In 1974, É. Masson divided Cypro-Minoan inscriptions into four different scripts based on how their signs were drawn. Her divisions still persist, but have become increasingly controversial: are they really different scripts, or are they just variants of one script? In Chapter 10, the corpora of Masson’s three main divisions of Cypro-Minoan are analyzed against each other in an effort to determine whether they all encode the same language. As a control, three analogous corpora of Cypriot Syllabic inscriptions are analyzed against each other in the same way, with the results demonstrating an overwhelming probability that they all encode the same language (which we know they do, as Cypriot Syllabic is deciphered: it encodes Greek). The analysis of Masson’s three main divisions of Cypro-Minoan demonstrates a similarly overwhelming probability that they all encode the same language, and thus are simply variants of the same written language, not different scripts. The Cypro-Minoan and Cypriot Syllabic corpora are also analyzed against each other, demonstrating an overwhelming probability that the two scripts encode different languages—that is, that Cypro-Minoan does NOT encode Greek.

Although Cypriot Syllabic was mostly used to write in Greek, it was sometimes used to write in an unknown indigenous language now conventionally called “Eteocypriot.” Many have wondered whether Eteocypriot could be a descendant of the language behind the earlier Cypro-Minoan script. In Chapter 11, Cypro-Minoan is analyzed against Linear A and Eteocypriot in an effort to determine whether any of them encode the same language. As a control, Cypriot Syllabic is analyzed against Linear B in the same way, with the results demonstrating an overwhelming probability that both scripts encode the same language (which we know they do, as both scripts are deciphered: they both encode Greek). Cypriot Syllabic is also analyzed against Linear A and Eteocypriot, demonstrating an overwhelming probability that none of them encode the same language—that is, that Linear A (for a fourth time) does NOT encode Greek, and neither does Eteocypriot. The analysis of Cypro-Minoan against Linear A and Eteocypriot, however, demonstrates a similarly overwhelming probability that (a) though Cypro-Minoan and Linear A clearly encode different languages, (b) Cypro-Minoan and Eteocypriot do encode the same language.

Mycenaean pottery has a remarkable continuity. In LH I and LH II pottery is based on Minoan principles. MH styles continue but the lustrous paint technique is introduced from Crete first in Ayios Stephanos, Laconia in LH I, and the lustrous decorated style developed. Marine, Ephyraean and the monumental palace style mark the LH II. Gradually though naturalism fades, tendency to abstraction and standardization appear leading to the uniformity of the famous Mycenae ‘koine’. In LH III, often inspired by wall-paintings, the Pictorial style expanded, kraters representing mainly chariot scenes being the typical vessels. The revival of the pottery after the destruction of the palaces brings to the pictorial an explosion of new themes. Close and granary styles mark the end of the pottery sequence. Clay painted larnakes, rare in Greece, appeared first in Crete under bathtub or rectangular form; exception is a unique set discovered in Tanagra depicting in a realistic vivid way scenes related to death and funeral rites.

This introduction explains the socio-political context that led to the protest depicted on the cover of the book. This is an instance of an internal, ideological conflict which led to joint collective action of the two communities, one of the few historical instances of such an event in Cyprus that was the result of a process of valorisation of free movement across the divide that started with the opening of the checkpoints in 2003. It is argued that in order to understand conflict and its transformation in conflict and post-conflict settings, it is important to evaluate internal heterogeneity and the transformation from one position to another in the representational field of an ethnic conflict. An integrative framework of a social developmental psychology is then presented, which is sensitive to historical change and change at various time scales (microgenesis, ontogenesis and sociogenesis) and at different levels of analysis. The introduction ends with a preview of the book, its two parts and different chapters.

In this chapter I apply the theoretical framework developed in the previous chapters to the case of the Cyprus conflict. First, I offer a short narration of the Cyprus conflict as background knowledge to the analysis that will follow that concerns the ontogenesis of social representations of the Cyprus conflict in the context of evolving educational policies of collective memory and history teaching since 1974. In particular, I propose that students, depending on their developmental level, reconstruct a collective memory promulgated for years as a certain hegemonic historical narrative of collective struggle to undo the injustices caused by a collective trauma. I also present research findings from our lab spanning the years 2003-2023 regarding the evolution and crystallisation of significant structures of representation in this period touching upon issues of change, resistance and continuity.

