The volume edited by Parker and Steele originates from a conference held in Oxford in 2016 in honour of L.H. Jeffery. It presents, through a balanced structure, the theoretical approaches to the origin of writing, its diffusion and use, while raising all the relevant questions and tapping into the long tradition of scholarship on the subject. It does this by starting from and by drawing a contrast with Jeffery's work, the yardstick for the contributors who constantly engage with the scholar and her most important legacy: her working method. In an effort to unravel the complex and often multifaceted questions addressed, the volume features a dialogical structure in which several essays look at the same questions from different angles, thus offering valuable insights.
In the first part, ‘Origins’, the first two chapters address the question of the geographical origin, time and diffusion of the alphabet and the development of local alphabets. R. Wachter discusses his idea of the birth, development and dissemination of alphabets, which he describes as ‘something behind the texts … with a highly systematic character’ (p. 21), recalling the ‘paradox’ between the need for a well-functioning alphabet to have a precise correspondence between sign and sound and an equally precise sequence, in order for it to be taught and learned, against the changing and diversified nature of early alphabets. Wachter courageously provides some milestones on the topic – though not always demonstrable: (i) the alphabet found in the earliest surviving texts is not the Greek ‘Uralphabet’; (ii) the Greek alphabet was born in a few days before spreading throughout the Greek world in a few weeks; (iii) it was invented once in a specific place; (iv) the alphabet reforms occurred at the beginning of their stabilisation; (v) finally Wachter stresses the importance of abecedaria in the study of the origin of the local alphabets.
N. Luraghi deals with the same issues more cautiously, emphasising the historical and social context that allowed the adaptation of the Phoenician alphabet. Luraghi highlights the fundamental difference between ‘alphabetic writing as such’ and the use of a series of signs to write, for example, one's name, stressing how this oral stage of writing, i.e. the use of memorised sequences, would have characterised its early stages. According to Luraghi, (i) writing entailed a long process; (ii) it was invented once in a specific place. Picking up on G.R. Cardona's fundamental ideas on the birth of writing, Luraghi reminds us that ‘writing is, among the social practices that are taught and learned, one of the most formalized’ (p. 41) and that therefore the process of adaptation from the Phoenician alphabet was carried out by ‘specialists’ immersed in an environment where multiple forms of writing and multiple languages were used.
The question of ‘for what purpose’ is addressed in a paper by R. Thomas who, starting from the recent discovery of eighth-century graffiti, mostly marks or single letters, at Methone and Eretria, innovatively reflects on the use of non-alphabetical or para-alphabetical signs on ceramics as the first means of learning and developing writing, pointing out how ‘“literacy” comes in numerous different manifestations, and in different levels, and the potential uses for writing may depend to a large extent on further social factors’ (p. 59).
An attempt to give a precise answer to the question ‘where’ is made by R.D. Woodard who, contrary to Jeffery's assertions (‘possibly at Al Mina in North Syria’ by Greek traders; Local Scripts, p. 11), believes that, on the basis of phonological and orthographic comparisons, the Greek alphabet was adapted by Greeks in the area of Cyprus and that it was later spread by East Ionians to West Ionians, even establishing a precise and probable historical horizon, i.e. ‘Assyrian military expeditions into Syria-Palestine and Anatolia in the ninth century bc, possibly during the campaigns of Shalmaneser III’ (p. 87). The Euboeans would then go on to spread this innovation.
Part 2, ‘Alphabet and Language’, opens with A. Johnston's chapter on the Epirus alphabet, which, starting from the analysis of the lead question tablets from Dodona, re-addresses the problem of the existence of a palaeographic homogeneity within the Epirus alphabet before the adoption of the Ionic canon, to suggest, after a comparison with the Thessalian epigraphic landscape, that the lack of standardisation might be a feature peculiar to the ethne, which would have tolerated a divergence of usages, contrary to the polis context that would have generally imposed a single standard. Johnston reasonably ‘remains agnostic regarding closely fixed alphabetic use’ (p. 117) for the sanctuary context of Dodona, where heterogeneous factors were at work in determining epigraphic choices.
J. Méndez Dosuna delves into the topic of the relationship between phonology and epigraphy, revisiting an apparently resolved issue such as the pronunciation of upsilon in ancient Greek. He presents his innovative theory on the development of the Greek vowel system, according to which the fronting of /u/ to /y/ occurred in proto-Greek and was then inherited by all dialects (and thus was not an innovation of Ionian-Attic as believed so far), addressing then the possible implications that this early dating of /u/-fronting might have for other sound changes.
