"But , the
fifth century , says the Greek script was adapted from the
Phoenicians. He claimed that the loan had made through a Phoenician colony, the Gphyriens, who settled in
Boeotia. The Greeks used the term phoinikeia things Phoenician alphabet to designate them.
For Hyginus , the Fates created five vowels and consonants B and T and Palamedes added eleven consonants. This alphabet was then transmitted into Greece by Cadmus , the Phoenicians came up with .
Diodorus of Sicily says: Some attribute the invention of letters to the Syrians, whom the Phoenicians learned. They communicated to the Greeks when they came to Europe with Cadmus , hence it is that the Greeks called "Phoenician letters. For proponents of this view, the answer is that the Phoenicians were not the first to invent the letters but they only changed the form to form other characters, which then became common under the name "Phoenician letters .
Plutarch , opposing the opinion of Herodotus, asserts that Gphyriens, and therefore the alphabet, or come from Euboea Erthrie .
The distinction between Eta and Epsilon and between Omega and Omicron, adopted in the Ionic form of the Greek alphabet is traditionally ascribed to Simonides of Ceos (556-469).
Chronology of the adoption of the alphabet
Text of the Cup of Nestor (written from right to left).
Most experts estimated today that the Phoenician alphabet was adopted by the Greeks in the early eighth century BC. AD . The earliest known epigraphic fragment dates from this period (770-750 BC.) . The oldest substantial texts found so far are the " Registration Dipylon "and the text of the" Cup of Nestor ". These two texts, written with the alphabet "Cumae" (see below) back to the late eighth century BC. AD. However, some scholars trace the Greek alphabet to dates much earlier: the eleventh century BC. AD for Naveh (1973) , the fourteenth to Stieglitz (1981) and even the eighteenth to Bernal (1990) . J. February, however, considers that the Greek alphabet in no case earlier than the tenth century BC. BC: before that date, the Phoenician letters had not yet acquired all graphics compatible with Greek characters derivatives. It considers in turn the appearance of the latter around the year -900 .
Nevertheless, historical research confirms the thesis of Phoenician origin of the Greek alphabet, even if the hypothesis of a Phoenician colony in Greece is rejected.
Registration boustrophedon - Ionian archaic writing. Museum of Hierapolis, Turkey.
The Greeks preserved the words denoting the Phoenician letters, even if they have revised their forms and names. Thus, the A Phoenician, representing an ox, was named "aleph" by them. In the Greek, although varied in its transcription, is called "alpha" which indicates its origin, "alpha" does not mean anything in particular in Greek. Most of the names of Greek letters can be explained in a similar manner. The loss of meaning of the name change also accentuated the word itself.
Another indication of the Phoenician origin is the order of letters, the Levantine order , which was stored at the Phoenician alphabet and the Greek alphabet. In addition, the oldest known Greek texts are written from right to left, like all Semitic Abjad.
The alphabets used in archaic Greece of variances, especially as the writing direction was long undecided (from right to left, left to right and sometimes even boustrophedon ), although certain common features (the same mistake naming names of some letters from the original term, for example) indicate that imports into the Greek world was a unique phenomenon. By studying the local alphabets, it is possible to speculate on where this cultural exchange took place.
Restructuring of the Phoenician abjad
The majority of Greek letters transcribed approximately the same sounds as the Phoenician letters. However, like other Semitic languages, Phoenician included several guttural (Aleph , was first called wau, then was renamed digamma (by reference to the shape , similar to two gammas "stacked") long after its complete disappearance of language Greek .
The Phoenician sibilants also knew four, while Greece has only one. The samech, first left, was subsequently re-employed to record the sound .
Some new symbols, such upsilon, phi, chi and psi were also added at the end of the alphabet (that is to say after the tau). The introduction of double consonants can be explained by the fact that these are the only allowable combinations of consonants in Greek at the end of a syllable. Thus, all syllables end with a vowel or one consonant.
Alphabets local
Distribution of groups of local alphabets after Kirchhoff (1887).
Archaic Corinthian Vase: The names "Perseus" and "Andromeda" is written to the left, but "Ketosis" to the right. See also the orientation of the sigma.
From eighth to sixth centuries, local variants of the alphabet were developed. These alphabets are divided into three groups by Kirchhoff in 1887: it distinguishes between green groups (Crete), blue (Attic, Ionic and Corinthian) and red (Western). In these groups, letters used to transcribe the sounds "ps", "kh" and "ks" are different. Alphabets in blue, "ks" is transcribed by the symbol , "kh" by and "ps" by. In alphabets in red cons, "ks" is transcribed by , "kh" by and "ps" is not represented by a single sign, but either phi-sigma, or by pi-sigma based pronunciation. As for the green group, it did not contain these new letters. In the red group, we should mention especially the Cumae alphabet (or Kymi in Euboea). This writing is probably the one that gave birth to the Roman alphabet via Etruscan.