In the Epilogue Christoforou offers an impressionistic essay on encounters with ancient Greek epic in modern Greek lands. In an alternative, personal perspective on the political account provided in Hanink’s chapter, he explores the problematic ownership of the past in Greece and how the central place held by Greek antiquity, and in particular epic, in the construction of western civilisation has created a strange distance between Greeks and the Greek past and its literature. Reflecting on his own experience as a Grecophone classicist, Christoforou shows how the story of Greekness and epic is now played out in the background of Greeks performing their Hellenicity in a world that does not always trust their inheritance.

An investigation of the Luvo-Hittite dammara- religious functionaries (male and female) and the borrowing of the term into Ahhiyawan (Ur-Aeolian) and, thence, European Mycenaean cult vocabulary as dumartes and its variant damartes (a scribal borrowing), and an exploration of the Anatolian source of the theonym Artemis. The intersection of both the cult title and divine name with Mycenaean dialect variation is carefully examined.

The investigation of Aeolian foundation myths continues in this chapter, with examination of traditions of the founding of Boeotian Thebes. Ancestral Indo-European tradition is again evident, as is an Anatolian stratum, one which foregrounds technological expertise of Asian origin.

After looking at the Mediterranean as a zone characterized by the movement of goods, people and ideas, this chapter examines the sea as the element from which hybrids arise, such as Skylla, Nereus, the Nereids and monsters of Hesiod’s Theogony. These hybrids give expression to the anxieties of Greek speakers on the move. Contact zones like Sicily stimulated a powerful response from Greek speakers, who were constantly faced with other people, other tongues and other habits. Hybridity emerges as a useful mechanism for envisaging otherness and rendering it manageable, either as monstrous threat or as something in a more muted register: similar, yet at the same time different. It is this polarity of similarity and difference that is the pendulum swinging through Archaic Greek culture. Two places of particularly rich cultural encounters, Naukratis and Samos, illustrate how the categories of exotic and hybrid overlap. Even more complicated is Cyprus, demonstrating the most intense cultural layering in the eastern Mediterranean. Here where EteoCypriots, Mycenaean Greeks, Assyrians and Phoenicians all mingle, hybridity was a recurring feature of the island’s culture.

This chapter offers a snapshot of detente in a downward spiral, illustrating just how fragile it ultimately proved to be, how susceptible it was to the logic of superpower rivalry, and how utterly dependent it was on domestic variables – especially in the United States. With Nixon's resignation in August 1974, detente – never stable – began to unravel. Crises in Cyprus and Africa, as well as the passage of the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which effectively denied the Soviet Union its Most Favored Nation status and further dampened the already dim prospects for Soviet–American trade, aggravated tensions between Moscow and Washington. Even the successful conclusion of the Helsinki Conference in the summer of 1975 failed to restore trust between the superpowers. Brezhnev's physical and mental decline contributed to a sense of paralysis in Soviet foreign policy. The Cold War returned by default.

The epigraphic documentation in the Phoenician language of the island of Cyprus makes it possible to approach the exploration of the semantic field of the force (’z) in the conceptual universe of the Phoenicians. Gods ‘of strength’ appear in inscriptions commemorating victories, both at Kition and at Larnaka-tis-Lapithou. Baal and Anat are discussed: the profession of war is not a male prerogative in the world of the gods. Strength is also present in the world of men: anthroponomy conceals a few names, albeit not many, constructed using the root ‘zz ‘to be strong’. At the same time Anat, Resheph, Baal and Mikal, gods present in the Phoenician context of Cyprus with also (but not only) warlike attributes, are implicated in the formation of anthroponyms, most of the time without reference to weapons and shields, if they are only those who serve their worshippers to face the daily battles from the delicate moment of birth onwards.