Not the least interesting and important of the results obtained from Dr. Schliemann's excavations at Hissarlik is the discovery that writing was known in the north-western corner of Asia Minor long before the introduction of the Phoenician or Greek alphabet. Inscribed objects are not indeed plentiful, but sufficient exist to show that the ancient inhabitants of the place were not wholly illiterate, but possessed a system of writing which they shared with the neighbouring nations of the mainland and the adjacent islands. Throughout Asia Minor a syllabary was once in use, which conservative Cyprus alone retained into historical times.

Numerous inscriptions in this syllabary have been found in the latter island. The characters, which amount to at least fifty-seven in number, long resisted all attempts at decipherment, but at last the problem was successfully solved by the genius of the Assyrian scholar, the late Mr. George Smith, with the help of a mutilated bilingual inscription, written in Phoenician and Cypriote. The language concealed under so strange a garb turned out to be the Greek dialect spoken in Cyprus, a dialect full of interesting peculiarities, and especially noteworthy as preserving up to the fourth century b.c. the two sounds of v and y (or digamma and yod), which had disappeared elsewhere. To the student of Homer the dialect is of considerable importance, since several of the grammatical forms found in the Iliad and Odyssey can be shown to have had a Cyprian origin.