than 8 or 9 m. from Corinth, an ancient inscription written Bovσrpooηdóv has recently been discovered, which shows that though Cleonae for B wrote, like the Corinthian ♫, and, as at Corinth, wrote B for a vowel sound, the vowel thus represented was not short and long e (e and n) as at Corinth, but n only, as in XPBMA, MB (xpñμa μn). Here represents e, and the spurious diphthong is represented by a, as in MI (elev, Doric infinitive-elva), a form which shows that has at Cleonae the more modern form I as distinguished from the Corinthian :3

η

These

Greek

use of

Regarding three other questions controversy still rages. and Zade), which it took over from the Phoenician; (b) what was are: (a) how Greek utilized the four sibilants (Shin, Samech, Zain the history of development in the symbols for 4, x, 4, (the history of belongs to both heads); (c) the history of the symbol for the digamma F. In the Phoenician alphabet Zain was the seventh letter, occupying the same position and having the same form approximately (1) as the early Greek Z, while in pronunciation it was a voiced s-sound; Samech () followed the symbol for n and was the ordinary s-sound, though, as we have seen, Phoenician it is in different Greek states at the earliest period as sibilants. well as ; after the symbol for p came Zade (), which was a strong palatal s, though in name it corresponds to the Greek ra; while lastly Shin (W) follows the symbol for r, and was an sh-sound. The Greek name for the sibilant (olyua) may simply mean the hissing letter and be a derivative from oifw; many authorities, however, hold that it is a corruption of the Phoenician Samech. Unfortunately, it is not clear how many sibilants were distinguished tion extended. There is, however, considerable evidence in support in Greek pronunciation, nor over what areas a particular pronunciaof the view that Greek or representing the sound arising from Ky, xy, τy, oy was pronounced as sh (s), while representing gy, dy was pronounced in some districts zh (z)." Carian territory, the sound of oo in 'Alikapraoσéwv is represented On an inscription of Halicarnassus, a town which stood in ancient by T, as it is also in the Carian name Panyassis (Пavvá Tios, genitive), though the ordinary >> is also found in the same inscription. The same variation occurs at the neighbouring Teos and at Ephesus, while the coins of Mesembria in Thrace show regularly META and METAMBPIANON, where T represents the sound which resulted from the fusion of oy, and which appears in Homer as σo in μégσos, while in later Greek it becomes μoos. This symbol T is in Greeks as San (av) and in modern times as Sampi, and which is all probability the early form of the letter which was known to the utilized as the numeral for 900 in the shape. According to Herodotus (i. 139), San was only the Dorian name for the letter which the Ionians called Sigma. This would bring it into connexion with the Phoenician W (Shin), which, turned through a right angle, is possibly the Greek Σ, though some forms of Zade on old Hebrew other forms of Sade, however, the other early form of σ, viz. M, is coins and gems (3) equally resemble the Greek letter. From probably derived. The confusion is thus extreme: the name Zade assimilated in Greek to the namesra and Ora becomes ra, though the form is that of Zain; the name of Samech is possibly has not taken over a Phoenician name. It is probable that the form the origin of Sigma, while the form of Samech is that of which

