On the Transmission of the Alphabet to the Aegean before 1400 B. C.

Author(s): Martin Bernal

Source: Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 267 (Aug., 1987), pp. 1-19
Published by: The American Schools of Oriental Research
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1356964
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Transmission

the

On
to

the

Aegean

of

Before

the
1400

Alphabet
B.C.*

MARTIN BERNAL
Department of Government
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
This article argues that Rhys Carpenter's date of ca. 700 and Naveh's of the 11th
century B.C.for the transmission of the Semitic alphabet to Greece, are both far too
low. New finds of early inscriptions in North Arabic scripts, notably that at Kamid
el-Loz, revive the hypothesis proposed by Praetorius at the beginning of the
century, that the so-called "new letters" in the Greek alphabet derive from ones
found in Thamudic and Safaitic, for consonants that merged in Canaanite. As these
letters seem to have disappeared from the Phoenician coast by the 14th century
B.C., it is argued that the alphabet must have been transmitted to Greece before
then. Further, the hypothesis of an earlier date removes many anomalies of the
present schemes and makes possible a general theory for the many alphabets and
alphabetically-based scripts that are found around the Mediterranean and beyond.

nographers differed in their dating of the arrival

of these legendary colonizers. The Parian Marble
put them in the 16th century B.c.; other sources
put them somewhat later (Edwards 1979: 163-74).
These dates were generally accepted until the end
of the last century when the time of transmission
began to be lowered (McCarter 1975: 1-12, 1718, nn. 45-47). In 1933, Carpenter proposed a
date around 720 B.C.,giving the following reasons:
1) the earliest Greek letters resembled those of
eighth century Phoenician; 2) no Greek inscriptions had been found from before that date
(Carpenter 1933: 8-29).

The Phoenicianswho came with Cadmus...

introducedinto Greeceafter their settlementof
the country, a number of accomplishments,of
whichthe most importantwas writing,an art till
then, I think, unknownto the Greeks. At first
they used the same charactersas the other Phoenicians, but as time went on they changedtheir
language, they also changed the shape of their
letters. At that period most of the Greeksin the
neighbourhoodwere Ionians; they were taught
these letters by the Phoenicians and adopted
them, with a few alterationsfor their own use,
continuing to refer to them as the Phoenician
characters ((potvtKltia)....

In the temple of the

Ismenian Apollo at Thebes in Boeotia I have

myself seen cauldronswith inscriptionscut on
them in Cadmeancharacters-most of them not
verydifferentfromthe Ionian.

"ANCIENT" AND "ARYAN" MODELS

This lowering must be seen in the context of
classical scholarship as a whole, and of European
intellectual, social, and economic life (below). By
the fifth century B.C., most Greeks perceived their
history in a framework that can usefully be called
the "ancient model," according to which Greece
had been settled and civilized by Egyptians and

(Histories, Vol. 58 trans A. de Selincourt 1972: 361).

ther sources associated the introduction

of the alphabet with Egypt and specifically
with the colonizing of Argos by Danaos,
e.g., Hekataios, (Jacoby 1923-29; vol. 1:12, frag.
20). However, Danaos himself had Hyksos and
hence Semitic connections (Astour 1967: 9-112).
Thus there is no doubt that the alphabet had a
general association in antiquity with Cadmus and
the Phoenicians (Jeffery 1982: 819). Ancient chroO

* More details on the theme of this article will be

found in Bernal:The CadmeanLetters:The Westward
Diffusionof the SemiticAlphabetBefore1400B.C.
1

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MARTIN BERNAL

Phoenicians around the middle of the second

millennium B.C. This view went without serious
challenge until the 1820s and it was not until the
1840s that a coherent new picture emerged; that
of an Indo-European or Aryan invasion from the
north, which was completely unattested in ancient
literature. Furthermore, the "Aryan model" was
in place before the decipherment of Egyptian and
Babylonian texts was accepted by classicists and
before Schliemann's discovery of Mycenaean civilization. Thus the new model was not the result of
these new sources of information. It was the
framework into which they were placed (Bernal
1986: 29-54; 1987: 308-16).
It is helpful to distinguish between "broad" and
"extreme" forms of the Aryan model. The first,
from the 1820s, denied ancient traditions that
reported Egyptian settlement but accepted those
that concerned the Phoenicians. Indeed, Phoenicians gained in reputation as the Egyptians were
dismissed. This state of affairs ended in the 1880s
and 1890s with the onset of the "extreme Aryan
model," which denied any importance to the Phoenicians. After some uncertainty in the early 20th
century, the extreme model returned with full
force in the 1920s. There is little doubt that the
change from the ancient to the Aryan model was
related to increasing European self-consciousness
and confidence deriving from successful expansion
into other continents. Similarly, the rise of the extreme Aryan model reflected the growing strength
of racial antisemitism. Educated Europeans and
North Americans of the time tended to see Greece
as the quintessence of Europe and the Phoenicians
as very like the Jews.
TWENTIETH CENTURY THEORIES ON THE
ORIGIN OF THE GREEK ALPHABET
The historiography of the arrival of the Phoenician alphabet in Greece has been central to the
establishment of the extreme Aryan model. By the
1920s legends of Phoenician settlement in Greece
were largely discredited and nearly all the Semitic
etymologies for Greek names and words had been
ruled out (e.g., Cook 1924: 181-237; Gardner and
Cary 1924: 575-76). There remained only the
Phoenician alphabet as a remnant of Semitic cultural influence on Greece. It is rewarding to consider studies made in the 1920s and 1930s of the
transmission of the alphabet from the Levant to
Greece, in light of this "sociology of knowledge."

BASOR 267

Major efforts were made to isolate the borrowing of the alphabet and to diminish its importance. First, a categorical distinction was drawn
between consonantal and vocalized alphabets. The
latter were considered a Greek invention (for
doubts on this, see below), the implication being
that developing vocalized alphabets was beyond
the capacity of Semites (Carpenter 1933: 20). A
second effort was made to remove the place of
borrowing as far as possible from mainland
Greece. Carpenter suggested Crete, Rhodes, and
later Cyprus (1933: 29; 1938: 68). In the late
1930s, however, Woolley proposed that there had
been an eighth-century Greek colony at Al Mina
on the Syrian coast. Despite the tenuousness of
this claim and the complete lack of early Greek
inscriptions within 500 miles of the site, classicists
and archaeologists including Carpenter enthusiastically accepted this as the point of transmission
(Jeffery 1961: 10, n. 3; 11, n. 3).
It is curious that Carpenter, who so strongly
needed attestation when it came to time, should
have been so lax in regard to place. One reason
was that he saw it as more in the "dynamic"
Greek character to have taken the alphabet from
the Middle East rather than to have received it
passively in the Aegean. Jeffery, who was Carpenter's leading successor, has summarized another
reason. "The second point was well brought out
by Professor Carpenter:that only in an established
bilingual settlement of the two peoples, not merely
a casual Semitic trading post somewhere in the
Greek area, will the alphabet of one be taken over
by the other" (Jeffery 1961: 7).
In this reconstruction, it is axiomatic that
Semitic colonization was categorically more casual
and temporary than that of the Greeks, a contention for which there is little ancient authority. The
reason for insisting on the small scale and transitory nature of Phoenician settlements seems
largely ideological. They had to be so if Greece
were to remain the racially pure childhood and
quintessence of Europe. As Bury wrote in his A
History of Greece, which was still standard until
the 1970s, "The Phoenicians doubtless had marts
here and there on coast and island; but there is
no reason to think that Canaanites ever made
homes for themselves on Greek soil or introduced
Semitic blood into the population of Greece"
(Bury 1900: 77).
Thus alphabet transmission was unwelcome in
Greece because it would require substantial Phoe-

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1987

TRANSMISSION OF THE ALPHABET TO THE AEGEAN

nician settlement and hence racial mixing.

