The Early Greek Alphabets

Extract

The importance of the Greeks in the history of alphabetic writing is paramount. All alphabets used in Europe today stand in direct or indirect relation to the ancient Greek. Several other alphabets—some long out of use—were also of Greek origin. That the Greek alphabet was not an original invention, but was in fact directly adapted from that of the North-west Semitic peoples (including the Phoenicians, the Aramaeans, and the ancient Hebrews), is now the opinion of all serious scholars. That the adaptation took place in the first two or three centuries of the 1st millennium B.C. is the increasingly accepted view, though scholarly dispute on the subject, complicated by an almost total lack of positive evidence, remains intense. It is worth adding that no evidence has hitherto been found that writing of any kind was employed in Greece between the time of the Linear B tablets of Pylos (c. 1200 B.c.) and the taking over of the North-Semitic alphabet.