from the very beginning of our records. Unfortunately, as yet | states. On the other hand, at Cleonae, which is distant not more no record is preserved which can with any probability be dated earlier than the 7th century B.C., and the Phoenician influence had by then nearly ceased. How long this influence lasted we cannot tell. If in Crete a system of writing of an entirely different nature had been developed seven or eight centuries before, there must have been some very important reason for the entire abandonment of the old method and the adoption of a new. In Crete, at least, the excavations show that the old civilization must have ended in a social and political cataclysm. The magnificent palace of Minos-there seems no reason to withhold from it the name of the great prince whom Thucydides recognized as the first to hold the empire of the sea-perished by the flames, and it evidently had been plundered beforehand of everything that a conqueror would regard as valuable. The only force in Greek history which we know that could have produced this change was that of the Dorian conquest. As everywhere in the Peloponnese, except at Argos, there seems to have been a sudden break with the earlier civilization, which can have been occasioned only by the semi-barbarous Dorian tribes, so the same result seems to have followed from the same cause in Thera. The Dorians apparently were without an alphabet, and consequently when Phoenician traders and pirates occupied the place left vacant by the downfall of Minos's empire, the people of the island, and of the sea coasts generally, adopted from them the Phoenician alphabet. The Greeks who migrated to Cyprus, possibly as the result of the Dorian invasion, adopted a syllabary, not an alphabet (see Plate; also WRITING). That the alphabet was borrowed and adapted independently by different places not widely separated, and that the earliest Greek alphabets did not spread from one or a few centres in Greek lands, seem clear (a) from the different Greek sounds for which the Phoenician symbols were utilized; (b) from the different symbols which were employed to represent sounds which the Phoenicians did not possess, and for which, therefore, they had no symbols. The Phoenician alphabet was an alphabet of consonants only, but all Greek alphabets as yet known agree in employing A, E, I, O, Y as vowels. On the other hand, a table of Greek alphabets will show how widely different the symbols for the same sound were. Except for a single Attic inscription (see Plate), the alphabets of Thera and of Corinth are the oldest Greek alphabets which we possess. Yet at Corinth alongside, which is found for the so-called spurious diphthong a (i.e. the Attic a, which does not represent an IndoEuropean &, but arises by contraction, as in pixeîre, or through the lengthening of the vowel sound as the result of the loss of a consonant, as in eipnuevos for FeFpnuevos) the short sound is represented by B; is found at Corinth in its oldest form, and also as Σ, while in Thera it is . In Thera the w sound of digamma (F) was entirely lost, and therefore is not represented. Both Thera and Corinth employ in the earliest inscriptions for, not §, though in both alphabets the ordinary use as is adopted, no doubt through the influence of trade with other 1 In an excellent summary of the different views held as to the origin of the alphabet (Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. xxii., first half, 1901), Dr J. P. Peters agrees (pp. 191 ff.) that the best test is the etymology of the names of the letters. He shows that twelve of the letter-names are words with meanings [in the northern dialects of Semitic], all of them indicating simple objects, six of the twelve being parts of the body. The objects denoted by the other six names-ox, house, valve of a door, water, fish and mark or cross-clearly do not belong to any people in a nomadic state, but to a settled, town-abiding population. Six of the letter-names are not words in any known tongue, and appear to be syllables only. Four letter-names are triliterals, and resemble in their form Semitic words." As II of the 12 which have meanings are to be found in the Assyrian-Babylonian syllabaries, he suggests a possible Babylonian origin. Different views with regard to some of these symbols are expressed by Lidzbarski, Ephemeris für semitische Epigraphik, ii. pp. 125 ff. (1906). The earliest tradition of the names is discussed by Nöldeke in his Beiträge zur semitischen Sprachwissenschaft (1904), pp. 124 ff.

2 See, for example, the tables at the end of Roberts's Introduction to Greek Epigraphy (1887); or Kirchhoff's Studien zur Geschichte des griechischen Alphabets (4th ed. 1887); or Larfeld's Handbuch der griechischen Epigraphik, vol. i. (1907).

is an abbreviation in writing from right to left of the earlier M, and of the four stroke . That the confusion of the sibilants was not confined to the Greeks only, but that pronunciation varied within a small area even among the Semitic stock, is shown by the difficulty which the Ephraimites found in pronouncing "shibboleth (Judges xii. 6).

For the history of the additional symbols which are not Phoenician, we must begin with y. There is no Greek alphabet in which the symbol is not represented. But the Phoenician form History corresponding to it is the consonant w, and occupies the of the position of the Greek digamma as sixth in the series. Whence did the Greeks obtain the digamma? The digamma. point is not clear, but probably the Greeks acted here as they did in the case of the vowel i and the consonant y, adopting the consonant symbol for the vowel sound. As, however, except in Cyprus, Pamphylia and Argos, the only y sound which survived in Greek

Cp. Fränkel, Corpus inscriptionum Graecarum Peloponnesi, i., No. 1607.

