The Origin of Greek Alphabet Discovered – 5

Today’s installment concludes The Origin of Greek Alphabet Discovered,
the name of our combined selection by James Baikie and David G. Hogarth. The concluding installment, is by David G. Hogarth.

If you have journeyed through all of the installments of this series, just one more to go and you will have completed five thousand words from great works of history. Congratulations!

Previously in The Origin of Greek Alphabet Discovered.

Oriental features in early Ionian art are certain and not hard to discern. The Oriental influences, so called, exerted on the art of mainland Greece, have been argued in the main from different features, and are much less well assured. The whole question of “orientalizing” archaic Greek art needs revision In the new light of Aegean evidence. Mutual relations between the Minoan society and the Nile Valley, which were remarkably intimate under the Eighteenth Dynasty, can be traced back to the Old Empire. Relations with western Asia appear to have been of almost equally long standing and cultural potency, and are only less well understood because the west Asian area itself is less well explored. But we are learning more of them every year; and so strong has the reaction against the crediting of all light to the East become that several leading authorities have independently supported M. Salomon Reinach in his well-known contention that that light is largely a mirage orientate, and that the Mediterranean area taught culture to Asia rather than vice versa. Mr. Arthur Evans has hinted strongly, and will state even more explicitly when he publishes his Scripta Minoa, his belief that the Semitic alphabets are to be traced ultimately to a Cretan original; and he and others have made out a strong case for the derivation of much of the early art of Philistia and Phoenicia from the Aegean. Archeologists are even beginning to suspect that Aegean influence and models penetrated to Mesopotamia, to inspire both the Assyrian and the Chaldean art of the opening of the first millennium B.C. Certain of the ivories, found by Layard in the Palace of Sennacherib at Nimrud, are in a style more akin to the Mycenaean than to any other, and the glyptic art of later Babylonia seems to repeat motives and manners exemplified at an antecedent period in the Aegean area. So likewise in the wide-spread Hittite culture of north Syria and Asia Minor we are noticing more and more Aegean affinities — in the structural plans of the palatial buildings, in the ceramic types, in the fashion of armament (e.g., the ” figure of eight” shield), and in the general spirit and certain particular details of sculptured monuments, such as the Kara Bel and Ivrez reliefs. Instead of regarding Cyprus as the first westward stage on the road of Phoenician evangelists, we now see that it was the last eastward stage in the Aegean evangelization of Phoenicia; and someone will have to rewrite that volume of Professor Perrot’s History of Art in Antiquity, wherein the products of an island, non-Phoenician in its language, its script, and its religious nomenclature, and never demonstrably colonized by Semites till the classical age (and then but in one small district), are quoted as the chief documents for Phoenician art.

This reconsideration in the light of the Aegean evidence will make us pause before accepting Eastern sources as directly responsible for all, or nearly all, of what have been called the “orientalizing” features of archaic Greek art, such, for example, as the winged and other monstrous forms on early Corinth ian and Peloponnesian vases, the arrangement of the decoration in zones, the use made of the Hon and other subtropic beasts, the composite demoniac forms, the architectural volute and pediment; for all these features were known to, and handled by, the prior Aegean world, and some of them, e.g., the zone arrangement of decoration, are found in mid-European art of the Bronze Age. No reconsideration, however, can entirely discredit the evidence for a fresh and direct impact of the East on archaic Hellas in the early Iron Age — an impact which could never have taken place, and obviously did not take place, during the prevalence of Minoan sea-power. For two arguments of ancient repute are irrefutable. The first is drawn from Homer; the second from the Greek alphabetic system. At the epoch which the epics reflect, the Sidonians beyond question were visiting continually the coasts of Greece and bringing to Greek marts fine objects of their own or of others’ workmanship. It is rather on the coasts of European than Asiatic Greece that we can warrant their visits, and all archeological evidence goes to suggest that the Sidonian wares were imitative in style and fabric. But these reservations do not alter the fact that works of Eastern character were being newly brought by Easterns to the area of the Helleno-Aegean culture at a period which the poems themselves prove to have been the opening of the Age of Iron.

As for the other argument, there are many reasonable doubts now current touching the source from which the Phoenicians derived their characters, and touching their responsibility for the actual letter-forms, for the alphabetic order, and for the alphabetic numeration used in historic Greece; but the names given by the Greeks to their letters leave no question that Semitic traders had exerted some direct and predominant influence on commercial intercourse in the -Aegean when the historic Greek alphabet was taking shape, whether through selection from a group of characters long used in the Aegean area, or through the wholesale adoption of a ready-made series selected long ago by some other race.

