Writing

The history of writing systems and the earliest evidence for them: scripts, inscriptions and alphabets, from Cretan hieroglyphs and the Proto-Sinaitic signs to the Greek alphabet.

Category: Culture

Compare with other topics →

c. 2100 BCE
Cretan hieroglyphs
From about 2100 BCE the Minoans use a pictographic script on seals and clay documents, at Archanes, Knossos, Malia and elsewhere. It lasts to about 1700, is undeciphered, and its language is unknown. It overlaps with, and may have been a prototype for, Linear A.
Writing Bronze Age Aegean Archaeology
c. 1900 BCE
Alphabetic inscriptions at Wadi el-Hol
In 1993 John and Deborah Darnell find two rock inscriptions in Egypt's Wadi el-Hol, published in 1999 and dated by them to c. 1900-1800 BCE. They are among the oldest alphabetic writing known and resemble the Proto-Sinaitic signs, though dating and origin are debated.
Writing Archaeology
c. 1850 BCE
The Phaistos Disc
Luigi Pernier finds a clay disc stamped with 45 signs (242 in all) at Phaistos on 3 July 1908. Estimates run from c. 1850-1600 BCE to after 1400. It is undeciphered, it is not clear that it is a script, and it is now generally accepted as authentic.
Writing Bronze Age Aegean Archaeology
c. 1850 BCE
Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions
At Serabit el-Khadim in Sinai, found by Hilda and Flinders Petrie in 1904-05, some 30-40 inscriptions use signs adapted from Egyptian hieroglyphs. They are dated c. 1850-1550 BCE, and whether the alphabet arose in Egypt or Canaan is disputed. Gardiner proposed a reading in 1916.
Writing Archaeology
c. 1800 BCE
Linear A
Minoan Crete uses Linear A from about 1800 to 1450 BCE: roughly 1,400 inscriptions, about 7,400 sign tokens. Named by Arthur Evans, it has been known since 1900 and is undeciphered. Linear B was later adapted from it to write Greek.
Writing Bronze Age Aegean Archaeology
c. 1750 BCE
Mycenaean civilization
On the Greek mainland a palace culture centred on Mycenae, Tiryns and Pylos emerges from c. 1750 BCE. It peaks between 1400 and 1200, spreads across the Aegean, and keeps its archives in Linear B.
Bronze Age Aegean Writing
c. 1500 BCE
Cypro-Minoan script and the Enkomi tablet
The Cypro-Minoan syllabary, derived from Linear A, is used on Cyprus and elsewhere from c. 1550 to 1050 BCE. About 250 inscribed objects survive. The longest early text is a clay tablet found at Enkomi in 1955, c. 1500. It is undeciphered.
Writing Bronze Age Aegean Late Bronze Age
c. 1450 BCE
Mycenaeans take over Crete; Linear B appears
Around 1450 BCE Mycenaean Greeks come to dominate Minoan Crete and adapt Linear A into Linear B to write Greek. Knossos is the only palace still in use later. Scholars debate whether this rule was political or mainly cultural.
Bronze Age Aegean Writing
c. 1400 BCE
Ugarit's scribes write an alphabet in cuneiform
Around 1400 BCE scribes at Ugarit use about thirty signs, pressed into clay, to write the Ugaritic language. The letter order resembles the Phoenician alphabet. The city's archives also use Akkadian, Sumerian, Hittite, Hurrian and Egyptian.
Late Bronze Age Technology Writing
c. 1180 BCE
The Greek Dark Ages
After the palaces fall, settlements shrink, Linear B vanishes, pottery simplifies and iron replaces bronze. Euboean Lefkandi prospers and Greeks begin settling the Anatolian coast. Recovery is well under way by the early 8th century BCE.
Greek city-states Writing
c. 1180 BCE
The Palace of Nestor at Pylos burns
The palace at Pylos burns around 1180 BCE (one source gives about 1250). Its Linear B tablets, preserved by the fire, mention hasty defensive preparations against an imminent attack, but no text names the attackers. The palace itself had no walls.
Bronze Age Aegean Archaeology Writing
c. 1100 BCE
The al-Khader arrowheads
Inscribed bronze arrowheads from al-Khader, dated c. 1100 BCE, are described as a "missing link" between the Proto-Canaanite and the Phoenician scripts. No Phoenician inscription is securely dated to the 11th century.
Writing Archaeology Late Bronze Age
c. 1000 BCE
The Ahiram sarcophagus
Pierre Montet finds the sarcophagus of Ahiram in the royal necropolis of Byblos in 1923. Its 38-word Phoenician inscription is the oldest long one known, c. 1000 BCE. Some scholars date it later, about 850 or the 9th-8th centuries.
Writing Archaeology
c. 1000 BCE
A Greek name on a bronze spit at Palaepaphos