4 See Witton, in American Journal of Philology, xix. pp. 420 ff., and Lagercrantz, Zur griechischen Lautgeschichte (Upsala, 1898). See Foat, "Tsade and Sampi" (Journal of Hellenic Studies, xxv. pp. 338 ff., xxvi. p. 286). A number of ingenious points often uncertain are raised by A. Gercke, "Zur Geschichte des ältesten griechischen Alphabets" (Hermes, xli., 1906, pp. 540 ff.).

the glide between i and another vowel as in duá-diya-is never century, and was soon given up. As the Ionians kept the form represented, there was no occasion to use the Phoenician Jod in a double function. With Vau it was different; the u-sound existed alphabet as Samech occupied in the Phoenician alphabet, there which the people of Thera used for 5, in the same position in their in some form in all dialects, the w-sound survived in many far into historical times. The Phoenician symbol having been adopted for Greeks used in the 6th century B.C. for & may be derived, according can be no doubt as to its origin. The symbol + which the Chalcidian the vowel sound, whence came the new symbol F or for the to the most widely accepted theory, from a primitive form of Samech digamma? Hitherto there have been two views. Most authorities, which is recorded only in the abecedaria of the Chalcidian colonies have held that the new form was derived from E by dropping the in Italy. In this case the borrowing of the Greek alphabet must lowermost crossbar; some have held that it developed out of the long precede any Phoenician record we possess. But it is not old Vau, a view which is not impossible in itself and has the similar probable that the Ionic and Phoenician developed independently development in Aramaic (Tema) in its favour. But as Dr Evans has found a form like the digamma among his most recent types of from the closed form. Kretschmer, however, in several publications symbols, and as we have no intermediate forms which will prove the takes a different view. He thinks that the guttural element in was a spirant, and therefore different from x, which is an aspirate. development of F from Y, though the form found at Oaxos in He points out that in Naxos, in a 6th-century inscription, in Crete, viz., shows a form sufficiently unlike F, it is necessary to Natiou, oxos and Ppáčov is represented by, the first element suspend judgment. in which he regards as a form of=h. As x is found in the same inscription (in the form X), the guttural element must have been different, else & would have been spelt X. Attica and most of the Cyclades kept x for the guttural element in § (written XS or +) and for x as well. On the west of the Aegean a new symbol was invented for the aspirate value, and this spread over the mainland and was carried by emigrants to Rhodes, Sicily and Italy. The sign X was kept in the western group for the guttural spirant in §, which was written X ; but, as this spirant occurred nowhere else, the combination was often abbreviated, and X was used for X< precisely as in the Italic alphabets we shall find that F =ƒ develops out of a combination FH.

Greek

&c.

11

The Greek aspirates were not the sounds which we represent by ph, th, ch (Scotch), but corresponded rather to the sound of the final consonants in such words as lip, bit, lick, the breath being audible after the formation of the consonant. It is not aspirates, clear that Greek took over with this value, for in one Theran inscription are found combined as equivalent to T-H, while the regular representation of 4 and x is and K, or (koppa) respectively. In the great Gortyn inscription from Crete and occasionally in Thera, 1 (in Crete in the form C) and K are used alone for and x, just as conversely even in the 5th century the name of Themistocles has been found upon an ostrakon spelt ОeμLookλs. Such confusions show that even to Greek ears the distinction between the sounds was very small. To have recorded it in writing at all shows considerable progress in the observation of sounds. Such progress is more easily indicated by changes in the symbols among a people whose acquaintance with the art is not of long standing nor very familiar. English, though possessing sounds comparable to the Greek 0, 4, x, has never made any attempt to represent them in writing. On the other hand, no doubt Athens in 403 B.C. officially adopted the Ionic alphabet and gave up the old Attic alphabet. The political situation in Athens, however, at this time was as exceptional as the French Revolution, and offered an opportunity not likely to recur for the adoption of a system in widely extended use which private individuals had been employing for a long time. The history of the symbols and x is altogether unknown. The very numerous theories on the subject have generally been founded on a principle which itself is in need of proof, viz. that these symbols must have arisen by differentiation from others already existing in the alphabet. The explanation is possible, but it is not easy to see why, for example, the symbol or Koppa, the Latin Q, should have been utilized for a sound so different as p-h; nor, again, why the symbol for () by losing its cross stroke should become, seeing that the sounds of e and outside Aeolic (a dialect which is not here in question) are never confused. On the other hand, if we remember the large number of symbols belonging to the prehistoric script, it will seern at least as easy to believe that the persons who, by adding new letters to the Phoenician alphabet, attempted to bring the symbols more into accordance with the sounds of the Greek language, may have borrowed from this older script. It is now generally admitted that the improvements of the alphabet were made by traders in the interests of commerce, and that these improvements began from the great Greek emporia of Asia Minor, above all from Miletus. Symbols exactly like 4, x, and (, X, Y) are found in the Carian alphabet, and transliterated by Professor Sayce1 as (and ü), h and kh respectively. If the Carian alphabet goes back to the prehistoric script, why should not Miletus have borrowed them from it? We have already seen that, in the earliest alphabets of Thera and Corinth, the ordinary symbol for in the Ionic alphabet was used for . This usage brought in its train another the use of V, not for as in Ionic, but for & in the name AAEVA CORA ='AMežavóoa, and similarly in Melos, . PAY IKVA ECM IIpağıúdeos. This experiment, for it was no more, belongs apparently to the latter part of the 6th 1 See especially Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology for 1895, p. 40; cf. also Kalinka, Neue Jahrbücher für Philologie, iii. (1899), p. 683. Similar forms are also found in the Safa inscriptions (South Semitic) with similar values, and Praetorius argues (Z.D.M.G. lvi., 1902, pp. 677 ff., and again, lviii., 1904, pp. 725 f.) that these were somehow borrowed by Greek in the 8th century B.C., while in lxii. pp. 283 ff. he argues that the reason why the Greeks borrowed for the aspirated t was its form, the cross in being regarded as T and the surrounding circle as a variety of an occasional form of the aspirate. Here also (p. 287) as in his Ursprung des kanaanäischen Alphabets, pp. 13 f., he argues that the two forms of the digamma F and E, and also the South Semitic w, could all have developed from the Cyprian I=we. without evidence of the intermediate steps. But proof is impossible 2 Inscriptiones Graecae, xii., fasc. iii. Nos. 811. 1149.

