The Alphabet
The Transmission of the Semitic Alphabet and Literacy to the West
Exerts taken from The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age by Walter Burkert.
It is generally and freely accepted that in the Bronze Age there were close contacts between Anatolia, the Semitic East, Egypt, and the Mycenaen world, that some “Aegead koine” can be found to characterize the thirteenth century B.C. One can refer to Mycenaen imports in Ugarit; Alasia-Cyprus is mentioned as a nexus of East-West connections; Hesiod and Homer are also viewed from this perspective. What is much less in focus is the “orientalizing period” of the century between approximately 750-650 B.C.-that is the Homeric epoch, when as well as eastern skills and images, the Semitic art of writing was transmitted to the Greece and made the recording of Greek literature possible for the first time.
Fig.
1 Before transmitting the alphabet to the West the people of the Middle East
were prolific writers having a school tradition going back over a thousand
years.
The Assyrian expansion to the Mediterranean together with the spread of trade in metal ores in the whole area provides a persuasive historical framework for the movement of eastern craftsmen to the West, as well as for the spread of Phoenician-Greek alphabet.
There is much to substantiate the idea that Cyprus had a role to play as an intermediary station in the transmission of writing: The distinctive designation of the Greek letters as Phoinikeia seems to presuppose that other “scribblings” (grammata) were known from which the Phoenician were different. This was the case only on Cyprus, where a linear script of Mycenaen type had been adapted to the Greek and persisted to Hellenistic times; the first document now known for its use in writing Greek dates from the eleventh century.
[T]he change of direction from line to line, called bustrophedon, (from right-left to left-right) as often practiced in early Greek writing, is also found in some Phoenician documents and is common in late Hittite hieroglyphs.
[T]he argument employed with great success at one time, that the great differences which appear from the start among local Greek alphabets presupposes a “long development” stretching over many decades, if not centuries, has been firmly refuted by Lilian Jeffery. The so-called development, or rather the process of transmission, including some errors in copying, idiosyncrasies of “hands,” and some intentional additions did happen extremely fast, within a few decades, if not years, reaching even the Phrygians in one direction and the Etruscans in the other near simultaneously.
In the increasing quantity of Greek geometric ceramics which can be classified and dated with a reasonable degree of precision, not a single scribbling has so far been discovered that looks like a Greek letter before, say, 770 BC, while in the decades from 750 to about 700 there are now dozens and dozens of documents. A cultural explosion has happened here; there is nothing to suggest that the Greek alphabet had been in hiding for centuries before that date. Thus the existence of Greek script in the tenth and even in the ninth century appears, from the state of things, to be virtually impossible.
Fig.
2 A pair of scribes, one with a clay tablet and one with a writing scroll,
filing reports after the conquest of a Babylonian city; detail from the stone
decoration of Tiglath-pileser III's Central Palace at Nimrud (BM ANE 118882).
The Greek reference to “Phoenicians” cannot be taken to mean that Phoenicians in the narrower sense-that is, the inhabitants of Byblos, Sidon, and Tyre – must have been the source. Phoenicians or Aramaeans from North Syria remain an equivalent option.
For the manner in which the transmission of writing occurred there is an invaluable clue, even if it is often overlooked: the Greek names of the letters (alpha, beta, gamma, and so on) with their unalterable order. These are Semitic words –bull, house, and so on- which have no sense at all in Greek. They were preserved for one particular reason: All teaching of reading and writing began with learning the sequence by heart. This explains also why much earlier the standardized sequence appears in two completely different Semitic alphabetic scripts., in the Ugaritic cuneiform alphabet attested in the thirteenth century and in the “Phoenician” alphabet, evidence of which has now been uncovered from as early as the twelfth century. Even across language barriers, the same mnemonic sequence was learned by rote in the same way. With the alphabetic script, for the first time a system of writing had come into being which was so simple that it could be used by all people of normal intelligence even outside the circles of learned professional scribes; they need to be taught for only a short time and to get some practice in handwriting. We may form some picture of the teaching of writing in the Syro-Palestinian regions. When much later we read in Josephus that “of all those who dealt with the Greeks, the Phoenicians used writing the most, for private business as well as for their public affairs,” he was referring to a school tradition going back a thousand years.
