Greek alphabet with vowels
Alfabeto griego con vocales
- Date
- c. 800 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Euboea (Lefkandi, Eretria) and Crete, Greece
- Credited to
- Greek traders in contact with Phoenicians
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What it is
Adaptation of the Phoenician consonantal alphabet, reusing surplus signs as vowels (alpha, epsilon, iota, omicron, upsilon), creating the first fully phonemic script. It can be learned in weeks, not years.
The Nestor's Cup inscription (Pithekoussai, c. 730 BCE) is one of the oldest testimonies.
What it led to
- Relatively widespread literacy that enabled written laws and an informed citizenry
- Fixing of Homeric epic and the birth of authored literature
- The basis of the Etruscan, Latin, Coptic, Gothic and Cyrillic alphabets
- Writing as a tool of public debate and philosophy
Built on
- Proto-Sinaitic alphabetc. 1850 BCE
- Phoenician alphabetc. 1050 BCE
- Proto-Sinaitic script
Made possible
- Latin alphabetc. 600 BCE
- Deductive mathematical proofc. 580 BCE
- Democracy, voting and sortition508 BCE
- Written contract with witnessesc. 450 BCE
- Iberian script (Paleohispanic semi-syllabary)century V a.C.
- Hippocratic medicinec. 420 BCE
- Library of Alexandria and catalogue (Pinakes)c. 285 BCE
- Bactrian script (adapted Greek alphabet) and the Rabatak inscriptionc. 127
- Armenian alphabet of Mesrop Mashtots405
- Georgian alphabet (Asomtavruli)century V (inscripciones de 430 y 493); tradición del century III a.C.
- Glagolitic alphabetc. 862-863
- Cyrillic alphabet of the Preslav schoolc. 890-910
- Written law of Draco and Solon
- Ostracism
- Library of Alexandria