The development of symbols for the long vowels ŋ and w was also the work of the Ionians. The h-sound ceased at a very early period to exist in Ionic, and by 800 B.C. was ignored in writing. The symbol

or H was then employed for the long open e-sound, a use suggested by the name of the letter, which, by the loss of the aspirate, had passed from Heta to Eta. About the same period, and probably as a sequel to this change, the Greeks of Miletus developed for the long open ō-sound, a form which in all probability is differentiated out of O. Centuries passed, however, before this symbol was generally adopted, Athens using only O for o, w and ou, the spurious diphthong, until the adoption of the whole Ionic alphabet in 403 B.C.5

alphabet,

The discoveries of the last quarter of the 19th century carried back our knowledge of the Latin alphabet by at least two centuries, although the monuments of an early age Latin which have been discovered are only three. (a) In 1880 was discovered between the Quirinal and Viminal hills a little earthenware pot of a curious shape, being, as it were, three vessels radiating from a centre, each with a separate mouth at the top. Round the sides of the triangle formed by the three vessels and under the mouths runs an inscription of considerable length.

The

The use for which the pot was intended and the purport of the inscription have been much disputed, there being at least as many interpretations as there are words in the inscription. The date is probably the early part of the 4th century B.C. Though found in Rome, the vessel is small enough to be easily portable, and might therefore have been brought from elsewhere in Italy. It is equally possible that the potter who inscribed the words upon it was not a native of Rome. Dvenos inOne or two points in the inscription make it doubtful scription. whether the Latin upon it is really the Latin of Rome. It is generally known as the Dvenos inscription, from the name of the maker who wrote on the vessel from right to left the inscription, part of which is DVENOS MED FECED (=fecit). (b) The second of these early records is the inscription on a gold fibula found at Praeneste and published in 1887. The inscription runs from right to left, and is in letters which show more clearly than ever that the Roman alphabet is borrowed from the alphabets of the Chalcidian Greek colonies in Italy. Its date cannot be later than the 5th and is possibly as early as the 6th century B.C. The words are MANIOS MED FHEFHAKED NVMASIOI, Manius made me for Numasius." The symbol for M has still five strokes, s has the angular form, S. The The inscription is earlier than the Latin change of s between fibula, vowels into r, for Numasioi is the dative of the older form which corresponds to the later Numerius. The verb form 3 See especially Athenische Mitteilungen, xxi. p. 426.

Praeneste

4 Figured in Roberts's Introduction to Greek Epigraphy, p. 65. Details of the history of the individual letters will be found in separate articles.