Marsillana Formello
Ahiram
Mesha
Samos
8th or 7th
7th
13th
9th
7th
The third way to diminish the significance of
the borrowing was to lower its date. By his exA
A
A
tremely risky positing of the late eighth century,
that
the
to
claim
was
able
essentially
Carpenter
a
B
I
4
passive Phoenicians had been impelled to sail west
I
1
I
by the Assyrians (1933: 18). What is more, the late
.4
date meant that what Phoenician influence there
3
had been in Greece had come after, not before,
91
-4
the establishment of the polis and the beginning
Y
y
of colonization, two institutions that could be
I
I
construed as Phoenician (Bernal, in press).
Although Carpenter realized that his late dating
0
required a uniquely rapid spread and diversificaI
Z.
tion of the alphabet throughout not only the
I1
Aegean but Italy and Anatolia, he responded, "I
hold it worse than absurd. I hold it unGreek and
L
1
hence unthinkable that it should have lingered for
I
any considerable lapse of time among this ini
:k.o
tensely active people" (1938: 69).
EB
0
Not all scholars were swept away by this kind
0
O
0
the
broadest
of rhetoric. For instance, Jensen,
p
)
alphabet scholar of the 20th century, continued to
date
maintain a 10th or 11th century
(1969: 456).
1-i
However, the only direct challenge to Carpenter
came from Ullman, the Semiticist who had previously proposed a date of the 12th century or
w
earlier. Ullman (1934: 359-81) agreed that many
Xq+
archaic Greek letters deviated from the forms on
the ninth century Phoenician inscriptions or the
y
Moabite Mesha Stela. But far from resembling
V
later ones, he saw the Greek letters as deriving
from earlier Levantine types and he insisted that
(P
an alphabet was as old as its oldest letter. He
agreed that the letters of the earliest datable Phoenician inscription-that on the sarcophagus of
Ahiram, king of Byblos-were very similar to the Fig. 1. Phoenician and Greek alphabets.
ninth century ones but where they differed the
earlier letters were closer to the Greek forms
(Ullman 1934: 359-81; fig. 1 here).
In his rejoinder to Ullman, Carpenter (1938: Montet's initial opinion (1928: 143-238) that the
64-65) implicitly took the position that an alpha- royal tomb in which it was found should be dated
bet is as recent as its latest letter. Thus he focused to the 13th century B.C. In the 1920s, palaeon K and M, the Greek forms of which resemble ographers, including Albright, accepted this date.
the later Phoenician forms. Although Carpenter During the 1930s and 1940s, however, Albright
did not address Ullman's arguments about the gradually lowered his dating until he reached the
older letters, Ullman could not withstand Car- first half of the tenth century. The reasons for this
penter's vigorous style, the relative power of clas- shift are debatable (Garbini 1977: 81-89). But the
result was clear, and by 1950 there was a sharp dissics and Semitic studies, and the spirit of the age.
Ullman was further undercut by controversy junction on dating between archaeologists and epigover the dating of the Ahiram inscription.
raphers. Two compromises have been attempted;
Apparently, archaeologists today do not doubt Frankfort (1970: 271) argued that while the tomb

YY

Nrt

h-Y

/
/V

-9

4q

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MARTIN BERNAL

Late
Proto-Canaanite
Variation

Archaic
Greek
Variation

Classical
Greek

Latin

1200-1050 B.C.

' VA
c94

'A>

A7
4

A
B
r

A,

D
E

a i1

B H
?

G'
H

10

12
13

A
N

14

16
17

1 1

18

Mt

19
20
21

ALPHABET STUDIES SINCE 1945

L
M

o o

15

.a
*9
,?f
't'

P'

99

t T

22

S
T

(D Y0
c Yt aX
W

vy

Hebrew or Phoenician of the first millennium

(Garbini 1977: 87-88). Garbini's position was confirmed in a paper by Gates at a meeting of the
American Oriental Society (1984), in which she
showed that there was a connection between the
inscription and the relief on the sarcophagus, both
of which are clearly Late Bronze Age. The significance of the 13th century date for Ahiram will
be discussed below; but in the 1940s and 1950s
Ullman's reliance on it discredited his arguments
among both classicists and the dominant school
of Semiticists. This assured the triumph of Carpenter's low dating and indirectly that of the
extreme Aryan model as a whole.

;! A
1 14

11

BASOR 267

;K't'X

u,v.w
-

C)

XI

Y
Z

'G is variationof C.
2Xfrom GreekE.
Fig. 2. Late Canaanite and Archaic
(from Naveh 1982: 180, fig. 162).

Greek alphabets

and the sarcophagus were 13th century, the inscription was later; while Porada (1973: 354-65)
maintained that the tomb was 13th century but
the sarcophagus was introduced in the tenth.
In 1977 Garbini tackled the problem in the light
of archaeology, art history, epigraphy, language,
and historiography. He showed that there is
nothing in the epigraphy to prevent a 13th century
date. Even more impressive, he demonstrated that
the language of the inscription shares many
features of Ugaritic not present in the biblical

After 1945, the ideological underpinnings of

anti-Phoenicianism were severely shaken by the
revelation of the consequences of anti-Semitism
but scientism and skepticism were unscathed and
most scholars continued to work within the extreme Aryan model. In the last 20 years, however,
they have been goaded into some reconsideration
by the rise of Israel, by Gordon's and Astour's
work, and by an increasing number of Canaanite
and early Phoenician finds in the Aegean (Bass
1967; Sznyzer 1979; Helm 1980). On the alphabet
the challenge has come from Naveh's article,
"Some Semitic Epigraphical Considerations on
the Antiquity of the Greek Alphabet" (1973: 1-8).
Working entirely from epigraphy, Naveh argued
that the uncertain direction of early Greek inscriptions resembled not the regular right to left of
Phoenician but the irregularities of Canaanite.
Similarly the stances of a number of Greek letters,
notably A and X, were not those of Phoenician
but paralleled those of an earlier period. He
further maintained that the archaic Greek H and
O resembled the Canaanite, not the Phoenician
forms and that A, E, N, , nI, 9, P, and possibly
O could be more plausibly derived from late
Canaanite of the 12th century than from Phoenician (fig. 2).
Naveh admitted difficulties with K and M.
Despite these complications he is convinced that
the bulk of the evidence points toward a borrowing from before the standardization of the
Phoenician alphabet. Accepting an early tenth
century date for Ahiram, Naveh (1973: 7-8)
cautiously put the transmission only some 50 years
earlier, in the mid-l lth century.

