Bryn Mawr Classical Review 02.05.15
Barry B. Powell, Homer and the Origin of the
Greek Alphabet. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1991. Pp. xxv, 280. ISBN
0521371570.
Reviewed by Mabel L. Lang, Bryn Mawr College.
Some may question whether making the case for WadeGery's 1949 suggestion that the Greek alphabet may have
been fashioned explicitly in order to record hexametric
verse is worth doing at all; Powell has shown in this book
that it is worth doing well. Replete with maps,
chronological charts, and a careful review of all possibly
relevant evidence, alphabetical, epigraphical and Homeric,
the case as presented here still rests ultimately more on
possibilities and a willingness to believe than on
demonstrable probabilities.
First, in Chapter 1, a survey of what can be known about
the creation of the Greek alphabet from the West Semitic
syllabary is seen to suggest a single Euboian adapter
working with a Phoenician informant about 800 B.C., first
learning in their proper order the names and shapes of the
signs and then experimenting with the usefulness of their
phonetic values for the writing of Greek words: converting
to use as vowels those four Semitic signs the names of
which, at least, represent sounds rather than consonants
(alf, he, yod, ain) and splitting off from the consonant wau
its vocalic counterpart; and attempting, with some
confusion, to find uses for all four Semitic sibilants.
The product, or Ur-alphabet, being transmitted first to
colonists and neighbors, then throughout Greece, incurred
the variations characteristic of the epichoric alphabets as a
result of error, ignorance, or efforts to simplify or
differentiate. The argument is intricate and masterly in its
use particularly of the supplemental letters (phi, chi, psi) to
show how the adapter, in inventing the chi-form and psiform as signs for aspirated kappa and koppa (just as he had
invented the phi-form for aspirated pi, imitating his use of
Semitic tet for aspirated tau), set the stage for the division
between the so-called "blue" (chi-form for chi) and "red"
(psi-form for chi) epichoric alphabets. Why the chi-form as
xi is first of the supplementals in the Etruscan abecedaria
(derived from Euboia) is not explained even though that
value is seen to be a subsequent abbreviation of the
adapter's chi-sigma when the psi-form's use as chi made the
chi-form redundant.
Powell demonstrates the nature of the adapter's alphabet by
using it to record the first ten lines of the Iliad. He does not,
however, explain the several anomalies in the writing.
Why, for example, is contraction for the sake of the meter
noted inconsistently (MU/RI' *A)XAI/OIS and D'
E)TELEI/ETO but A)/LGEA E)/QHKE, DE\ I)FQI/MOUS
and TE A)/R) despite regular contraction in the earliest
verse inscriptions? Why is the chi-form used for chi before
alpha (*A)XAI/OIS), iota (*AXILH=OS), and upsilon
(YUXA/S) while the psi-form is used for chi before
omicron (XOLWQEI/S)? Why are the two o-sounds in
H(RW/WN represented by one vowel while the two esounds in E)TELEI/ETO both appear? Is the omission of a
metrically necessary digamma in A)/NAC a mistake like
the rho for pi in PA=SI and the omitted kappa in
O)LE/KONTO?
Chapter 2 surveys the history of writing from Egyptian
hieroglyphics through the Cypriote syllabary to the
Phoenician script, which Powell, following the view of
Gelb outlined in Appendix 2, takes as a syllabary. How
these earlier forms of writing worked is described in detail
in order to make clear the nature and magnitude of the
change involved in the invention of the alphabet. Then for
the first time in the history of writing it became possible for
a man both to record and to pronounce words in a language
he did not know. Furthermore, unlike the syllabaries, the
alphabet with its unique emphasis on phonetics constituted
the perfect vehicle for the recording of hexameter verse.
Was that why it was invented?
Chapter 3 presents 68 of the earliest Greek inscriptions,
showing both the preponderance of hexametric verse in
those long enough to exhibit it and the private, almost
literary concerns of the writers which are manifested in all
parts of Greece. The absence of public or economic texts
confirms the impression of an aristocratic society (of which
the adapter was a leading light) intent on its own good life.
Noted also is the extent to which the inscriptions'
preservation has resulted from nothing more than the
imperishability of the objects on which they were written,
suggesting the possibility of much contemporary writing on
perishable materials. But once such lost writing is mooted,
is the absence of public or economic texts significant?
Chapter 4 is concerned with the question whether the
adapter invented the alphabet in order to record hexametric
verse in general or that of Homer (rather than that of the
demonstrably later Hesiod) in particular. The answer comes
with a detailed survey of the evidence of Homer's date
(from archaeology, linguistics, and outside references both
literary and pictorial). Considerable importance is given to
the beginning of the representation of legendary material
about 725 B.C. with the vastly greater number of such
mythic scenes being from the Epic Cycle rather than from
Homer. The impetus is taken to be the greater ease of
writing and so the greater spread of copies of such shorter
poems, as if pot painters and other artists could be inspired
only by the written word. And yet the poems of Homer are
here assumed to have been recorded some fifty years earlier
without having started any new fashion in artistic
representation.
Chapter 5 contrasts the Iliad and Odyssey with the short,
one-topic songs sung by the bards in the Odyssey at
banquets or on the athletic field, by audience request or on
their own impulse. The length of the Iliad and Odyssey,
which is taken to be inordinate for any conceivable
performance, and their richness and variety of episode
could have been achieved only in a situation in which the
poet was obliged to spin out, to elaborate, to digress -- that
is, in which his normal pace was so slowed down that the
adapter could record it word by word in the alphabet he had
invented for this purpose. "We praise Homer, but the Iliad
and the Odyssey were a joint venture, a cooperative effort
between the poet and the man who wrote down the poet's
words" (p. 230). How are we to react? Many who think
wishfully that we have Homer's words pure and
unadulterated will be pleased at the neatness of this
solution even though they may have to give up notions of
the poet's unique genius. Still there are questions. Instead of
the epics' organic unity that we have supposed resulted
from an orally composing poet's repeated re-creation and
structural tightening, are we instead to imagine a poet who
has time enough on his hands between words and lines to
invent new epithets but rather saves it up to insert episodes
which were hitherto separate songs? And if the oral
performance of the Iliad requires 18 hours (p. 229, note
19), how many days of how many sessions would it have
taken to record in a new and unfamiliar medium the same
Iliad now to be viewed as a composition which was
conceived ab ovis, vastly enlarged and strung together by a
poet who was inflating now for the first time one old song
with other songs old and new? And if the Iliad and Odyssey
came into being thus, what was it about Homer's earlier
repertory that so impressed the adapter that he invented the
alphabet to record it?
A final tying-up of mythic and alphabetic loose-ends
introduces the adapter by name, that is, as the Palamedes
who is in later literature credited with alphabetic and other
cultural innovations. All in all, this is a book which is as
remarkable for the ingenuity of its answers to difficult
questions as it is for its useful review and compelling
display of so much of the relevant evidence.