The relationship between epigraphy and phonology is also the subject of the chapter by S. Minon who, starting from a document of the Archaic period unearthed in a private collection in 2010, the ‘New Festival Calendar from Arkadia’ (J. Heinrichs, The Many Faces of War in the Ancient World [2015]), proposes a comparative linguistic, epigraphic and historical study of the new tablet and other archaic texts from Arcadia. To provide a more precise dating and historical context of the text, Minon offers detailed insights into Arcadian palaeography in addition to putting into practice the comparative method developed by Jeffery.
The last section of the volume, ‘Themes and Regions’, deals with the problem of early alphabets and writing, focusing primarily on their use, in particular the chapter by A. Meadows, who innovatively tackles the thorny and non-trivial problem of the dissemination of epigraphic uses on early coins. Recalling Jeffery's attention to this documentary typology and her opinion that ‘coin legends in general reflect the script in use at the time when the die was cut’ (Local Scripts, p. 65), Meadows conducts a systematic study to ‘trace the development and spread of the use of writing on the earliest coins’, providing a first comparative overview of their production and circulation and on their ‘purpose, geographical origin, and type of legends’ (pp. 187–8).
The following chapters are dedicated to studies on specific geographical areas, which rounds off the volume with a diatopic approach that also critically adopts more purely sociological questions on the use of writing. Thus, the chapter by J. Whitley, who, taking up ‘the idea that the alphabet put the Greeks on the royal road to rationality’ (p. 224), professed by Watt, Goody and Havelock, analyses the spread of writing in Crete by finding ‘patterns of epigraphic habits’. In particular, if Crete as a whole differs in epigraphic habits from other areas of the Greek world, Central Crete also differs from Eastern Crete (the latter having more casual writing and fewer inscribed laws than the centre of the island), reminding us of D. Clarke's important lesson that ‘boundaries between language groups, ethnic groups, and material culture groups were unlikely to be isomorphic’ (pp. 241–2).
From Crete we move to Attica and the Aegean islands with A.P. Matthaiou's paper, featuring many new archaic inscriptions from Attica, the Attic-Ionic islands of the Cyclades and the Doric islands, adding to Jeffery's list two islands that have recently returned evidence, Kythnos and Astypalaia, and bringing to the attention of scholars ‘discrepancies’ with respect to local ‘norms’ – like the use of san in a sixth-century abecedarium from Attica – thus returning to the problem of the phenomena behind these variations, sometimes linked to local pronunciation and sometimes to graphic variants.
N. Papazarkadas explores the question of the epichoric alphabet within ethne offering a conspectus of Boeotian inscriptions discovered in the last 25 years (and the editio princeps of an unpublished Boeotian epigram). The time span of these inscriptions is wider than that treated in the other chapters, since Papazarkadas, disagreeing with Jeffery on this, argues that a local script may exist, as far as the Boeotian case is concerned, also for a period later than the Archaic one. Rebuking Johnston's hypothesis and Whitley's conclusions, Papazarkadas argues that in this case the political unification of the region took place as a result of a previous cultural homogeneity, which also led to the homogeneity of the script.
The paper by E. Benelli and A. Naso focuses on more explicitly sociological issues providing us with the sociological, historical and archaeological background for the use of writing in Etruria. While examining the problem of the adoption of the epigraphic practice, which would have been caused by the gift exchange system in Etruria, they stress, like other authors in the volume, that ‘epigraphy is by no means a necessary and immediate consequence of the adoption of writing skills’ (p. 307), compellingly arguing that it originates from the Euboean script.
Closing the series of case studies is K. Lomas's examination of the Messapic script, which provides different answers to the same issues discussed by Benelli on the Etruscan script: its origins and development, linked to the alphabet of Tarentum, but also to various scripts, according to a process that she considers to be typical of early alphabet transfers; its dissemination through the practice of learning (and therefore the importance of abecedaria to understand this process); the fundamental difference between casual writing and formal epigraphy. Finally, Lomas reminds us of the ‘visual’ nature of inscriptions, which, ‘particularly in societies with low or limited levels of literacy’ (p. 321), are even more important than the messages, while also tackling the delicate issue of the relationship between writing and identity in the processes of alphabet transfer.
If a general conclusion can be drawn from this volume, it is the need to rethink certain established categories such as A. Kirchhoff's division of the alphabets or certain sweeping assumptions about the relationship between writing and polis/ethne identity to focus the study of the alphabets, as Jeffery did, on individual historical and geographical contexts. Not because general conclusions about local scripts and writing in the Archaic period cannot be drawn - indeed, consider the interesting and often pan-Mediterranean reflections of a sociological nature that this volume proposes -, but rather, because there is no doubt, and the choral, dialogical and discussion-oriented nature of this book demonstrates this amply, that the same models cannot be applied even to apparently similar contexts when dealing with the archaic history of the Greek world, and this also pertains to script.