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1987

TRANSMISSION OF THE ALPHABET TO THE AEGEAN

Orhon Yanissey

Hungarian
Ls

Numidian
TF

Tifineh

Key:
Ar
At
B
BT
C
D
E

Arcadian
Attic
Boeotian
Bastulo Turdetanian
Corinthian
Dorian
Euboean

GI
IS
KL
L
TF

Greco-Iberian
lonian
Izbet Sarteh
Kamid el Loz
Lemnian
Tel Fekheriye

Fig. 3. Locations of ancient alphabets.

As is usual with breakthroughs, Naveh received

very little direct response, but he transformed the
debate. Most classicists had already been convinced of the ninth century date by new discoveries
of early inscriptions (McCarter 1975: 19-26).
American Semiticists, led by Cross, hesitated for a
few years. McCarter tried to find a compromise
between Naveh and Carpenter concluding with
the uncertain declaration that, "while the Greeks
may have begun to experiment with Phoenician
writing as early as the 11th century B.C., they did
not, for whatever reason, develop a true independent tradition until the beginning of the eighth
century. The Greek system, therefore, is best
described as descended from a Phoenician prototype of ca. 800 B.C."(McCarter 1975: 126).
Despite his protestations of orthodoxy and his
apparent acceptance of Carpenter, McCarter did
in fact concede Naveh's argument.
Since 1980, encouraged by new finds of Canaanite "Greeklike"inscriptions in Israel, notably those

from Izbet Sartah, Cross has come to accept

Naveh's position (1980: 1-21) and in this, he has
been supported by de Hoz (1983: 47-48). Thus we
now have a division between the classicists, who
maintain a date of ca. 800 B.C., and a dominant
school of Semiticists who hold that the date is
around 1100 B.C. In this article it is argued that
both are far too low.
DIFFICULTIES WITH CONTEMPORARY
THEORIES
A 13th century date for Ahiram undercuts
Naveh's l1th century date for transmission.
Furthermore, his assumption of more or less
unilinear progress from proto-Canaanite to Phoenician requires modification. While it is clear that
Palestine was using a Canaanite alphabet in the
12th century, some similar "pre-Phoenician"
features can be seen in the alphabet from Tell

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MARTIN BERNAL

BASOR 267

implausible to suggest rural Palestine or Eastern

Syria. Thus Naveh and Cross both seem absolutely
a
AA
A&V
right pace Millard, Bordreuil, and Kaufman, to
b
rule out any point after the establishment of the
>D
(k)
Phoenician alphabet on the coast (Millard and
g
d
8W
R
Bordreuil 1982: 140; Kaufman 1982: 143).
E
e
~3 ~ It is much more difficult to pinpoint any parkE
ticular Phoenician city as the site of origin.
Fk
rC
:
v
According to many reports, Cadmus came from
I
IT
I
z
Tyre (Edwards 1979: 46-47). Tyre was also ecoy~
h
B-t
nomically and politically the leading city in the
%0
?0
th
1Q
ninth and eighth centuries, and thus would seem a
I
likely candidate if the borrowing were late. If the
K
K
k
alphabet came somewhat earlier-from, say, the
A
I
J]
~12th to the 9th centuries-Sidon, which is also
+ A
WD
m
mentioned, though less frequently, in traditions
II
about Cadmus (Edwards 1979: 46-47) would be
n
the
+x
likely site of origin. Sidon was "the" Phoes/sc
nician city for Homer and the Bible.
o0
If the transmission of the Phoenician alphabet
1
rnrP
took place in the Bronze Age it would almost
M
S
certainly have been through Byblos. There is con1
q
firmatory evidence for this from the fact that
PPR
r
aq
or biblos meant "papyrus scroll" or "writbyblos
I
3~
TSC
in Greek. In any event it is plausible that the
s
ing"
TL>
{
western alphabets were transmitted before the 13th
Tl
TT
t
either because they came from Byblos or
century
YVl
A&W4'
u
4b
~ because the "Ahiram alphabet" was basically that
ph
of Tyre and Sidon as well.
N\lY
X
kh
Evidence from the west also raises questions
(f:
f
about the hypothesis of an 11th-century date.
3(h)
First, Herodotus' claim (v. 59-62) that he saw
"Cadmean"
inscriptions at Thebes from before the
t(th)
Trojan War (ca. 1200 B.c.) seems to be supported
by Pseudo-Aristotle (Mira. 133). Herodotus may
Fig. 4. Early Italian alphabets.
have been lying or mistaken but nonetheless his
testimony should not be summarily dismissed.
Second, there are the large number of alphabetic
dialects found in 7th century Greece. Analogies
Fekheriye, 200 kilometers inland on t]he Syrian- with alphabetic divergence elsewhere suggest that
Turkish border; and this alphabet has been ten- these dialects would have taken at least 500 to 600
tatively dated to the ninth century. Thus it is years to develop. The diversity is greatest among
plausible that outlying areas responded at varying the so-called "new letters," those after Y, which
rates to the innovations made on the IPhoenician have no Phoenician parallels.
These new letters provide a third problem, since
coast.
of
ansmission
they were present from Italy to Anatolia by 700
Taking the terminus ante quem trz
i
Phoenician
of
the
as the establishment
alphabet, B.C. Such rapid invention, dispersion, and variain tion seems to call Carpenter'sand Naveh's schemes
st
Landard
it
became
that
and the knowledge
the
over
of
different parts
period into question.
Syro-Palestine
Even more serious objections to the lower dates
1300-850 B.C., it becomes important tlo consider
the place in the Levant from which tthe western come from the many other alphabetic scripts
alphabets are likely to have come. It is extremely found around the Mediterranean, few of which
Pre Sabellic

Messapic

Etruscan

t N
oo?

