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ALPHABET

the glide between i and another vowel as in δυά=diya—is never represented, there was no occasion to use the Phoenician Jod in a double function. With Vau it was different; the u-sound existed in some form in all dialects, the w-sound survived in many far into historical times. The Phoenician symbol having been adopted for the vowel sound, whence came the new symbol or for the digamma? Hitherto there have been two views. Most authorities have held that the new form was derived from E by dropping the lowermost crossbar; some have held that it developed out of the old Vau, a view which is not impossible in itself and has the similar development in Aramaic (Tema) in its favour. But as Dr Evans has found a form like the digamma among his most recent types of symbols, and as we have no intermediate forms which will prove the development of from , though the form found at Oaxos in Crete, viz. shows a form sufficiently unlike , it is necessary to suspend judgment.

The Greek aspirates were not the sounds which we represent by ph, th, ch (Scotch), but corresponded rather to the sound of the final consonants in such words as lip, bit, lick, the breath being audible after the formation of the consonant.Greek
aspirates,
&c. It is not clear that Greek took over with this value, for in one Theran inscription are found combined as equivalent to , while the regular representation of φ and χ is and K , or (koppa) respectively. In the great Gortyn inscription from Crete and occasionally in Thera, (in Crete in the form C) and K are used alone for φ and χ, just as conversely even in the 5th century the name of Themistocles has been found upon an ostrakon spelt Θεμισθοκλῆς. Such confusions show that even to Greek ears the distinction between the sounds was very small. To have recorded it in writing at all shows considerable progress in the observation of sounds. Such progress is more easily indicated by changes in the symbols among a people whose acquaintance with the art is not of long standing nor very familiar. English, though possessing sounds comparable to the Greek θ, φ and χ, has never made any attempt to represent them in writing. On the other hand, no doubt Athens in 403 B.C. officially adopted the Ionic alphabet and gave up the old Attic alphabet. The political situation in Athens, however, at this time was as exceptional as the French Revolution, and offered an opportunity not likely to recur for the adoption of a system in widely extended use which private individuals had been employing for a long time.

The history of the symbols φ and χ is altogether unknown. The very numerous theories on the subject have generally been founded on a principle which itself is in need of proof, viz. that these symbols must have arisen by differentiation from others already existing in the alphabet. The explanation is possible, but it is not easy to see why, for example, the symbol Ϙ or = Koppa, the Latin Q, should have been utilized for a sound so different as p-h; nor, again, why the symbol for θ () by losing its cross stroke should become φ, seeing that the sounds of θ and φ outside Aeolic (a dialect which is not here in question) are never confused. On the other hand, if we remember the large number of symbols belonging to the prehistoric script, it will seem at least as easy to believe that the persons who, by adding new letters to the Phoenician alphabet, attempted to bring the symbols more into accordance with the sounds of the Greek language, may have borrowed from this older script. It is now generally admitted that the improvements of the alphabet were made by traders in the interests of commerce, and that these improvements began from the great Greek emporia of Asia Minor, above all from Miletus. Symbols exactly like φ, χ, and ψ () are found in the Carian alphabet, and transliterated by Professor Sayce[1] as v (and ü), h and kh respectively. If the Carian alphabet goes back to the prehistoric script, why should not Miletus have borrowed them from it? We have already seen that, in the earliest alphabets of Thera and Corinth, the ordinary symbol for ξ in the Ionic alphabet was used for ζ. This usage brought in its train another—the use of , not for ψ as in Ionic, but for ξ in the name = Άλεξαγόρα, and similarly in Melos, = Πραξικύδεος.[2] This experiment, for it was no more, belongs apparently to the latter part of the 6th century, and was soon given up. As the Ionians kept the form , which the people of Thera used for ζ, in the same position in their alphabet as Samech occupied in the Phoenician alphabet, there can be no doubt as to its origin. The symbol + which the Chalcidian Greeks used in the 6th century B.C. for ξ may be derived, according to the most widely accepted theory, from a primitive form of Samech , which is recorded only in the abecedaria of the Chalcidian colonies in Italy. In this case the borrowing of the Greek alphabet must long precede any Phoenician record we possess. But it is not probable that the Ionic and Phoenician developed independently from the closed form. Kretschmer, however, in several publications[3] takes a different view. He thinks that the guttural element in ξ was a spirant, and therefore different from χ, which is an aspirate. He points out that in Naxos, in a 6th-century inscription,[4] ξ in Nαξίου, ἕξοχος and Φράξου is represented by , the first element in which he regards as a form of = h. As χ is found in the same inscription (in the form X), the guttural element must have been different, else ξ would have been spelt . Attica and most of the Cyclades kept X for the guttural element in ξ (written or ) and for χ as well. On the west of the Aegean a new symbol was invented for the aspirate value, and this spread over the mainland and was carried by emigrants to Rhodes, Sicily and Italy. The sign X was kept in the western group for the guttural spirant in ξ, which was written X ; but, as this spirant occurred nowhere else, the combination was often abbreviated, and X was used for X precisely as in the Italic alphabets we shall find that F = f develops out of a combination FH.