It is figured most accessibly in Egbert's Introduction to the Study of Latin Inscriptions, p. 16.

took over from Etruscan perhaps the sign q, but gave it the new value of a spirant which developed out of an earlier d-sound, but which is written in the Latin alphabet with rs. The second Umbrian symbol was d, which was the representative of an s-sound developed by palatalizing an earlier k. In Oscan, which had an o-sound, but no symbol for it, a new sign was invented by placing a dot between the legs of the symbol for u-V. This, however, is found only in the best-written documents, and on some materials the dot cannot be distinguished. The symbol was invented for the open-sound and close e-sound. At a much later epoch it was introduced into the Latin alphabet by the emperor Claudius to represent y, and the sound which was written as i or u in maximus, maxumus, &c. Besides the Italic alphabets already mentioned, which are all derived from the alphabet of the Chalcidian Greek colonists in Italy, there were at least four other alphabets in use in different Darts of Italy: (1) the Messapian of the south-east part of the peninsula, in which the inscriptions of the Illyrian dialect in use there were written, an alphabet which, according to Pauli (Alt-italische Forschungen, iii. chap. ii.) was borrowed from the Locrian alphabet; (2) the Sabellic alphabet, derived from that of Corinth and Corcyra, and found in a few inscriptions of eastern-central Italy; (3) the alphabet of the Veneti of north-east Italy derived from the Elean; (4) the alphabet of Sondrio (between Lakes Como and Garda), which Pauli, on the insufficient ground that it possesses no symbols corresponding to and x, derives from a source at the same stage of development as the oldest alphabets of Thera, Melos and Crete. From the fact that upon the Galassi vase (unearthed at Cervetri, but probably a product of Caere), which is now in the Gregorian Museum of the Vatican, a syllabary is found along with one of the most archaic Greek alphabets, and that a similar combination was found upon the wall of a tomb at Colle, near Siena, it has been argued that syllabic preceded alphabetic writing in Italy. But a syllabary where each syllable is made by the combinations of a a symbol for a consonant with that for a vowel can furnish no proof of the existence of a syllabary in the strict sense, where each symbol represents a syllable; it is rather evidence against the existence of such writing. The syllabary upon the Galassi vase indicates in all probability that the vase, which resembles an ink-bottle, belonged to a child, for whose edification the syllables pa, pi, pe, pu and the rest were intended. The evidence adduced from the Latin grammarians, and from abbreviations on Latin inscriptions like lubs for lubens, is not sufficient to establish the theory.

Teutonic runes.

of the Christian era. We hear of correspondence between the Romans and German chieftains in the early days of the empire. It is strange, therefore, if the Roman alphabet, which formed the model for the runes, was that of two whole centuries later, and even then the formal alphabet of inscriptions. By that time the Teutons were likely to have more convenient materials than wood whereon to write, so that the adaptation of the forms would not have been necessary. That the Germans were familiar with some sort of marks on wood at a much earlier period is shown by Tacitus's Germania, chap. x. There we are told that for purposes of divination certain signs were scratched on slips of wood from a fruit-bearing tree (including, no doubt, the beech; cp. book, German Buch, and Buchstabe, a letter of the alphabet); the slips were thrown down promiscuously on a white cloth, whence the expert picked them up at random and by them interpreted fate. In these slips we have the origin of the Norse kefli, the Scots kaivel, which were and are still used as lots. The fishermen of north-east Scotland, when they return after a successful haul, divide the spoil into as many shares as there are men in the boat, with one share more for the boat. Each man then procures a piece of wood or stone, on which he puts a private mark. These lots are put in a heap, and an outsider is called in who throws one lot or kaivel upon each heap of fish. Each fisherman then finds his kaivel, and the heap on which it lies is his. This system of "casting kaivels," as it is called, is certainly of great antiquity. But its existence will not help to prove an early knowledge of reading or writing, for in order that everything may be fair, it is clear that the umpire should not be able to identify the lot as belonging to a particular individual. It has, however, been contended that a system of primitive runes existed whence some at least of the later runes were borrowed, and the ownership marks of the Lapps, who have no knowledge of reading and writing, have been regarded as borrowed from these early Teutonic runes. Be this as it may, the resemblances between