rnLr

'1
?TCa

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1987

TRANSMISSION OF THE ALPHABET TO THE AEGEAN

have been considered in relation to the question

of transmission (fig. 3). Apart from the difficulties
caused by their very number and variety, many of
them make an 11th century date especially difficult
to accept. There are, for example, the extraordinary transcriptions of Anatolian letters into
Greek and Egyptian (Friedrich 1957: 107). The
most plausible explanation for these is that the
former retained their early spellings but were written more or less phonetically in foreign scripts.
Such a situation requires that the alphabet have
been introduced, an orthography fixed, and soundshifts taken place. All of these accomplishments
take considerable time.
Another problem is that the Phrygian and
Lydian alphabets in northwest Anatolia shared
with Etruscan a peculiar letter 8 with a value f
(Jensen 1969: 512-13; Brixhe and Drew-Bear 1982:
77-78). In addition, the Etruscan alphabet resembles that of the northern Aegean island of
Lemnos, an alphabet that was used for a closely
related language. Many scholars have postulated
an alphabet dialect cluster of Lydian, Etruscan,
Lemnian, and Phrygian. (Jeffery 1961: 299; Jensen
1969: 473). Given the ancient traditions that the
Etruscans came from northwest Anatolia (Buonamici, 1939: 92-95) and the plausible linking of
their migration to that of the Trs in the invasions
of "the Sea Peoples" reported by the Egyptians in
the 13th and 12th centuries (Gardiner 1964: 271),
the most likely explanation of the dialect cluster
may be that the Trs/ Etruscans were already using
an alphabet in this period. This is certainly a
much less cumbersome supposition than the others
that have been proposed (Sommer 1930: 1-7;
Hammarstrom 1931: 92-95). A higher dating
would also explain the considerable diversification
of Etruscan alphabets in Italy and the Alps and
would fit the theories of a very early origin of the
Germanic runes from these alphabets (Jensen
1969: 567-73; Pittioni 1941: 373-84).
Both tradition and inscriptions indicate that
there were other alphabets in Italy, some of which
contain features unknown in Canaanite, Phoenician, or Greek but found in many unexpected
places (fig. 4). For instance, East Italic contains a
which is given the value s or f
sign [t or 4,
1933:
224, 248). In Runic the letter
(Whatmough:
f the origin of which scholars are unable to
explain, isp (fig. 5). Turkic alphabets from Siberia
and a version of the Old Hungarian alphabet used
the same letter for b (fig. 6). In Spain the alphabet

Common
Germanicrunes

Nordic (later) runes

Danish

Rune

kkh
A

netic

runes9th- value
I
vaue 9th- th 10thcents.
centuries

u,ow

g, r

IM IL

h
.n

r
.ngr

$
I

Mn
pi

O cao1

N H
II A

itr

rei

k,g,ng

kaun

hagall

na.
n

"

I, C

iss

tI

tY,k/s -2,-,B
S

fp

hlc}1/1

I,t,
w

Na

iq,,d

KR

P P

SwedishNorwegian Phonetic

~ a<asd

R R
(<
I\

(2

runes

HH

?B

sol

t, d, nd

tyr

p, b, mb

bjarkan

ypq

T
1

I,t

I ,gr

9(nig)

I,

,k.

/I

Fig. 5. Runic alphabets (from Jensen 1969: 367, fig. 343).

syllabary called Iberian gave this same symbol the

value be (fig. 7). In Numidia it was p orf (fig. 8).
In Thamudic and in an inscription from a seventhcentury B.C. south Arabian site it is readf(Jamme
1969: 354; fig. 9), probably the value of the same
letter found on 14th century ostraca from inland
Lebanon (Mansfeld 1970: 29-41; pls. 4, 8; fig. 10
here).
The fact that these letters come from very different periods-1400 B.C. to A.D. 1400-does not
alter the significance of the geographical pattern
i.e., that all around the periphery there are similar
forms for identical or closely related sound values,

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?
8

MARTIN BERNAL

Orhon

Ycnisey

l4

Phonctic
value

Orhon

a (a)

Yenisey

>P

m
n'

i i

Phonetic
value

rf

It

oU

D
ad6

du

Oo
f

i'

.> 0

J33

b'
bl
bs

'r
33 I

nj

nd nj
nt nd

d'

qi

4J

1'

di

tr

VI

Jv

ql
9I'

to

d'

OA

ATro A

hh
It

/frP

h h1
+?^^

qt

oq u9
9o qu
rl*
r'

'f

i
It
'

Id lt

Fig. 6. Archaic Asian alphabets (from Jensen 1969: 424,

fig. 419).

a pattern that a linguistic dialectologist would

assume was the result of innovations at the center.
In this case the early forms found at the center
either have two equal legs as with the Greek I or
the Ugaritic =, or they have one leg shorter than
the other, F. Both can easily be simplifications of
f/. There is even a link, the form r. found in the
earliest Ionian abecedary' and in the otherwise
archaic Messapic alphabet of Apulia.
Another peculiar letter in this alphabet is a
"trident" t or th, which seems to derive from an
early letter with or without the middle stroke
breaking through, with similar sounds, found
around the periphery from the Ethiopic tet (, to
Anatolia and Spain. This, too, appears to be the
remains of a substratum, which antedates the 13th
century when the first "closed tets" are attested.
If Carpenter and Naveh fail to explain anomalies in the Italic scripts, their timetables are

BASOR 267

completely unable to cope with the Spanish syllabaries. These are made up of alphabetic vowels,
liquids, and sibilants. The stops are vocalized: ba,
be, bi, bo, bu, etc. These are made up of vowels,
liquids, and sibilants. Most of the letters and a
few of the syllables can be identified with Phoenician and Greek letters but many cannot. This
peculiarity has led some scholars to hypothesize a
native script onto which an alphabet was grafted
(Jensen 1969: 38). The dominant school, however,
sees the older elements as having come from
oriental syllabaries during the second millennium
(Maluquer de Motes 1968: 15). The theory is
based on the progressivist assumption that syllabaries must precede alphabets. It seems more
likely in this case, however, that the opposite took
place. Both Etruscan and early Roman writers
tended to use redundant letters syllabically (Jensen
1969: 525). In both Spain and Italy these were
plentiful: the dominant languages had merged their
stops into a single series. In Spain there seem to
have been still further resources in archaic letters
no longer used in Phoenician and Greek. Hence
the Iberian be from the ancient p. Similarly its te
and to could well have come from an outmoded
"open tet."
Historians dispute the date of the Phoenicians'
first settlement in Spain. Classicists still prefer a
low date but Semiticists and Spanish historians
now go as high as the 1lth century B.C.(Maluquer
de Motes 1968: 17; 1970: 71-76; Blazquez 1975:
11-58; Cross 1979: 108-11). Thus the older
Spanish signs probably antedate the 11th century
B.C. A similar situation exists in North Africa.
Neither the Numidian alphabet nor the Tifineh
still used by the Tuaregs in the southern Sahara
resembles Phoenician or Punic (fig. 8). These too,
may come from a substratum earlier than the 11th
century.
All of this evidence mitigates against an 11th
century date of transmission for Greece. Such a
date cannot contain major anomalies in Anatolia
and Italy and it is completely unable to handle the
more remote alphabets.

ALTERNATIVE HYPOTHESES
To provide a better and more comprehensive
scheme, changes of both model and time scale are
proposed here.

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TRANSMISSION OF THE ALPHABET TO THE AEGEAN

1987

Iberico~I
Iberico
_

'n--

Bastulo Turdetano
4

Iberico

Bastulo Turdetano
4

Pr

b~
6L

bo

m*

bu

a&.

RP?P

E5
-

O09

t
~.

+X+

rA/i
I

\V US LU

qq
q~r

c,o AAC

ml/i

YYVuT

r
I

<

(r4

I
$^ be rTr
I

c Q

bo,

Fig. 7. Early Spanish syllabaries (from Gomez-Moreno

ca

)I

A DaG(4(

CO
co o
O

CA<

(po(f

1962: 75).