The development of symbols for the long vowels η and ω was also the work of the Ionians. The h-sound ceased at a very early period to exist in Ionic, and by 800 B.C. was ignored in writing. The symbol or H was then employed for the long open e-sound, a use suggested by the name of the letter, which, by the loss of the aspirate, had passed from Heta to Eta. About the same period, and probably as a sequel to this change, the Greeks of Miletus developed Ω for the long open ō-sound, a form which in all probability is differentiated out of O. Centuries passed, however, before this symbol was generally adopted, Athens using only O for ο, ω and ου, the spurious diphthong, until the adoption of the whole Ionic alphabet in 403 B.C.[5]

The discoveries of the last quarter of the 19th century carried back our knowledge of the Latin alphabet by at least two centuries, although the monuments of an early age which have been discovered are only three.Latin alphabet. (a) In 1880 was discovered between the Quirinal and Viminal hills a little earthenware pot of a curious shape, being as it were, three vessels radiating from a centre, each with a separate mouth at the top.[6] Round the sides of the triangle formed by the three vessels and under the mouths runs an inscription of considerable length. The use for which the pot was intended and the purport of the inscription have been much disputed, there being at least as many interpretations as there are words in the inscription. The date is probably the early part of the 4th century B.C. Though found in Rome, the vessel is small enough to be easily portable, and might therefore have been brought from elsewhere in Italy.The Dvenos inscription. It is equally possible that the potter who inscribed the words upon it was not a native of Rome. One or two points in the inscription make it doubtful whether the Latin upon it is really the Latin of Rome. It is generally known as the Dvenos inscription, from the name of the maker who wrote on the vessel from right to left the inscription, part of which is DVENOS MED FECED ( = fecit). (b) The second of these early records is the inscription on a gold fibula found at Praeneste and published in 1887. The inscription runs from right to left, and is in letters which show more clearly than ever that the Roman alphabet is borrowed from the alphabets of the Chalcidian Greek colonies in Italy. Its date cannot be later than the 5th and is possibly as early as the 6th century B.C. The words are MANIOS MED FHEFHAKED NVMASIOI, “Manius made me for Numasius.”The Praeneste fibula. The symbol for M has still five strokes, s has the angular form , . The inscription is earlier than the Latin change of s between vowels into r, for Numasioi is the dative of the older form which corresponds to the later Numerius. The verb form

  1. ↑ See especially Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology for 1895, p. 40; cf. also Kalinka, Neue Jahrbücher für Philologie, iii. (1899), p. 683. Similar forms are also found in the Safa inscriptions (South Semitic) with similar values, and Praetorius argues (Z.D.M.G. lvi., 1902, pp. 677 ff., and again lviii., 1904, pp. 725 f.) that these were somehow borrowed by Greek in the 8th century B.C., while in lxii. pp.283 ff. he argues that the reason why the Greeks borrowed Θ for the aspirated t was its form, the cross in being regarded as T and the surrounding circle as a variety of an occasional form of the aspirate. Here also (p. 287) as in his Ursprung des kanaanäischen Alphabets, pp. 13 f., he argues that the two forms of the digamma F and , and also the South Semitic = ω, could all have developed from the Cyprian I = we. But proof is impossible without evidence of the intermediate steps.
  2. ↑ Inscriptiones Graecae, xii., fasc. iii. Nos. 811, 1149.
  3. ↑ See especially Athenische Mitteilungen, xxi. p. 426.
  4. ↑ Figured in Roberts’s Introduction to Greek Epigraphy, p. 65.
  5. ↑ Details of the history of the individual letters will be found in separate articles.
  6. ↑ It is figured most accessibly in Egbert’s Introduction to the Study of Latin Inscriptions, p. 16.
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