| Name | Semitic Meaning | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Phoenician | Aramaic | Greek | Latin | Hebrew | Arabic | Syriac | ||
| 1050 BCE | 800 BCE | 750 BCE | 700 BCE | 500 BCE | 400 CE | 1200 CE | ||
| ʼāleph | ox |
 |
 |
Αα | Aa | א | ﺍ | ܐ |
| bēth | house (Arabic: بيت) (Hebrew: בית) |
 |
 |
Ββ | Bb | ב | ﺏ | ܒ |
| gīmel | camel (Arabic: جمل/بعير) (Hebrew: גמל) |
 |
 |
Γγ | Cc, Gg | ג | ﺝ | ܓ |
| dāleth | door (Hebrew: דלת) |
 |
 |
Δδ | Dd | ד | د,ذ | ܕ |
| hē | window |
 |
 |
Εε | Ee | ה | هـ | ܗ |
| wāw | hook(Hebrew: וו) |
 |
 |
Υυ, (Ϝϝ) | Yy, Ff, Vv, Uu, Ww | ו | ﻭ | ܘ |
| zayin | weapon (Hebrew: כלי זין) |
 |
 |
Ζζ | Zz | ז | ﺯ | ܙ |
| ḥēth | wall (Arabic: حيط) |
 |
 |
Ηη | Hh | ח | ح,خ | ܚ |
| ṭēth | good |
 |
 |
Θθ | ט | ط,ظ | ܛ | |
| yōdh | hand (Arabic: يد) (Hebrew: יד) |
 |
 |
Ιι | Ii, Jj | י | ي | ܝ |
| kaph | palm (of a hand) (Arabic: كفّ) (Hebrew: כף) |
 |
 |
Κκ | Kk | כך | ﻙ | ܟ |
| lāmedh | goad |
 |
 |
Λλ | Ll | ל | ﻝ | ܠ |
| mēm | water (Arabic: ماء /maː/) (Hebrew: מים /ˈmajim/) |
 |
 |
Μμ | Mm | מם | ﻡ | ܡ |
| nun | serpent |
 |
 |
Νν | Nn | נן | ﻥ | ܢ |
| sāmekh |
fish (Arabic:
سمكة
/ˈsamaka/=fish) (Hebrew:
שמך
/ˈʃemeχ/=Trout) pillar |
 |
 |
Ξξ, poss. Χχ | poss. Xx | ס | س | ܣ / ܤ |
| ʼayin | eye (Arabic: عين) (Hebrew: עין) |
 |
 |
Οο | Oo | ע | ع,غ | ܥ |
| pē | mouth (Arabic: فم) (Hebrew: פה) |
 |
 |
Ππ | Pp | פף | ﻑ | ܦ |
| ṣādē | papyrus plant |
 |
 ,
 |
(Ϻϻ) | צץ | ص,ض | ܨ | |
| qōph | eye of a needle (Hebrew: קוף) |
 |
 |
(Ϙϙ) | ק | ﻕ | ܩ | |
| rēš | head (Arabic: راْس) (Hebrew: ראש) |
 |
 |
Ρρ | Rr | ר | ﺭ | ܪ |
| šin | tooth (Arabic: سن) (Hebrew: שן) |
 |
 |
Σσς | Ss | ש | ش | ܫ |
| tāw | mark (Hebrew: תו) |
 |
 |
Ττ | Tt | ת | ت,ث | ܬ |
Table 1 A table showing the transmission of the alphabet from East to West. Extracted from various tables in Wikipedia.
The Semitic letter names alpha, beta, and so on occur in Greek literature in the fifth century at their earliest, but they must have been in current use ever since the eight century, as they had been adopted along with the original alphabet; that those meaningless word patterns should have been introduced into Greek at any later time is quite impossible.
The Latin alphabet can serve as counterproof: Writers of Latin did not adopt the ancient Phoenician mnemonic sequence; rather, they let the vowels sound for themselves and added an e-vowel to the consonants, as the Greeks had already done with their additional letters γ Ω on the one hand and Φ Χ Ψ, pronounced “phee,” “khee,” “psee,” on the other; but even so Latins and Romans started school by learning their a be ce - as we still do today. It is remarkable that in this respect the Greek practice has remained closer to Phoenician-Aramaic school tradition than the Latin did to the Greek.
Thus it is clear that the adoption of the Phoenician script by the Greeks was more than the copying of letter forms; it included the transmission of the technique of teaching and learning how to read and write.
As contact with Egypt became more frequent, papyrus, being so much cheaper and lighter, became the dominant writing material. It was called byblos from the Phoenician trading post Gubla/Byblos, or chartes, a foreign word of unknown origin. It seems that papyrus became available at the earliest in the era of Psammetichus, about 660, or more probably only when the Greeks settled at Naukratis around 600.
Akkadian cuneiform side by side with Aramaic, Phoenician, and Greek alphabetic script produces a continuum of written culture in the eight century which stretches from the Euphrates to Italy.
In any event, the fashionable claim that the Greeks adopted only the alphabet from so-called Phoenicians and created all the further achievements of their written culture on their own should be approached with caution. Writing tablets and leather scrolls at the very least came with the script and moulded the techniques and concept of the book. There was no tabula rasa. So much of Semitic written culture has been completely lost that general probability would suggest that rather there were far more numerous, richer, and denser connections than can be demonstrated by the meagre remains available.
It is well known that a large part of the Greek vocabulary lacks any adequate Indo-European etymology; but it has become a fashion to prefer connections with a putative Aegean substratum or with Anatolian parallels, which involves dealing with largely unknown spheres instead of pursuing connections to the well-known Semitic languages.
Beloch even wanted to separate the Rhodian Zeus atabyiros from Mount Atabyrion=Tabor, the mountain in Palestine, in favour of vague Anatolian resonances. Anti-Semitism was manifest in this case; elsewhere it was often operating on an unseen level. Even first-rank Indo-Europeanists have made astonishing misjudgements; the number of Semitic loan-words in the Greek language is “quite insignificantly small” (Debrunner); “indeed they don’t even reach double figures” (Meillet). They seem to have forgotten even the fifteen Semitic letter names. Emilie Masson, in her highly restrictive critical work (1967) has nevertheless established thirty-seven definite and twelve possible Semitic words in the Greek language; using less rigid parameters Oswald Szemerenyi was able to add another dozen; there is no shortage of further attempts. Some of this material requires careful checking; but additional findings also are by no means to be excluded. This much is certain: There is a marked presence of Semitic loan-words in Greek.
Source: The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age by Walter Burkert.