New Model
The diffusion of alphabets should be seen as a
series of impulses from a first center in the Levant
and other epicenters crossing and overlapping each
other. It is impossible to plot such developments
on a "tree." Thus it is more useful to trace-as
with linguistic isoglosses-the "isographs"for particular letter forms, stances, directions, etc. This
has been attempted above with p and t.
New Time Scale
The latest period for the initial spread is the
middle of the second millennium B.C. This could
be linked to Egyptian expansion in the Middle
Kingdom 2100-1750 B.C., but more plausibly to
the Hyksos, Egypto-Canaanite conquests in the
Aegean which, according to the ancient model,
formed the basis of Mycenaean civilization (Bernal
1987: 16-46, 84-103). In Italy it would be associated with the considerable Aegean influence in the

Late Bronze Age (Pugliese Carratelli 1976: 24361) and in Spain with the arrival before 1500 B.C.
of the El Argar people, who clearly had Anatolian
and Aegean connections (Cerda 1979: 381-86;
Daniel and Evans 1975: 756-69).
In accord with McCarter's thesis (1975: 123-26)
two major waves of Levantine influence are postulated here; but their dates are seen as several
hundred years earlier. The second major wave
would have come with the Phoenician expansion
from the 10th to the 9th centuries, hence before,
not after, the Greek, Italian, and Iberian urbanization on the Phoenician pattern. It is hypothesized that new letters were introduced during this
period and that major alphabetic reorganizations
were undertaken.
Disadvantages of the New Hypotheses
Adopting these new hypotheses has a number
of disadvantages. First, the wave model is less
simple and elegant than that of a tree. However,

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10

MARTIN BERNAL
Numldian

phonetic
Berber

hortz.

Brber
horz.

OD

DC nuA
lill
1111
II

HI

d
h

I:
.

II8

n
s

El

s2

111
?1,

g (y)
p(f)

XX6

z
z

11

30

value

perp.

II

9 (alpha)

phonetic

Numidlan

value

perp.

h
t

00
?:E 3 Z
O -4=D Lul
0

m
3 EW t,t d
-z NZ 3
1t
k

q
g
r

t
t2

Fig. 8. Archaic alphabets from the Magreb (from Jensen

1969: 155, fig. 118).

Thamudic Sabaean Early Ethiopic

> hfi
b nn
c Do

i1

n
0

oo

ct
d" ^q
h yy

W 098B0
Z T1
h rnm'I

YY

U
u

a)
H

ea

mT

mrM3

[Dm

rT

4*H
Y
Q)
(D

Standard
Ethiopic

k fl

I 91L

m
n

J)
il

4*'

17
o<

8~
Ih

n
0

4 cp)A(p)T

S Alf
d

)(

t
t

+
s

S.

ES

)t
x

o--o

Fig. 9. South Semitic alphabets.

BASOR 267

the earlier clarity was only achieved by drastic

pruning and by neglecting masses of data. Besides
which, as in linguistics, in the exploration of
origins the informational value of alphabets bears
no relation to their success. Hence for example,
the Messapic alphabet of Apulia can provide as
much information as the Roman.
The greatest loss is that of attestation. The
new timetable requires hundreds if not thousands
of years of "silence," not merely in Greece but
throughout the alphabetic region. It will surely be
argued that the proposed changes will move
alphabet studies from a "positive science" into a
"field of mere speculation." However, in this case
positivism and the requirement of "proof" are
inappropriate. The best one can hope for in such
areas is competitive plausibility. Furthermore, the
"argument from silence" is an extraordinarily unreliable tool. Proof from absence is not a procedure approved of in natural sciences and it
would be laughed out of court by the "new
archaeologists"(Binford 1981: 195-208). In Greece
we cannot even be sure how long the silence is,
since large numbers of what are apparently the
most archaic texts are undatable, and we have the
testimony of Herodotus and Pseudo-Aristotle
that there were alphabet inscriptions from before
the Trojan War (Herodotus V.58-62; PseudoAristotle, Mira. 133).
Nevertheless, the new model does require substantial gaps. There are, however, comparable
lacunae. We know from the Bible that there was
extensive literacy in Early Iron Age Israel, although remarkably little evidence of it was found
for many years (Schmidt 1920: 67-68). Furthermore, rainfall is low there and, unlike archaeologists in the Aegean, those in the Levant have
expected to find such traces and have more or less
known what to look for. In Cyprus there is a gap
of more than 500 years in the attestation of the
local syllabary and in Crete, one of over a millennium, for Linear A (Gordon 1966: 13; Duhoux
1982: 101-11). A number of scholars have made a
plausible case for a "Tyrrhenian Syllabary" existing in Anatolia and Italy for a thousand years,
something that has never been attested. They have
simply found this hypothesis the only way to
explain otherwise inexplicable phenomena in other
scripts (Slotty 1952: 76-92; Wetter 1936: 114-33;
Pfiffig 1963: 144-49; Lejeune 1967: 40-59).
Another objection to the new model is that the
Aegean syllabaries or linear scripts ruled out the

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1987

TRANSMISSION OF THE ALPHABET TO THE AEGEAN

need for, or the likelihood of, an alphabet. Yet

there have been many biscriptural societies from
Egypt to Japan. The survival of one script but not
another is also fairly common. In Mesopotamia
there is massive attestation of cuneiform and very
little of the Aramaic alphabet. It is only in rainless
Egypt that the less formal-though regularscripts of daily use still survive. If similar destructions had taken place in Japan, there would have
been plentiful evidence of kanji used on stone and
coins but very little of kataka or hiragana. In the
Late Bronze Age Aegean the only attestation we
have is on clay. However, we now know from
Bass's sensational discoveries from the Kas shipwreck, that folded wax "note books" of the type
standard in classical antiquity were in use in the
Aegean in the 14th century B.C. (David Owen,
personal communication 9/3/1986). This explains
Bellerophon's nivai nTZcKTOg,"folded tablet," on
which according to Homer the OrilmaTakuypa,
"sinister signs or letters," were "written" (Iliad
6.169). Although these could have been written in
any linear script, the new find indicates that there
was "casual" writing in the region in the Late
Bronze Age and that there is no reason to suppose
that our knowledge of the scripts used there at the
time is complete.
The only substantive disadvantage of adopting
the new model that the alphabet was introduced
before 1400 B.C. is that such a model cannot
explain why the Greek Cypriots used a native
syllabary rather than the alphabet. This is not a
problem for the present model. If the alphabet
had been introduced in the 10th or the 9th century
B.C., Greek migrants to the island in the 13th
could not have brought it with them. Explanations
can be found in terms of the new model but they
are much more cumbersome. This loss of explanatory power is far outweighed by the benefits of
the proposed new model. Not only does this cope
with most of the anomalies in the old model, but
it explains many peripheral forms that have so far
been inexplicable. Before attempting to explain it,
however, it will be useful to consider the hypothetical "alphabet of primary transmission."
The Alphabet of Primary Transmission
There is no doubt that the pictographic Sinai
alphabet is both very old and in some way related
to other alphabets. Nevertheless, the relationship
is not direct and the reading of the letters is

