Contextualizing the Origin of the Greek Alphabet

Abstract

The Greek alphabet likely appeared as a functional writing system in the late ninth century BC in a particular eastern Mediterranean locale, but the process by which it took shape is one that stretched chronologically from that moment back into the Bronze Age, and geographically from Anatolia and Syria-Palestine, through Cyprus, to Pylos, Knossos, and other Mycenaean palace sites. This chapter examines that formative process as one characterized by various episodes of the transfer of knowledge between structured systems-transfers that left traces of operational elements of earlier, pre-alphabetic systems within the emerging alphabet. It further explores a scenario in which this alphabetic system could have plausibly found motivation and achieved functionality among non-literate Greeks operating within the multi-lingual and multi-graphic context of the complex armies of the Neo-Assyrian empire.