PHOENICIAN WATCH:
Greek Alphabet’s Phoenician Origins Questioned After 2,500 Years (Dimitrios Aristopoulos, Greek Reporter).
The Phoenician alphabet myth has long dominated discussions of Greek writing. Herodotus’ prestige and clarity made his account persuasive, but evidence from other traditions, linguistic analysis, and modern archaeology challenges his claim. The phrase “phoinikeia grammata” did not originally mean “Phoenician letters” after all; it referred instead to an older practice—Linear B writing on palm leaves.
Herodotus reinterpreted the phrase and linked it to the Phoenicians. His version prevailed, transforming Cadmus into a foreign bringer of letters. Yet the deeper truth is more complex: the Greeks had their own pre-alphabetic writing, and they preserved faint memories of it in myths, scholia, and surviving phrases.
This headline sounds completely daft. The article doesn't help much. You have to look at the underlying technical article to see what is actually being argued.
There are two separate issues. First, the origin of the Greek alphabet. It was developed from the Phoenician alphabet—the Northwest Semitic alphabet used by naval traders from Lebanon, whatever you call it and them. This is obvious. No one disputes it. The Greek Reporter article doesn't quite come out and deny this, but it doesn't ever say it clearly either.
Second, Herodotus, in his account of the Cadmus myth, say that in pre-Trojan War times the "Phoenicians" brought a writing system in "Phoenician letters" which the Greeks used. The article argues that this is a reference to the syllabic (not alphabetic) Linear B script, which was indeed used early on to write Greek. Arguably, Linear B was written mostly on palm leaves, which is one meaning of this Greek word phoinix. Herodotus misunderstood earlier references to Linear B as phoinikeia grammata, "palm-leaf letters," to mean the Northwest Semitic alphabet from which the Greek alphabet derives. Thanks to him that alphabet was erroneously called "Phoenician."
I don't know if this argument is correct, but it looks credible. There's nothing daft about it.
The full article in The Journal of Hellenic Studies (2022), 142, 219–254 (doi:10.1017/S0075426922000131) is available online.
Deconstructing the Phoenician myth:‘Cadmus and the palm-leaf tablets’ revisited
Willemijn Waal
Leiden University, The Netherlands Institute for the Near East
E-mail: w.waal@hum.leidenuniv.nl
Abstract
According to Herodotus, the expression phoinikeia grammata means ‘Phoenician letters’ and refers to
the Phoenician origins of the Greek alphabet. This account has found general acceptance, but it is not
the only interpretation possible and other theories circulated in antiquity. The adjective φοῖνιξdoes
not only mean‘Phoenician’; it can also refer to a palm tree or the colour red. This article argues that
the expression phoinikeia grammata did not originally refer to the alphabet, but to Linear B writing on
palm leaves, as already suggested by Frederick Ahl. It is shown that the account of Herodotus is the
result of a‘learned reinterpretation’, triggered by the ambiguity of the word φοῖνιξ. The new under-
standing of phoinikeia grammata proposeds here has some important consequences: it implies that
Linear B, as has long been suspected, was primarily written on palm leaves (hence‘palm-leaf writ-
ing’) and that in classical antiquity there was at least a limited historical awareness of the existence
of pre-alphabetic writing systems in the Aegean. This paper adduces additional evidence to substan-
tiate these claims. Lastly, a case will be made that Herodotus’ incorrect reinterpretation has led to
the‘Phoenicianization’ of Cadmus, who was originally a Greek hero.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
