Table of Contents

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.

Promotional Information

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

Reviews

' ... this is a book which is as remarkable for the ingenuity of its answers to difficult questions as it is for its useful review and compelling display of so much of the relevant evidence.' Bryn Mawr Classical Review '[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