the runic and the Mediterranean alphabets are too great to admit of denial that it is from a Greek alphabet, whether directly or indirectly, that the runes are derived. That Wimmer postdates the introduction of the runic alphabet seems clear from the archaic forms and method of writing. It is very unlikely that a people borrowing an alphabet which was uniformly written from left to right should have used it in order to write from right to left, or Bouarpoonoóv. Hence Hempl contends that Wimmer's view must be discarded, and that the runes were derived about 600 B.C. from a western Greek alphabet which closely resembled the Formello alphabet (one of the ancient Chalcidian abecedaria) the date at the same period as Isaac Taylor had done in his and the Sabellic and North Etruscan alphabets. He thus fixes Greeks and Goths and The Alphabet. Taylor, however, derived the runes from the alphabet of a Greek colony on the Black Sea. Hempl's initiative was followed by Professor Gundermann of Giessen, who announced in November 1897 that he had discovered the source of the runic alphabet, the introduction of which he declares preceded the first of the phonetic changes known as the "Teutonic sound-shifting," since<=g is used for k, X=x for g, a Theta-like symbol for d, while zd is used for st. If this view (which is identical with Taylor's) be true, we have a parallel in the Armenian alphabet, which is similarly used for a new value of the sounds. Hempl, on the other hand, contends

It has been argued that the runes of the Teutonic peoples have been derived from a form of the Etruscan alphabet, inscriptions in which are spread over a great part of northern Italy, but of which the most characteristic are found in the neighbourhood of Lugano, and in Tirol near Innsbruck, Botzen and Trent. The Danish scholar L. F. A. Wimmer, in his great work Die Runenschrift (Berlin, 1887), contends that the resemblance, though striking, is superficial. Wimmer's own view is that the runes were developed from the Latin alphabet in use at the end of the 2nd century A.D. Wimmer supports his thesis with great learning and ingenuity, and when allowance is made for the fact that a script to be written upon wood, as the runes were, of necessity avoids horizontal lines which run along the fibres of the wood, and would therefore be indistinct, most of the runic signs thus receive a plausible explanation. The strongest argument for the derivation from the Latin alphabet is undoubtedly the value of ƒ attaching to; for, as we have seen, the Greek value of this symbol is w, and its value as ƒ arises only by abbreviation from FH. On the other hand, several of Wimmer's equations are undoubtedly forced. Even if we grant that the Latin symbols were inverted or set at an angle (a proceeding which is paralleled by the treatment of the Phoenician signs in Greek hands), so that represents Latin V, M Latin E, Latin V, and ▷ Latin D; while the symbol for the voiced spirant & is doubled, M, D, it is difficult to believe that the symbol for the spirant g, viz. X, represents a Latin K (which was of rare occurrence), or again,a,u and b, because at this time b was a bilabial spirant a Latin N, or that the symbol for ng,, represents <=c doubled. Moreover, the date of the borrowing seems too late. The runes are found in all Teutonic countries, and the Romans were in close contact with the Germans on the Rhine before the beginning 1 For further details of these alphabets, see Conway, The Italic Dialects, ii. pp. 458 ff. The recent discovery by Keil and Premerstein (Denkschriften der Wiener Akademie, liii., 1908) of Lydian inscriptions containing the symbol 8 suggests that the old derivation of the Etruscans from Lydia may be true and that they brought this symbol with them (see article on F). But the inscriptions are not yet deciphered, so that conclusive proof is still wanting.

that the sound-shifting had already taken place, and, arguing that several of the symbols have changed places (e.g.ƒ and

and not a stop), ultimately obtains an order-abdefz kgw hijh prstul m n o. As neither Gundermann nor Hempl has published the full evidence for his view, no definite conclusion at the moment is possible.

2 R. M. Meyer, Paul Braune und Sievers' Beiträge, xxi. (1896), pp. 162 ff.

3 In a paper published in the volume of Philologische Studien, presented as a Festgabe" to Professor Sievers in 1896, and in a second paper in the Journal of Germanic Philology, ii. (1899), pp. 370 ff. 4 See Literaturblatt für germanische und romanische Philologie for 1897, col. 429 f.

1-ak-ut-1°ck-et-en-a-es-o-is-et-qu•es-ok-v-or-dl-e • i-ar-okes-ak •ur-i-am at

1 2XUT [V]IOEK NG EV S O 1DIET Off•S OK I OF ON E • I af ok• s akoip Tapas

Cyprian Inscription (4th century B.C.) from Curium (British Museum Excavations, p. 64). Below are (1) the transliteration of the symbols; (2) the Greek words, both like the Cyprian reading from right to left.

AJ BOT = [ { := 12 = T1=T#YOTY >1 YT51X909Yz02/

打

ς, νῦν ὀρχηστών πάντων Σταλώτατα παίζει το 5, το δεκάτη μν

Oldest Attic Inscription. From a Dipylon Vase probably of 8th century B.C. Right to left.