Alphabets

 

Here is a handy time-line with pictures to help us understand how this all came to pass. Bold text indicates that there are captioned pictures of the pieces listed.

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2000 BC — Early Cretan Pictographic Phaistos Disk

1500 BC — Ras Shamra Script

 

UNCERTAIN OF TIME BUT VERY IMPORTANT ALL THE SAME:
Phoenicians developed a phonetic 22-character alphabet
It was based on the Egyptian “logo” system (See how that works?)
Phoenician system adopted by the Greeks who added vowels
Words were in rows but reading direction was not fixed.
BOUSTROPHEDON or “as the ox plows” was the rule.
One row would read left to right then the next would read
right to left.

 

1000 BC — Early Greek Alphabet

850 BC — Aramaic Alphabet

516 BC — Israelites return from Babylonian exile

447-432 BC — Parthenon built in Athens

429 BC — Sophocles' tragedy Oedipus Rex

323 BC — Alexander the Great dies in Babylon

300 BC — Euclid's geometry

190 BC — Parchment used for manuscripts

44 BC — Julius Caesar assassinated

29 BC — Vergil's Georgics

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100 AD — Pompeiian wall writing

114 AD — Trajan's Column

250 AD — Greek uncials

200 - 500 AD — Roman square capitals and rustic capitals

500 AD — Early Arabic alphabet

 

*** LEARN THIS LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT ***

742 - 814 AD — Emperor Charlemagne

Responsible for several contributions to alphabet:

• Ordered a revision of religious texts and classical works

• Pronunciation and spelling were standardized

• Capitals at the start of sentences, spaces between words

• Punctuation introduced

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1000 AD — Naskhi becomes dominant Arabic alphabet

1146 AD — Hangul, Korean alphabet

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