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BCE • • (semi-syllabic) 7 c. BCE • (see) • E.g. CE • 1840 • 3 c.

CE • 1949 CE • 2 c. BCE • (old Turkic) 6 c. 650 CE • • 1204 CE • 2 c. BCE • (syllabary; letter forms only) c. 1820 CE • 2 c. CE • (origin uncertain) 4 c.

CE • 405 CE • (origin uncertain) c. 430 CE • 862 CE • c. 940 CE • 1372 CE 1443 18 c. CE (derived from ). • • • The history of the Greek alphabet starts with the adoption of letter forms and continues to the present day. The Greek alphabet postdates, the that was used for writing, by several centuries. This article concentrates on the early period, before the codification of the now-standard.

The Phoenician alphabet was strictly speaking one that was consistently explicit only about consonants, though even by the 9th century BC it had developed to indicate some, mostly final, vowels. This arrangement is much less suitable for than for, and these matres lectionis, as well as several Phoenician letters which represented consonants not present in Greek, were adapted according to the principle to represent Greek vowels consistently, if not unambiguously. The Greek alphabet was developed by a Greek with first-hand experience of contemporary Phoenician script.

Almost as quickly as it was established in the Greek mainland, it was rapidly re-exported, eastwards to, where a similar script was devised. It was also exported westwards with or West Greek traders, where the adapted the Greek alphabet to their own language, which eventually led to the. Most specialists believe that the was adopted for Greek during the early 8th century BC, perhaps in. The earliest known fragmentary Greek date from this time, 770–750 BC, and they match Phoenician letter forms of c. The oldest substantial texts known to date are the and the text on the so-called, both dated to the late 8th century BC, inscriptions of personal ownership and dedications to a god. Tradition recounts that a daughter of a certain, married a Phrygian king called Midas.

This link may have facilitated the Greeks 'borrowing' their alphabet from the Phrygians because the Phrygian letter shapes are closest to the inscriptions from Aeolis. Some scholars argue for earlier dates: Naveh (1973) for the 11th century BC, Stieglitz (1981) for the 14th century, Bernal (1990) for the 18th–13th century, some for the 9th, but none of these are widely accepted. Herodotus' account [ ] According to legends recounted by, the alphabet was first introduced to Greece by a Phoenician named: The Phoenicians who came with —amongst whom were the Gephyraei—introduced into Greece, after their settlement in the country, a number of accomplishments, of which the most important was writing, an art till then, I think, unknown to the Greeks. At first they [the Phoenicians] used the same characters as all the other Phoenicians, but as time went on, and they changed their language, they also changed the shape of their letters. At that period most of the Greeks in the neighbourhood were Ionians; they were taught these letters by the Phoenicians and adopted them, with a few alterations, for their own use, continuing to refer to them as the Phoenician characters—as was only right, as the Phoenicians had introduced them. The Ionians also call paper 'skins'—a survival from antiquity when paper was hard to get, and they did actually use goat and sheep skins to write on. Indeed, even today many foreign peoples use this material.

In the temple of Ismenian Apollo at Theba in Boeotia I have myself seen cauldrons with inscriptions cut on them in Cadmean characters—most of them not very different from the Ionian. Herodotus estimates that Cadmus lived sixteen hundred years earlier, or around 2000 BC. He had seen and described the Cadmean writing engraved on certain in the temple of at Thebes.

He estimated that those tripods dated back to the time of, the great-grandson of Cadmus. On one of the tripods there was this inscription in Cadmean writing, which as he attested, resembled: Ἀμφιτρύων μ᾽ ἀνέθηκ᾽ ἐνάρων ἀπὸ Τηλεβοάων ( ' dedicated me from the spoils of [the battle of] Teleboae.' A second tripod bears the inscription in verse: Σκαῖος πυγμαχέων με ἑκηβόλῳ Ἀπόλλωνι νικήσας ἀνέθηκε τεῒν περικαλλὲς ἄγαλμα. ( 'Scaeus the boxer, victorious in the contest, dedicated me to Apollo, the archer god, a lovely offering'). Herodotus estimated that if Scaeus, the son of was the dedicator and not another of the same name, he would have lived at the time of. The third tripod bears the inscription again in hexameter verse: Λαοδάμας τρίποδ᾽ αὐτὸς ἐυσκόπῳ Ἀπόλλωνι μουναρχέων ἀνέθηκε τεῒν περικαλλὲς ἄγαλμα.