The Early Greek Alphabets: Origin, Diffusion, Uses 1st Edition

The Early Greek Alphabets: Origin, Diffusion, Uses 1st Edition – Ebook Instant Download/Delivery ISBN(s): 9780198859949,0198859945,9780192603838, 0192603833

Product details:

• ISBN-10: 0192603833
• ISBN-13: 9780192603838
• Author: Robert Parker, Philippa M. Steele

The birth of the Greek alphabet marked a new horizon in the history of writing, as the vowelless Phoenician alphabet was borrowed and adapted to write vowels as well as consonants. Rather than creating a single unchanging new tradition, however, its earliest attestations show a very great degree of diversity, as areas of the Greek-speaking world established their own regional variants. This volume asks how, when, where, by whom and for what purposes Greek alphabetic writing developed. Anne Jeffery’s Local Scripts of Archaic Greece (1961), re-issued with a valuable supplement in 1990, was an epoch-making contribution to the study of these issues. But much important new evidence has emerged even since 1987, and debate has continued energetically about all the central issues raised by Jeffery’s book: the date at which the Phoenician script was taken over and adapted to write vowels with separate signs; the priority of Phrygia or Greece in that process; the question whether the adaptation happened once, and the resulting alphabet then spread outwards, or whether similar adaptations occurred independently in several paces; if the adaptation was a single event, the region where it occurred, and the explanation for the many divergences in local script; what the scripts tell us about the regional divisions of archaic Greece. There has also been a flourishing debate about the development and functions of literacy in archaic Greece. The contributors to this volume bring a range of perspectives to bear in revisiting Jeffery’s legacy, including chapters which extend the scope beyond Jeffery, by considering the fortunes of the Greek alphabet in Etruria, in southern Italy, and on coins.

Table contents:

1. Introduction

2. The Genesis of the Local Alphabets of Archaic Greece

3. Sounds, Signs, and Boundaries: Perspectives on Early Greek Alphabetic Writing

4. Writing and Pre-Writing in Early Archaic Methone and Eretria

5. Contextualizing the Origin of the Greek Alphabet

6. Dodona and the Concept of Local Scripts

7. The Pronunciation of Upsilon and Related Matters: A U-Turn

8. Letter Forms and Distinctive Spellings: Date and Context of the ‘New Festival Calendar from Arkadia’

9. Local Scripts on Archaic Coins: Distribution and Function

10. Regions within Regions: Patterns of Epigraphic Habits within Archaic Crete

11. New Archaic Inscriptions: Attica, the Attic-Ionic Islands of the Cyclades, and the Doric Islands

12. Boiotian Inscriptions in Epichoric Script: A Conspectus of Recent Discoveries

13. Etruria between the Iron Age and Orientalizing Period and the Adoption of Alphabetic Writing

14. The Greek Alphabet in South-East Italy: Literacy and the Culture of Writing between Greeks and Non-Greeks

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