Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet

ISBN-13: 9780521589079 / Angielski / Miękka / 1996 / 308 str.

Barry B. Powell

Opis

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.

Recenzje

'[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

Spis treści

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.