The Early Cyrillic alphabet, also called classical Cyrillic or paleo-Cyrillic, is a writing system that was developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the late 9th century on the basis of the Greek alphabet for the Slavic peoples living near the Byzantine Empire in South East and Central Europe. It was used by Slavic peoples in South East, Central and Eastern Europe. Among some of the traditionally culturally influential countries using Cyrillic script are Bulgaria, Russia, Serbia and Ukraine.