system of writing used on the island of Cyprus, chiefly from the 6th to the 3rd century BC. The syllabary consists of 56 signs, each of which represents a different syllable. Most inscriptions written with this syllabary are in the Greek language, although the syllabary was originally designed for writing the earlier non-Greek language of Cyprus. The classical Cypriot syllabary is apparently a late development of the still undeciphered Cypro-Minoan script (containing 63 syllabic symbols), which was found on a number of clay tablets from Cyprus and Syria and dates from about 1500 to about 1100 BC. The Cypro-Minoan script in turn is thought to be a distant offshoot of the early Cretan scripts (Linear A and Linear B).