Cypriot Graffiti in Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egyptian monuments are covered in graffiti made by visitors from Cyprus. Why were they there, and what does it mean?
In antiquity carving one’s name on a monument was a common and culturally meaningful practice. The walls of Egyptian monuments – from the pyramids of Giza to the temples of Abydos and Karnak – are covered with graffiti left by visitors over the millennia. These inscriptions were made by travellers in their own languages and writing systems. Alongside familiar scripts such as Latin and alphabetic Greek there are rarer systems such as the Cypriot syllabary – a distinctive writing system that originated on the island of Cyprus in which each character is a syllable, rather than a sound. It is an Aegean script, probably related to Mycenaean Linear B.
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