For example, in Cyrillic, the letter ve (Cyrillic) ("ve") stands for , confirming that beta was pronounced as a fricative by the 9th century AD, while the new letter be (Cyrillic) ("be") was invented to note the sound . Conversely, in Gothic, the letter derived from beta stands for , so in the 4th century AD, beta may have still been a plosive in Greek although according to evidence from the Greek papyri of Egypt, beta as a stop had been generally replaced by beta as a voiced bilabial fricative by the first century AD.