Therefore far be it from any sane scholar to rule the Phoenician out of the story of Hellenic origins. But we must reduce his part to a more modest performance than used to be credited to him. He should be regarded as a carrier only, an intermediary who had no independent art or culture of his own, but transmitted the art and culture of others greater than himself.
Oriental features in early Ionian art are certain and not hard to discern. The Oriental influences, so called, exerted on the art of mainland Greece, have been argued in the main from different features, and are much less well assured. The whole question of “orientalizing” archaic Greek art needs revision In the new light of Aegean evidence. Mutual relations between the Minoan society and the Nile Valley, which were remarkably intimate under the Eighteenth Dynasty, can be traced back to the Old Empire. Relations with western Asia appear to have been of almost equally long standing and cultural potency, and are only less well understood because the west Asian area itself is less well explored. But we are learning more of them every year; and so strong has the reaction against the crediting of all light to the East become that several leading authorities have independently supported M. Salomon Reinach in his well-known contention that that light is largely a mirage orientate, and that the Mediterranean area taught culture to Asia rather than vice versa. Mr. Arthur Evans has hinted strongly, and will state even more explicitly when he publishes his Scripta Minoa, his belief that the Semitic alphabets are to be traced ultimately to a Cretan original; and he and others have made out a strong case for the derivation of much of the early art of Philistia and Phoenicia from the Aegean. Archeologists are even beginning to suspect that Aegean influence and models penetrated to Mesopotamia, to inspire both the Assyrian and the Chaldean art of the opening of the first millennium B.C. Certain of the ivories, found by Layard in the Palace of Sennacherib at Nimrud, are in a style more akin to the Mycenaean than to any other, and the glyptic art of later Babylonia seems to repeat motives and manners exemplified at an antecedent period in the Aegean area. So likewise in the wide-spread Hittite culture of north Syria and Asia Minor we are noticing more and more Aegean affinities — in the structural plans of the palatial buildings, in the ceramic types, in the fashion of armament (e.g., the ” figure of eight” shield), and in the general spirit and certain particular details of sculptured monuments, such as the Kara Bel and Ivrez reliefs. Instead of regarding Cyprus as the first westward stage on the road of Phoenician evangelists, we now see that it was the last eastward stage in the Aegean evangelization of Phoenicia; and someone will have to rewrite that volume of Professor Perrot’s History of Art in Antiquity, wherein the products of an island, non-Phoenician in its language, its script, and its religious nomenclature, and never demonstrably colonized by Semites till the classical age (and then but in one small district), are quoted as the chief documents for Phoenician art.

This reconsideration in the light of the Aegean evidence will make us pause before accepting Eastern sources as directly responsible for all, or nearly all, of what have been called the “orientalizing” features of archaic Greek art, such, for example, as the winged and other monstrous forms on early Corinth ian and Peloponnesian vases, the arrangement of the decoration in zones, the use made of the Hon and other subtropic beasts, the composite demoniac forms, the architectural volute and pediment; for all these features were known to, and handled by, the prior Aegean world, and some of them, e.g., the zone arrangement of decoration, are found in mid-European art of the Bronze Age. No reconsideration, however, can entirely discredit the evidence for a fresh and direct impact of the East on archaic Hellas in the early Iron Age — an impact which could never have taken place, and obviously did not take place, during the prevalence of Minoan sea-power. For two arguments of ancient repute are irrefutable. The first is drawn from Homer; the second from the Greek alphabetic system. At the epoch which the epics reflect, the Sidonians beyond question were visiting continually the coasts of Greece and bringing to Greek marts fine objects of their own or of others’ workmanship. It is rather on the coasts of European than Asiatic Greece that we can warrant their visits, and all archeological evidence goes to suggest that the Sidonian wares were imitative in style and fabric. But these reservations do not alter the fact that works of Eastern character were being newly brought by Easterns to the area of the Helleno-Aegean culture at a period which the poems themselves prove to have been the opening of the Age of Iron.

As for the other argument, there are many reasonable doubts now current touching the source from which the Phoenicians derived their characters, and touching their responsibility for the actual letter-forms, for the alphabetic order, and for the alphabetic numeration used in historic Greece; but the names given by the Greeks to their letters leave no question that Semitic traders had exerted some direct and predominant influence on commercial intercourse in the -Aegean when the historic Greek alphabet was taking shape, whether through selection from a group of characters long used in the Aegean area, or through the wholesale adoption of a ready-made series selected long ago by some other race.

Therefore far be it from any sane scholar to rule the Phoenician out of the story of Hellenic origins. But we must reduce his part to a more modest performance than used to be credited to him. He should be regarded as a carrier only, an intermediary who had no independent art or culture of his own, but transmitted the art and culture of others greater than himself.
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This ends our selections on The Origin of Greek Alphabet Discovered by two of the most important authorities of this topic. This blog features short and lengthy pieces on all aspects of our shared past. Here are selections from the great historians who may be forgotten (and whose work have fallen into public domain) as well as links to the most up-to-date developments in the field of history and of course, original material from yours truly, Jack Le Moine. – A little bit of everything historical is here.

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