the Aegean and especially Crete. Already Linear A switched to a left-to-right script, and in addition to containing symbols for old letters, there are new letters, grammatical symbols, whole syllables and a number system including fractions. In Linear B, also used by the Mycenaeans from about 1450 BC until the Bronze Age Collapse, seemingly for primarily official purposes. Like Linear A, some symbols were letters and others whole syllables—not unlike Egyptian hieroglyphs in that way—with about 200 overall signs. Ultimately, these, and other scripts used for early Greek language writing can help to show the transition of a once glyph-based system of representing words and sounds into a recognizable form of the alphabets it led to.