The most famous Eteocypriot inscription is the
Amathus bilingual, a bilingual text inscribed on a black marble slab found on the
acropolis of
Amathus about 1913, dated to around 600 BC and written in both the
Attic dialect of
Ancient Greek and Eteocypriot. The Eteocypriot text in Cypriot characters runs right to left; the Greek text in all capital
Greek letters, left to right. The following are the syllabic values of the symbols of the Eteocypriot text (left to right) and the Greek text as is: :Eteocypriot: :: 1: '''''' :: 2: '''''' :Greek: :: 3: '''''' :: 4: '''''' :which might be rendered into modern script as: :: 3: '''''' :: 4:
. Cyrus H. Gordon translates this text as ::
The city of the Amathusans (honored) the noble Ariston (son) of Aristonax. Gordon's translation is based on Greek inscriptions in general and the fact that "the noble Ariston" is in the
accusative case, implying a
transitive verb. Gordon explains that "the verb is omitted ... in such dedicatory inscriptions". The inscription is important as verifying that the symbols of the unknown language, in fact, have about the same phonetic values as they do when they are used to represent Greek. Gordon says, "This bilingual proves that the signs in Eteocypriot texts have the same values as in the Cypriot Greek texts...." ==References==