Zev Radovan

“Dedicated,” is the Greek word read from the last four signs of an inscription on the reverse side of the scapula from Dor. The marks, written from right to left, are in Cypro-syllabic script, a system of 56 signs each representing a syllable ending in a vowel. The system was invented in about 700 B.C.E. to write Cypriote; it was later adapted, none too well, to write Greek. The signs preceding the word “dedicated” may have named the dedicant and his father. Professor Oliver Masson, of Paris, who studied the inscription, believes it was dedicated, perhaps to the goddess Astarte, by a Cypriote pilgrim at a Phoenician temple. It was inscribed about a century or more later than the scene on the other side.