New Book: Understanding Relations Between Scripts II: Early Alphabets

The first book I’ve worked on is now available. Understanding Relations Between Scripts II: Early Alphabets, edited by me and Philippa Steele, is the first book to emerge from the CREWS research project into ancient writing. It’s based on a conference held in 2017 and includes chapters from a number of experts on early writing.

Thanks to EU European Research Council funding, which also funded the conference this is based on and pays my wages, the whole thing is available open access. You can download it on the Publications page of this site.

If you’d prefer a physical copy, you can get those from the Oxbow website. They’re currently discounted!

Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS) is a project funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 677758), and based in the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge. Understanding Relations Between Scripts II: Early Alphabets is the first volume in this series, bringing together ten experts on ancient writing, languages and archaeology to present a set of diverse studies on the early development of alphabetic writing systems and their spread across the Levant and Mediterranean during the second and first millennia BC. By taking an interdisciplinary perspective, it sheds new light on alphabetic writing not just as a tool for recording language but also as an element of culture.

Contents:

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

1. Introduction: Issues in studying early alphabets

Philip J. Boyes and Philippa M. Steele

2. A ʽtop-downʼ re-invention of an old form: Cuneiform alphabets in context

Silvia Ferrara

3. Variation in alphabetic cuneiform: Rethinking the ‘Phoenician’ inscription

from Sarepta

Philip J. Boyes

4. Ancient Egypt and the earliest known stages of alphabetic writing

Ben Haring

5. Much ado about an implement! – the Phoenicianising of Early Alphabetic

Reinhard G. Lehmann

6. Vowel representation in the Archaic Greek and Old Aramaic scripts:

A comparative orthographic and phonological examination

Roger D. Woodard

7. Mother or sister? Rethinking the origins of the Greek alphabet and

its relation to the other ‘western’ alphabets

Willemijn Waal

8. The development of Greek alphabets: Fluctuations and standardisations

Philippa M. Steele

9. Between scripts and languages: Inscribed intricacies from geometric and

archaic Greek contexts

Giorgos Bourogiannis

10. The matter of voice – the Umbrian perspective

Karin W. Tikkanen

11. Writings in network? The case of Palaeohispanic scripts

Coline Ruiz Darasse

Bibliography