Greek Writing from Knossos to Homer: A Linguistic Interpretation of the Origin of the Greek Alphabet and the Continuity of Ancient Greek Literacy [Hardcover]

Roger D. Woodard (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0195105206 | ISBN-13: 978-0195105209 | Publication Date: June 12, 1997

Greek Writing from Knossos to Homer examines the origin of the Greek alphabet. Departing from previous accounts, Roger Woodard places the advent of the alphabet within an unbroken continuum of Greek literacy beginning in the Mycenean era. He argues that the creators of the Greek alphabet, who adapted the Phoenician consonantal script, were scribes accustomed to writing Greek with the syllabic script of Cyprus. Certain characteristic features of the Cypriot script--for example, its strategy for representing consonant sequences and elements of Cypriot Greek phonology--were transferred to the new alphabetic script. Proposing a Cypriot origin of the alphabet at the hands of previously literate adapters brings clarity to various problems of the alphabet, such as the Greek use of the Phoenician sibilant letters. The alphabet, rejected by the post- Bronze Age "Mycenaean" culture of Cyprus, was exported west to the Aegean, where it gained a foothold among a then illiterate Greek people emerging from the Dark Age.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...a very learned, thorough and informed work, and [Woodard's] conclusions are well worth considering."--New England Classical Journal

"...will interest linguists and historians of writing."--Religious Studies Review

About the Author

Roger D. Woodard is at University of Southern California.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (June 12, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195105206
• ISBN-13: 978-0195105209
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,745,569 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A benchmark in Classical, as well as linguistic, scholarship, July 18, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Greek Writing from Knossos to Homer: A Linguistic Interpretation of the Origin of the Greek Alphabet and the Continuity of Ancient Greek Literacy (Hardcover)

The Book Description above covers the basic trajectory of the book in some detail, so I will not elaborate any further on that. What the Description does not mention is the cross-platform of this book, which attempts to speak to linguists as well as classicists, and which does so in a highly articulate and clear manner. This book is an enormous feat of lucid scholarship that proposes no more than an argument (albeit one that is painstakingly well-informed), that makes other recent attempts in this field seem bombastic and naive by comparison (see for example Barry Powell's recent 'Homer and the Origin of the Alphabet'). This book's cogently argued pursuit of the vexed question of the history of the transmission of the Phoenician script to the Greeks is a very welcome addition that for the first time attempts to cast light on the black hole of missing evidence from between 1100 to c. 750 BC. In this regard it is the only book of its kind available in any language, and its clear method of argumentation from fact will no doubt secure it a high position among scholarship on the topic. One example should suffice to explain why. While the book does not engage the question of how a 12th century Phoenician dotted omicron appears in a Greek alphabet of the 8th century (whereas the Phoenicians had ceased to use it around 1100 BC), Woodard's book is so far the only attempt to account for how such a thing could actually happen: by exploring the thesis that a history of transmission existed between two different scribal cultures on the island of Cyprus.