This type of loan is not unique: several people who spoke no Greek, nor even, in some cases, an Indo-European, have used the Greek alphabet and adapted it to their language forming alphabets pichoriques said. So, in Anatolia, the Phrygian, Lycian, and Lydian, Carian of. They have the distinction of having devised a writing system mid-alphabet (with Greek letters), mid-syllable .
Using these variants and a few others, we see that the archaic alphabets and the groups they are consistent with trade routes of the Aegean. From these studies it appears that the borrowing of the Phoenician alphabet took place in Lebanon today and the alphabet would spread throughout the Greek world, starting with the Euboea and Athens.
Changes to the classical and Hellenistic periods
This is the alphabetical variant blue Ionian group that eventually win the Greek world. In -403 , its use became mandatory in Athens for all official documents in lieu of the former variant penthouse. Its use, thirty years later had expanded to Boeotia and Macedonia. In the late fourth century, it had won almost all the Greek world . In -403, the Ionic alphabet had already evolved and used to transcribe the various letters e and o long and short, noting the letter H e along now.
| His | Old Attic | Ionian |
|---|
| | | (-) |
| | E | (eta) |
| | gold | |
| | | (omega) |
| | gold | |
| | | (chi) |
| | | (phi) |
| | | (xi) |
| | | (psi) |
Uppercase I or II century. Fragment of Euclid's Elements on papyrus.
The absence of a letter to the aspirate .
The introduction of signs diacritics , accents and punctuation in the manuscripts attributed to Aristophanes of Byzantium (third-second century) . However, these signs appear only very rarely in epigraphy where one hardly meets from time to time that points separating words or phrases, or horizontal lines indicating the figures . In the manuscripts, it was not until the ninth century that it will begin to be widely used.
The Ionian alphabet thus became a universal use in the Hellenistic world, is spreading around the same time as the koine, Greek town. Only minor local variations subsisted graphically throughout antiquity.
Fourth-century uncial page of the Bible
But at the same time, near the capital, angular, used in epigraphy, two different styles of writing were developed, adapted both to the use of ink and light media (papyrus or later , parchment and paper). The uncial or capital , appeared first, consisted of large letters straight, similar to epigraphical characters, but more rounded. In the third century BC. AD, while the uncial, which will be shown during many centuries of remarkable stability, continued to be used, especially for books, a cursive appeared. This model gradually deviates uncial, with smaller print, more stretched, more simple, with many ligatures . It was written for other (private letters, documents of everyday life ... ). Ligatures, as well as the advent of a final sigma () distinct from normal sigma (), also had the advantage of easy reading, ensuring the autonomy of words, that nothing separated ). In cursive, there are three successive styles: the Ptolemaic (third - first century BC.) Roman (Ie - third century) and Byzantine (from the fourth century) .
Developments in the Middle Ages
Cursive sixth century (private contract) on papyrus
Minuscule of the tenth century. Vetustissimus manuscript, text Thucidides.
In the middle of the ninth century uncial was replaced as writing library, a tiny characters with compact, rounded, from the old cursive. This innovation occurred in the Studion monastery in Constantinople. The manuscripts of this period are called codices vetustissimi ("very old manuscripts). Subsequently, this style developed, borrowing more items still in cursive: from the middle of the tenth century, it is called codices dilapidated conditions, recentiores from the thirteenth and Novell after 1456 (beginning of printing ) .
Tiny late fifteenth century. Text of Aristotle
At the same time as the tiny, medieval Greek script passed the spaces between words, but not immediately in a systematic way. Previously, the words are followed without interruption or, more rarely, they were separated by a mid-height or two points. Tonic accents (acute, grave and prispomnes) and punctuation marks were gradually used more regularly. The iota subscript (written now and not ) was used with long vowels in the thirteenth century.
In medieval manuscripts, ancient uncial were often used in conjunction with the lowercase for titles and to emphasize the initial of a sentence or paragraph. As in Latin, this habit was the basis for the establishment of a bicameral alphabet: lowercase are derived from their modern counterparts, medieval and case-uncial. As in Western manuscripts also the initials were frequently used at the beginning of the chapter.
The printed text
Printed text, taken from an edition of Aristotle of 1566
The first printed texts resumed course the handwriting of their time, which therefore does hardly altered. There is however a gradual decline in the use of ligatures and abbreviations. To count, it nevertheless retained the ligature (stigma worth sigma + tau), which had replaced the digamma to include the number 6. While retaining the term "stigma", he often substitutes the final sigma, the two characters are similar in their design.
