The Early History of the Greek Alphabet: New Evidence from Ereteria and Methylketone
summary
Inscriptions found in new archaeology in the Aegean Sea, along with linguistic evidence related to Greek and Phrygian vowels , are used here to explore the origin and spread of the Greek alphabet. The "invention" of vowels happened only once, and all the different Greek, Phrygian and italic letters ended up coming from this moment.
The idea spread quickly, from not being written in the 9th century BC to casual use, including jokes, in 725 BC. The methanone port in the northern Aegean Sea could be a candidate for origin. A place where the Greeks and the Phoenicians did business together, with an international network; Is this where the Semitic, Greek and Phrygian alphabets first merged?
preface
The Phoenician adopted alphabetic writing, adapted by the Greeks in the 8th century BC, which is one of the most important developments in world history. The impact is almost immediate and far-reaching. For the first time, writing was not limited to the scribe class that served rulers or religious elites, whether in Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Levant, or in the syllabic linear B world of the Mycenaean palace system.
Writing was invented independently in three places: first in Sumer in southern Mesopotamia, the oldest examples are from the United States c. 3200 BC in Uruk (Mikarovsky 2004) and shortly thereafter in Egypt (Lopreeno 2004); appeared in the middle of the second millennium BC (Peyraube 2004); In Mesoamerica, Mayan glyphs first appeared in c. 300 BC (Brick 2004).
Mesopotamian cuneiform, the most widely used writing system before the alphabet, first developed in Western Asia in 2000 BC (Iselin 1982; Navi 1982), in fact, most of the letters can eventually be traced back to the Western Semitic alphabet (Sass 2005).
Importantly here, the Western Semitic alphabet was introduced, adopted, and adapted to the specific cultural context of Early Iron Age Greece. Using new archaeological finds, particularly from Erreteria and Methylketone, and in the context of linguistic evidence, this paper re-evaluates the adoption and adaptation of the Phoenician/Aramaic alphabet by the Greeks and Phrygians to create their own place. In the Mediterranean, there are many places where Greek and Semitic languages coexist.
As Barry Powell (2002: 193) notes: "The Greeks and Semitic Levantians mixed in the mouth of the Orange River, Yuboa, Boitia, Samos, Crete, Cyprus, and Italy." Other places have also been proposed, notably the Nile Delta, although evidence from Egypt largely came later than the adoption and adaptation of the Phoenician alphabet by the Greeks.
What is often overlooked in discussing the adoption of the Phoenician alphabet by the Greeks is the remarkable agreement between the Greeks and Phrygian vowels, which to some extent could not have been adopted independently from the Semitic script. The symbols for vowels are taken from Semitic, but represent Semitic and are largely redundant for Greek and Phrygian phonology.
New evidence from estrogen and methanone
Eretria, located in the central west, is the traditional metropolis (mother city) of metone, located in Pieria (Macedonia), near the Haryakemon River Delta and on the southeastern edge of the hot bay (Bessiosetal.2012). Early Yuboa settlers found a thriving settlement in Meketon, occupied from the last period of the Neolithic period, to the Bronze Age, the Early Iron Age, the Antiquity and the Classical periods. The city was destroyed by Philip II in 354 BC.
New finds from Eretria were found in the sanctuary of Apollo d'Fras, most dating back to the late geometric period (750–700 BC). Kenzelman S. Pfyff et al. (2005) published eight categories in detail: i) small open containers for drinking; b) a large artillery battery with an inscription after the shot (No. 43); iii) Closed small ships, 4 inscriptions after firing.
Of these 66 markings, I have stated only two, both drawn or cut before the container fires, both small open containers: a binary fish and an inscription. The latter keeps a small part of the database, written retrograde (right to left), done by a person who practices writing the entire alphabet.
Both were made by potters who worked in Erreteria in the late geometric period; They are not post-shooting markings, which may have been written later, although they come from a security background in the second half of the 8th century BC. More notably, these early graffiti and graffiti were not written by scribes in the service of the ruling elite, but by potters, which speaks volumes about the extent and use of literacy in the early days when the Greek alphabet was developing.
Bibliography:
Bartonek，A。 and G. Buchner. In 1995. The oldest Greek inscriptions in Pithekoussai (from the second half of the eighth century to the first half of the seventh century).
Blakely, USA. In 2012. Diamond fish in the Thracian Sea. Your Religious Profile
COLDSTREAM, J.N. 1977. Greek for geometric shapes. London: Ernest Benn.