11

extremely uncertain. In any event we are concerned here not with the Uralphabet but with the
alphabet or alphabets in use on the Phoenician
coast in the middle of the second millennium. The
best indications seem to come from the Ugaritic
and Thamudic alphabets. The former contains
almost the whole inventory of protosemitic consonants. It is generally recognized that although
Ugaritic was stamped in cuneiform, it was based
on a linear alphabet. Thus, although its letters
cannot indicate the precise forms of their prototypes, some may provide rough approximations
of them. (Fevrier 1934: 13-16; Gordon 1967: 4.2)
An Ugaritic abecedary gives information on letter
order; a partial list of letter names helps in this
area, too.
The Thamudic alphabet belongs to a group
generally known as South Semitic. This forms by
far the most informative sector of the periphery.
These alphabets are particularly conservative,
partly because many of them were used in remote
deserts but more because the Arabic and south
Arabian languages they represented seem to have
been closer than any others to those spoken in the
Levant in the early second millennium B.C. Thus
their letters have better phonetic correspondences
to those of the original forms than do those of
Canaanite, Greek, and Anatolian.
It used to be thought that the South Semitic
alphabets were enlargements of the "original"
22-letter Phoenician alphabet, but expanded to
accommodate greater consonantal ranges. This
theory has now been discounted because the
"extra" letters in the archaic South Semitic alphabets are known now to be independent forms, not
Phoenician or Canaanite ones with diacritical
marks, and also because, unlike the vocalized
'aleps and an anomalous s, the "extra"consonants
were fully integrated into the Ugaritic abecedary.
Thus, linguists now generally concede that the
22-letter alphabet is a reduction of a larger one of
27 or 28 letters (Garbini 1979: 38, n. 24; Naveh
1982: 30-32). The best known South Semitic alphabets are the Ethiopic ones and the Sabaean or
Minaean one of the great kingdoms of south
Arabia. While there is no doubt that theyespecially the Ethiopic-have many archaic features, scholars agree that the North Arabic and
South Semitic scripts are still more ancient (Jensen
1969: 337-52).
From 1930 to 1970, scholars tended to see the
origins of these alphabets in the seventh or sixth

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12

MARTIN BERNAL

century B.C. This assumption has been called into

question by the discovery of an 11th century
monogram in south Arabia (Jamme 1969: 354),
by letters from Baluca in Jordan with a 12th
century date (Ward and Martin 1964: 5-28), and
by the 14th century ostraca from Lebanon (R6llig
and Mansfeld 1970: 265-70). These finds have
revived hypotheses proposed early in this century
by Grimme that Thamudic should be dated to the
second millennium (Jensen 1969: 350-51). Thus,
where-as with p and t-Thamudic forms correspond with other peripheral forms, there is a good
case for postulating an original letter of that
shape. However, because it is easy to become
confused between simple signs, Thamudic and
peripheral forms can only be related to each other
where similar phonetic values have been independently arrived at. This is the case with the Spanish
syllabaries. Hence, the alphabet of primary transmission can be shown to be the "older ingredient
x," which with Phoenician and Greek made up
the systems that are only attested in Spain from
the fourth or fifth century B.C. (Jensen 1969: 293).
THE GREEK ALPHABET
The Letters to Y
Finally we come to the Greek alphabets and
consider in detail those letters that are particularly
useful indicators of its age and nature.2
A. Naveh (1973: 6) has shown that in both
stance and shape the A is pre-Phoenician, and
thus I would place the terminus ante quem at
1300 B.C. What phonetic value did A have? In a
patchy but important and fascinating article, the
historian of ancient art Bundgaard (1965: 1-72)
argued the three vocalized 'aleps of Ugaritic represented the earliest Semitic type (1965: 47). This
is clearly wrong: not only do they not appear in
other Semitic alphabets but 'e/i and 'o/u came at
the end of the abecedary and their forms show
signs of being derivative. This does not, however,
mean that they were not in the alphabet of primary
transmission. Thus Bundgaard's suggestion that
vocalized 'aleps were used to write Anatolian and
Aegean vowels is very plausible. For instance, it is
much easier to derive alpha from 'a than from
consonantal 'alep.
B. Beta has more variations than any other
Greek letter (Jeffery 1961: 23). In Thera it was
simply a Phoenician bet. In the rest of the Dorian

BASOR 267

south Aegean there were a number of derivatives

of pi with archaic "side kicks." The tenaciously
conservative, non-Greek-speaking Eteocretans employed a B (Duhoux 1982: 101-11) as did all the
non-Dorian Greeks.
The b sound did not exist in early Greek. It
does not appear in linear B, and b's found in the
later language either come in loan words or derive
from the Indo-European gW, which became b in
most contexts after the breakdown of the labiovelars. If, as is maintained here, the alphabet were
introduced before this change-and in the initial
stages of borrowing from Semitic and Egyptianthere would have been little need for a letter b.
For different reasons the same was true in Anatolian. Such conditions would explain why the
west Semitic b was not successfully transplanted
at this early stage.
B does not resemble any Semitic bet, and it
seems more likely to derive from the "backed"
Semitic mem seen in the Ethiopic P0 and the
Sabaean l. This is found throughout south Semitic, including Kamid el Loz as well as in southern
Spain and Carian, in which, however, it is read as
m, b, orp (Ray 1981: 150-62). It is quite plausible
to posit the same uncertainty in Late Bronze Age
Greece. With the reorganization of the Greek
alphabets-postulated here as having taken place
in the tenth or ninth century-B was used as b in
its proper Phoenician alphabetic and numerical
position. In the southern Aegean this uncertain
niche was filled either by an archaic pi or by the
contemporary Phoenician bet. The gap left in
most alphabets by removing the m was filled by
the contemporary Phoenician mem. Hence a similarity exists between early mus with ninth and
eighth century Levantine mems to which Carpenter (1938: 64-65) rightly drew attention.
E. Both tailed and tailless e's are found all
over Greece, Anatolia, and Italy. Palaeographers
have assumed that the former were earlier, both
because of their closeness to the Phoenician form
and because of their imperfection according to the
progressivist and teleological view of alphabetic
development. However, the Samian abecedary
from ca. 660 B.c. has an upright tailless E (fig. 1)
and there seems little reason to accept the conventional sequence. If the alphabet is to be viewed
as having been transmitted from Phoenicia and
not Palestine, E can hardly have been exported
after the 13th century when tailed e's replaced E
on the Levant.

