Chapter 1 presents the reader with an overview of each of the seven ancient scripts in the Aegean family: Cretan Hieroglyphic, Linear A, the script on the Phaistos Disk, Linear B, Cypro-Minoan, Cypriot Syllabic, and Eteocypriot. So far, only two of these scripts have been deciphered (Linear B and Cypriot Syllabic), though it is clear that all seven scripts are “syllabaries,” with a separate sign for each syllable in the languages they encode. For each script, the reader is given (a) a brief description of the script, and when and where it was used, as well as a photograph of an inscription in the script, (b) a summary of the corpus of inscriptions in that script, (c) the structure of the script’s syllabary (including a table containing the syllabic signs in the script), and (d) a description of the “standard edition” of the script’s corpus—i.e., the work recognized as the authoritative edition of inscriptions in that script. The chapter ends by discussing the prospects for decipherment of the five undeciphered scripts in this family.