Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet

A challenging and fascinating enquiry into the genesis of alphabetic writing.

Barry B. Powell (Author)

9780521589079, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 28 October 1996

308 pages, 4 maps 6 tables
35.3 x 9.8 x 2 cm, 0.46 kg

'[This] is an important book, and will be widely read by students of writing in other cultures as well as by Homerists, linguists, historians and archaeologists of early Greece.' Classical Philology

Who invented the Greek alphabet and why? The purpose of this challenging book is to inquire systematically into the historical causes that underlay the radical shift from earlier and less efficient writing systems to the use of alphabetic writing. The author reaches the conclusion that a single man, perhaps from the island of Euboea, invented the Greek alphabet specifically in order to record the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer.

Foreword: why was the Greek alphabet invented? 1. Review of criticism: what we know about the origin of the Greek alphabet
2. Argument from the history of writing: how writing worked before the Greek alphabet
3. Argument from the material remains: Greek inscriptions from the beginning to c. 650 BC
4. Argument from coincidence: dating Greece's earliest poet
5. Conclusions from probability: how the Iliad and the Odyssey were written down
Appendix I: Gelb's theory of the syllabic nature of West Semitic writing
Appendix II: Homeric references in poets of the seventh century.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]