A bronze spit from Tomb 49 at Palaepaphos-Skales, Cyprus, bears the Greek name Opheltas in the genitive, in a syllabic script. Its tomb dates to the late 11th or early 10th century BCE. Scholars disagree on whether the script is Cypro-Minoan or the Cypriot syllabary.
Writing Greek city-states Archaeology
c. 800 BCE
The earliest alphabetic graffiti at Eretria
About thirty inscriptions of the 8th century BCE are known from Eretria, 26 from the sanctuary of Apollo Daphnephoros, including a graffito in a Semitic script and a clumsy Greek ostrakon. Under 1% of the sanctuary's pottery is inscribed, so writing was still rare.
Writing Greek city-states Archaeology
c. 800 BCE
The Greeks adopt the alphabet
Around 800 BCE the Greeks adapt the Phoenician script, using some consonant signs for vowels: the first alphabet to write both. The oldest substantial inscriptions, such as the Dipylon vase and Nestor's Cup, date to about 740-730 BCE.
Greek city-states Literature Writing
c. 740 BCE
The Dipylon inscription
An Athenian jug from the Dipylon cemetery, found in 1871 and dated c. 740 BCE, carries 46 letters scratched right to left, the first 35 forming a hexameter about the best dancer. Either it or Nestor's Cup is the oldest known Greek alphabetic inscription.
Writing Greek city-states Archaeology
c. 730 BCE
Early alphabetic graffiti at Methone
Graffiti and potters' marks from the northern Aegean port of Methone, mostly on pottery of about 730-700 BCE, are roughly contemporary with those of Pithekoussai. John Papadopoulos proposes Methone as a candidate for where the alphabet began, a claim others contest.
Writing Greek city-states Archaeology
c. 730 BCE
Nestor's Cup
Giorgio Buchner finds a cup in Tomb 168 at Pithekoussai in 1954, made c. 735-720 BCE on Rhodes or in northern Ionia. Its three-line inscription in the Chalcidian Euboean alphabet, with two hexameters, refers to Nestor's cup; the first line's restoration is disputed.
Writing Greek city-states Archaeology
c. 500 BCE
Pyrgi Tablets: Etruscan and Phoenician dedication
Around 500 BCE the Etruscan ruler of Caere, Thefarie Velianas, dedicates a sanctuary at Pyrgi to Uni, equated with Astarte, on gold tablets in Etruscan and Phoenician. Found in 1964, they show Etruscan-Carthaginian ties.
Etruscans Carthage Writing
c. 475 BCE
The Gortyn Code
A law code of the first half of the 5th century BCE is cut in 12 columns of about 600 lines at Gortyn, Crete, in the Dorian dialect and in boustrophedon. First fragment found 1857, more in 1884. It is the longest surviving Greek inscription apart from Diogenes of Oenoanda's.
Writing Greek city-states Archaeology
403 BCE
Athens adopts the Ionic alphabet
In the archonship of Eucleides (403/402 BCE) Athens officially adopts the Ionic alphabet, on a decree credited to Archinus. It had been used informally for years, and some later inscriptions still use the old Attic letters. It becomes the standard Greek alphabet.
Writing Greek city-states Athens
March 27, 196 BCE
The Rosetta Stone decree
On 27 March 196 BCE priests at Memphis issue a decree for Ptolemy V, written in hieroglyphs, Demotic and Greek. Found in 1799, the stone lets Champollion, building on Young and others, announce the decipherment of hieroglyphs in 1822.
Ptolemaic Egypt Hellenistic kingdoms Writing
c. 405 – c. 434
Mesrop Mashtots and the Armenian Bible
Around 405 Mesrop Mashtots creates the Armenian alphabet. A first Bible translation from Syriac follows (c. 411), then a revision from Greek completed c. 434.
Early Christianity The Bible Religion Literature Writing
863
Cyril and Methodius begin translating the Gospels into Slavonic
Arriving in Great Moravia in 863, the brothers Cyril and Methodius translate the Gospels and liturgical books into Old Church Slavonic, using the Glagolitic script they devised.
The Bible Religion Literature Byzantine Empire Writing
c. 1269
Kublai Khan's court introduces the 'Phags-pa script for the Mongol empire
The Tibetan monk Drogön Chögyal Phagpa devises a new alphabet at Kublai Khan's request to write Mongolian and other languages of the empire. Sources date it to 1269 or 1270.
Kublai Khan Mongol Empire Religion Writing
1952
Linear B is deciphered
In 1952 Michael Ventris shows that Linear B, found at Knossos by Arthur Evans in 1900, writes an early form of Greek. His work builds on Alice Kober's, and John Chadwick collaborates with him. It pushes written Greek back to the Mycenaean age.
Bronze Age Aegean Writing