What is considered the first complete alphabet was developed in ancient Greece, and writing took place on stone, clay, papyrus, wax tablets, and parchment.
Date: c. 3000-31 b. c.e.
Category: Language
Background The earliest writing systems were not phonetic; the symbols used did not directly reflect the speech sounds of the language. Rather, the first writing was pictographic, consisting of simplified drawings of objects and animals. This limited system gradually began to include ideographic signs, which symbolized more abstract concepts relating to the original pictograph. For example, a pictograph of the Sun might also come to mean “day” or “light.” Eventually, logographic signs were added. These were signs invented to symbolize words but no longer had a direct pictorial connection.
Truly phonetic writing systems are those in which there is a direct connection between each symbol and a speech sound. A syllabary has a sign for each syllable in a language. A consonantal script has a sign for all consonants with little emphasis on vowel sounds. An alphabet has a sign for each individual sound.
Crete and Cyprus The ancient Cretans developed a writing system between the second and third millennia b. c.e. Their Minoan script started out pictographic and developed into a logographic system. By 1700 b. c.e., two cursive scripts, called Linear A and Linear B, were in existence. They employed characters that were made of lines, rather than pictures, and they were largely phonetic. Only Linear B has been deciphered. About a thousand years later, a syllabic Cypriot script was in existence on the island of Cyprus. Because it represented the Greek language, it could be deciphered and was instrumental in the decipherment of Linear B.
Greece With the Dorian invasion of Greece about 1100 b. c.e., the use of the early Linear B script ceased. The earliest use of a new script using the consonantal Phoenician alphabet occurs in 850 b. c.e. This alphabet was somewhat inadequate for the Greek language, which had many vowel sounds compared with the Semitic languages for which it had been used. The Greeks adapted the alphabet by borrowing signs for consonant sounds that did not exist in their language and using them instead to transcribe their vowels. By 403 b. c.e., Ionic script existed. It had twenty-four signs, with seventeen consonants and seven vowels. This is considered the first complete alphabet. Greek was at first written right to left, as were many of the ancient scripts. This phenomenon is not fully understood. Overtime, Greek writing changed direction, first to the transitional boustrophedon phase and eventually left to right. This change may be attributable to the introduction of the split-reed pen, cut from a hollow-stemmed reed in which ink could be stored. It had a hard tip, which may have resisted being pushed backward across the page compared with the soft reed brush. The Greeks produced a great body of literature using their new alphabet.
A large uppercase was used mainly for inscriptions on stone, and a cursive variation was used for writing on papyrus or wax tablets. Wax tablets were convenient for everyday use. They were slates covered with a layer of wax, and writing could be erased by smoothing over the soft wax surface. A cheaper material was ostraca, clay potshards on which writing was painted. Around the second century b. c.e., shortages in papyrus began to occur. Parchment, made from animal skins, came into use. Preparation techniques were much improved from earliertimes. True parchment was of sheepskin, but cattle, goatskin, gazelle, and antelope were also used. Only the hair side was written on. Vellum was the finest form made of calfskin, on which both sides were written.
Further Reading
Claiborne, Robert. The Birth of Writing. New York: Time-Life Books, 1974.
Daniels, Peter T., and William Bright. The World’s Writing Systems. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Diringer, David. The Alphabet: A Key to the History of Mankind. 3d ed. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1968.
_. Writing. New York: Praeger, 1962.
Jackson, Donald. The Story of Writing. New York: Taplinger, 1981.
Jean, Georges. Writing: The Story of Alphabets and Scripts. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1992.
Powell, Barry B. Writing and the Origins of Greek Literature. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Robinson, Andrew. The Story of Writing. New York: Thames and Hudson,
1995.
Vervliet, Hendrik D. L., ed. The Book Through Five Thousand Years. New York: Phaidon, 1972.
Worthington, Ian, and John Miles Foley, eds. Epea and Grammata: Oral and Written Communication in Ancient Greece. Boston: Brill, 2002.
Yunis, Harvey, ed. Written Texts and the Rise of Literature Culture in Ancient Greece. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Barbara C. Beattie
See also: Crete; Cyprus; Inscriptions; Language and Dialects; Linear B;
Literary Papyri; Literature.
World History