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1987

TRANSMISSION OF THE ALPHABET TO THE AEGEAN

The third or antepenultimate Ugaritic letter

is conventionally transcribed 'e/i. Analogies with
neighboring languages, however, suggest that it
was simply 'e, which is how Gordon (1967: 5:1516; 31) treats it. It is striking, therefore, that
E looks remarkably like the E, E, he of Ugaritic
and Canaanite, with a diacritical mark. This
strengthens Bundgaard's claim (1965: 49-53) that
the "Greek" vowels were already present, at least
in embryo, in the Ugaritic vocalized 'aleps with
waw and yod. Thus, it is probable that the primary
Greek borrowing of epsilon came from a vocalic
reading of the West Semitic E. The secondary
borrowing of the tailed forms shows, however,
that the identification with he was never lost.
I. There are basically two forms of this letter
around the Mediterranean; the crooked Phoenician yod and the straight I. The isograph separating the two shows that the former occurs in
regions including Spain, North Africa, and the
Dorian south Aegean known to have been heavily
influenced by Phoenicians in the Early Iron Age.
Around the periphery one finds the I with or
without the "pin head" or dot seen in the South
Semitic yod T. The latter was necessary in scripts
using| as a word divider or a waw.
The yods of the Late Canaanite abecedary from
Izbet Sartah in Palestine have open "pin heads."
But the Ahiram form is clearly Phoenician. Thus
there is an approximate terminus ante quem of
1300 B.C. for the transmission of the straight I.
There is not enough space here to go into the
complexities of the sound value of yod. Note,
however, that it is extremely easy for y and w to
move from consonant, to glide, to vowel, and back
again. There are also indications that they may
have been used as glides and vowels in the Late
Bronze Age.3 In any event there is no difficulty in
deriving vocalic iota from an ostensibly consonantal yod.
K. There is no doubt that this letter resembles
Phoenician rather than Canaanite kaps. Naveh
has explained this by postulating that earlier Greek
had a tailless kappa used for both k and kh but
that, "Later, in the ninth century, wishing to
differentiate between the two sounds, the Greeks
borrowed the contemporary Phoenician kaf...
and used it for k: the older form thenceforth
denoted kh only" (Naveh 1982: 184).
This is plausible, though an alternative explanation will be discussed under khi.
_. We shall not discuss the complicated ques-

13

tion of the phonetics of Semitic sibilants and their

reception elsewhere.4 Graphically, it is certain that
the Greek letter derives from a "four square" or
"checkerboard" form. Whether or not Cross is
right to see it as the samek on the Izbet Sartah
abecedary he is certainly right to posit it as the
basic form (1980: 11). Both the E and the Roman
X can be seen as abbreviations of this. They
cannot come from the Phoenician samek in which,
as with the he, the mem, and the qop, the vertical
shaft had dropped.
O. Naveh has shown that the early Greek
omicrons with a central dot do not come from the
Phoenician circle but from the pictographic 'ayin,
"eye" with its pupil. This is not invalidated by the
dotted forms found at Tell Fekheriye. Thus the
transmission of O from the Phoenician coast
would antedate the 13th century.
Phonetically there is no doubt of the connection
between 'ayin and the back vowels and there is an
attestation of its use in Ugaritic as an o (Gordon
1967: 62, 16; Hopkins 1976: 232).
Q. Koppa appeared in most Greek alphabets,
and possibly some in Anatolia. Its strongest attestation was in the "Phoenician pale" of Corinth
and the southern Aegean, again with the exception
of Eteocretan. It derives either from the Canaanite
or the Phoenician, both of which had similar
qops. Koppa does not correspond to the South
Semitic, probably the pre-Canaanite, form (for
which see (D). Thus 9 could have been introduced
at any time between 1300 B.C. and 800 B.C.

E. Naveh has shown that this must derive

from the Canaanite form before the sin was
rotated to become W. Thus it probably was borrowed before 1300 B.C.
The "New Letters"
(. We are now beyond the Canaanite alphabet
and into the so-called "new letters." These have
provided great difficulty for Carpenter and Jeffery
as they are attested in Greek from the beginning
of the seventh century B.C. Since no parallels can
be found in Linear B or any other ideologically
sound environments, they would have to have
been invented, acquired dialectically varied shapes
and values, and diffused in less than a century.
Naveh's positing of an 11th century borrowing is
less unacceptable, but he too cannot explain the
origin of the "new letters." Furthermore, both
schools agree that the most archaic alphabets are

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14

MARTIN BERNAL

those from the south Aegean that lack these

letters.
The "new letters" can best be explained in terms
of the model proposed here. In reality they are
not new, but extremely ancient. They existed in
the alphabet of primary transmission but were
dropped on the Levantine coast in the middle of
the second millennium because of graphic changes
and the phonetic simplifications in Canaanite
(Harris 1939: 29-64; Moran 1961: 58-59). Their
extraordinary archaism in Greek came about because, unlike the first 22 letters, they were not
under constant pressure to conform to more prestigious Canaanite or Phoenician forms.
This is not the first time that it has been proposed that the new letters derive from forms
found in South Semitic. Praetorius (1902: 676-80)
proposed the connection. It was accepted by Evans
(1909: 91-100) who then derived the South Semitic
letters from Minoan signs. Dussaud (1907: 57-62)
went even farther, by reconciling the obvious similarities with the antisemitism of the times by
proposing that the South Semitic letters came
from Greek. Even this kind of speculation became
impossible in the late 1920s. Most scholars neglected Praetorius' ideas completely while a few
dismissed them with ridicule because of the supposed lateness of the Semitic forms (Jensen 1969:
463). Today this theory has been transformed
both ideologically and archaeologically, and his
hypothesis must again be treated with respect.
On 0, however, Praetorius appears to have
been in error. Using the analogy of the derivation
of the Latin F from waw, he argued that (D came
from the South Semitic "double-circle" waw, seen
in the Ethiopic OPand the Sabaean *. While such
an origin is plausible for the Phrygian-LydianEtruscan 8, it seems less likely for (. Greek phis,
in which the shaft stays within the circle, occur in
the Phoenicianized central Aegean; the southern
region did not use the letter at all. In alphabets
that on other grounds appear to be ancient, the
shaft projects clearly in both directions. In the
Near East, there is no example of a South Semitic
w in which the division goes beyond the circle.
Indeed this would go against what seems to be its
basic form, that of a double O.
Graphically, (F is identical to the qop universal
in South Semitic seen in the Ethiopic q and
Sabaean Q. Qop is always associated with back
vowels, hence the Greek koppa-presumably a
secondary borrowing. In Roman, Q, derived from
a later 9-like qop, was used to represent the Indo-

BASOR 267

European labiovelar kw. Could this not have been

the case in Greek? We know from Semitic that if
( was transmitted, it must have been before the
14th century, because after that the shaft dropped
below the top of the circle. Thus it is reasonable
to postulate that the letter was introduced before
the breakdown of the Greek labiovelars, which
evidence from linear B suggests took place around
the middle of the second millennium (Chadwick
1973a: 81-82; 1975: 808-11). In most contexts kw
was simply develarized to become p. Thus (
would have become a spare labial altogether
appropriate for ph, a sound lacking in Semitic.
X. There are two possible origins for the
western or "red" khi: T: the derivative from kap
suggested by Naveh (1982: 184) and Praetorius'
proposal (1902: 677) that it came from the South
Semitic h seen in the Sabaean t and the Ethiopic
vh. Graphically, the match between fh and the
Greek letter is perfect. There is however the phonetic problem that the Semitic het was clearly
distinguished from ha until the second half of the
second millennium. On the other hand, the fit k,
kh, required by Naveh is not perfect either, and it
is appropriate to remain skeptical.
The origin of the Greek "blue" khi, X, also
found in Carian, Lycian, and Messapic, is clearer.
Praetorius (1902: 678), Evans (1909: 94) and
Dussaud (1907: 73-74) all saw a similarity between
this khi and the Thamudic and Safaitic X, ha.
Presumably because of the frequent loans and
transcriptions of h as khi, they were not perturbed
that khi is generally supposed not to have been
spirantized in early times. Thus both the graphic
and the phonetic correspondences between the
Greek X and the archaic South Semitic X ha are
excellent.
T. This letter appears in two forms, "single"
in "blue" alphabets and "double" (with two pairs
of branches in opposite directions) in the few
"red" dialects that contain it. The reason for the
distinction is clearly that the "single" form could
not be used where the "niche" was occupied by
the "red" khi. It is, however, difficult to tell which
was the original form. Both have Thamudic
equivalents but other evidence5 suggests that the
"double"psi was primary but with a propensity to
simplify where possible.
To help clarify this, it will be useful to consider
first what sound or sounds the letter psi represented in Greek. Few if any words with IndoEuropean roots begin with ps. More Greek words
with this initial seem to derive from the common

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1987

TRANSMISSION OF THE ALPHABET TO THE AEGEAN

A B E I K
1700

on 9

15

cXpQ

1600
1500
1400
I
I

1300

I
I

1200
1100

1000
900
Fig. 10. Selected Greek letters.