The current alphabet
Current printed and manuscript writing and pronunciation of the names of modern letters.
Like what happened with Latin characters, a new handwriting has appeared alongside print. Some letters there are a substantially different.
In 1982, the spelling was officially adopted monotonic. We therefore abandoned the system of three accents (acute, grave and prispomne) to retain only the acute accent. Greek was in fact long since replaced the height accents accent of intensity. The initial aspirations remains silent a long time, the spirits were also abandoned.
More generally, the pronunciation of Greek has profoundly changed the course of a development started before the beginning of our era, mainly iotacisme and monophtongaison. But the spelling has remained conservative: many sounds now identical continue to be written in different ways. On the other hand, consonant clusters can now be noted that sounds are not represented in the alphabet but are present in the language, especially in words of foreign origin. Thus, for example, that the group nu-tau () can transcribe the sound Of the Delta ruling today DH; group mu-pi () allows writing that his B disappeared from the alphabet since the beta has evolved to its V .
Alphabets derived from the Greek alphabet
The Etruscan alphabet , used from the seventh century BC. BC , which later give birth to the Latin alphabet , is derived from Greek, through the colonies of Magna Graecia. It should be noted that the alphabet used in these colonies was not the Ionian alphabet but the alphabet used in Euboea. Thus the Etruscan writing derives not from the classical Greek alphabet, but an archaic alphabet type "western".
The Gothic alphabet , invented probably by Bishop Arian Wulfila is an adaptation of the Greek alphabet in its written form uncial.
The Copts of Egypt have used the uncial Greek alphabet, which they loved characters adapted from the Egyptian demotic, to write their language : it is the Coptic alphabet.
In the ninth century , the monks Cyril and Methodius Greek alphabet adapted it the same, still in its spelling uncial, to transcribe the Old Church Slavonic , creating the Glagolitic alphabet , the ancestor of Cyrillic.
Related articles
References
- M. O'Connor, Epigraphic Semitic Scripts, in Daniels and Bright, The World's Writing Systems, 1996.
- Herodotus, Investigations, V, 58.
- Hyginus, Fabulae, 277.
- Diodorus Siculus, Historical Library, V.
- Plutarch, Moralia, V, 860th, from the malice of Herodotus.
- N Stampolidis and V. Karageorghis, The Earliest Of The date inscribed objects, AW Johnston, The alphabet, in Sea Road from Sidon to Huelva: Interconnections In The Mediterranean, ed. N. Stampolidis and V. Karageorghis 2003, 263-76.
- Peter Swiggers, Transmission of the Phoenician Script to the West, in Daniels and Bright, The World's Writing Systems, 1996.
- / Span> Joseph Naveh, "Some Semitic epigraphical considerations In The antiquity of the Greek alphabet," American Journal of Archaeology 77: 1-8 (1973).
- Robert A. Stieglitz, "The Letters of Cadmus: Mythology, Archaeology, and Eteocretan" Pepragmena always Diethnous Kretologikou Synedriou (Heraklion, 29 August to 3 September 1976), Athens, 1981.
- M. Bernal, Cadmean Letters: The Transmission of the Alphabet to the Aegean and Further West Before 1400 BC, Eisenbrauns, 1990, isbn = 0-931464-47-1.
- J. February History of writing, Payot, 1984 395 et seq.
- In Mycenaean Greek Lakonia, Viotia, and Cyprus. See digamma.
- In the second century BC. BC at the latest. Cf. digamma.
- J. February, Op cit., p. 388 ff.
- J. February, Op cit., p. 410-417.
- J. February, Op cit., p. 401.
- See Diacritics of the Greek alphabet and J. February, Op cit., p. 406.
- J. February, Op cit., p. 407.
- See Greek numerals.
- The term is confusing, leading to apparent contradictions between sources: J. February and its predecessors have used the term "uncial" to refer to this writing from the Hellenistic period. She in fact has all the features. However, today we tend to reserve the term "uncial" in its medieval form, the contemporary uncial Latin (from the third century AD), and use the term capital to its previous form. But this name can lead to further confusion ("capital" versus "tiny", which appears literally the ninth century).
- A list of these is available at [1] , p. 16. According to BA Van Groningen, Short Manual of Greek palaeography, Leyden, 1955, p. 31-45.
- J. February, Op cit., p. 404 ff.
- J. February, Op cit., p. 406.
- G. Bady, Greek Palaeography, course elements, "Univ. Lyon, 2001, p.13. [2]
- Paul Hansall, Glossary of Terms Used in Paleography - A. Dain, manuscripts, Paris, 1949.
- See Modern Greek , writing and pronunciation.
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