Late Egyptian pattern of masculine definite article

p', followed by the sibilant. Others cannot; and
these appear to come from the Canaanite s. More
stems seem to come from the Canaanite z. These
include pseud- from zwd, "pretentious or false,"
and psor- from zwr, "scabby, loathsome." The
suggestion that v was used for "unclear"sibilants
is strengthened by the confusion within Greek
between such words as pseros and xeros, "dry,"
and ps5mos and zomos, "delicacy."
To return to the letter form; W. It is attested in
Hungarian as zs in Siberian as c2 or g2 and in
Phrygian as a sibilant. "Double" psis appear in
Tifineh as z and in Runes as -z or -r. The last has
been derived from Italian forms of the same type,
which have also been identified in Lemnian. Presumably, the Glagolitic and Cyrillic zhivete, jC
zh was taken from Runes or East European alphabet (Taylor 1883: 2.201). None of these alphabets
had a Greek psi. Thus one can suppose that these
letters and psi were relics of a widely known extra
sibilant, probably voiced. In Greece, because of its
redundancy the psi was used to represent the
common p' + s from Egyptian.
Praetorius (1902: 678-79) plausibly saw the
origin of psi in the Safaitic dal. In both this
alphabet and Thamudic it was written "single" or
"double" or "single with a check." However, in
none of the Canaanite loans z >ps is the former
an etymological dal. This provides two important

clues about the alphabet of primary transmission:

first, it indicates that this alphabet came from
Phoenicia, not from the Syrian coast further north
where d merged with d not z. Second, the transmission seems to have taken place not long after
the latter merger early in the second millennium
(Harris 1939: 36). Thus the most plausible date
for the transmission would seem to be the second
quarter of the second millennium.
f.
This letter has now been attested in the
Samian abecedary of ca. 660, and thus seems to
be as old as any other letter. It has several variants
in Greece; appearing as a circle containing a dot
or smaller circle (L. H. Jeffery, personal communication, Spring 1978) or as in northwest Anatolia and Etruria and possibly the Achaean city of
Phleious as an 8 (Jeffery 1961: 147, n. 1). In some
Italian scripts and in Runic the "struts"are turned
down (Haas 1965: 224). Jeffery (1961: 37-38)
argues that omega is an opened circle and that the
"struts" are secondary. However, the examples
indicate that the "struts" are relics of a second
circle. It is only on the assumption that the letter
was originally two circles that one can explain the
cursive co.
The common South Semitic waw was a circle or
ellipse divided by a line e. In Thamudic, there was
a variant with two concentric circles and in South
Arabic and early Ethiopic there are forms of a
horizontal oo or C. The shape of the Ugaritic 'olu

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16

MARTIN BERNAL

BASOR 267

JI tallies well with these. Thus it is probable that the most recent, precisely because they are the
the creators of its linear prototype used an archaic closest to Phoenician. Ionia and Aeolis were the
w to represent the consonant's vocalic reflex 'o/u. regions least affected by Phoenicians and Dorians
This would explain the derivation of omega.
in the Early Iron Age. The Ionians took great
With Q we complete the scheme for a Semitic pride in preserving their Bronze Age traditions.
origin for all the Greek vowels except for eta and Thus once one concedes that the alphabet was
the "new letters." Figure 10 sets out the corre- introduced in the second millennium, it becomes
spondences between the coastal Levantine letter obvious that the Ionians would have been the
forms and the early Greek ones. The solid lines people most likely to have retained the earlier
suppose a Byblian transmission and the broken forms.
ones suppose a transmission from hypothetical
There are other indications that the Ionian
conservative dialects in Phoenicia, although not in alphabet was the most ancient in Greece. It was
the alphabet of the Homeric epics and it was
Syria and Palestine.
To summarize, dating for the letters discussed is adopted as the pan-Hellenic alphabet at the
as follows:
beginning of the fourth century. It is usual for
scripts to spread with economic, political or miliB, D,X, T, Q: before1400B.C.
tary power. But by no stretch of the imagination
A, E, I, O, n-, E: before1300B.C.
can the Ionians be said to have triumphed in the
K, M: after 1000 B.C.
Persian and Peloponnesian wars. The reasons for
their alphabet's success were clearly cultural. Not
The other letters provide insufficient evidence only was it that of Homer but it was seen as the
on which to determine dating.
most ancient form, and this was considered reason
From this and the principle that a script is as to establish it as the standard form. This view is
old as its oldest letter, it is evident that the confirmed by the passage from Herodotus quoted
alphabet must have been transmitted before 1400 at the beginning of this article, in which he deB.C. On the other hand, the late K and M are not
scribes the "Cadmean letters" as being "most of
the only indications that there was a major re- them not very different from the Ionian" (1:58).
If Herodotus were being tricked, the forgers
organization in the first quarter of the first millennium. The alphabetic and numerical orders are believed that the Ionian was the most ancient
clearly based on the Canaanite and Phoenician alphabet. It would seem more probable, however,
ones and the o's in iota and rh6 indicate that that the inscriptions were genuine and that they
Greek letter names are Canaanite or Phoenician were examples of 14th century inscriptions with
rather than early west Semitic-or for that matter, vowels and "new letters."
Aramaic.
To conclude, it would seem that if we use all
the information at our disposal, in a relatively
logical and detached way, we will arrive at very
CONCLUSIONS
much the same conclusion as Herodotus and his
The discussion makes it clear that far from contemporaries: that the Phoenician or Levantine
alphabet was transmitted westward around the
being the earliest-as is commonly supposed-the
south Aegean alphabets of Crete and Thera are middle of the second millennium B.C.

NOTES
'This was discoveredafterthe publicationof Jeffery, Semitic Alphabet before 1400 B.C., forthcoming.
3Thisis arguedat morelengthin CadmeanLetters.
1961.Jeffery,does, however,illustrateit in 1982:825.
4SeeCadmeanLetters.
2I have completed studies of the other letters in
5SeeCadmeanLetters.
Cadmean Letters: The Westward Diffusion of the

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1987

TRANSMISSION OF THE ALPHABET TO THE AEGEAN

17

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