Add Context - 4. Alphanumeric Notation and the Calendrical-Musical Kosmos
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The breakthrough to alphabetic writing seems to have been inspired from quite a different direction. A set of about 28 symbols had been created to signify the days in the lunar month, the gamut of tones in the musical scale, or perhaps both. These signs were applied to the verbal phonemes which became the basis for the Canaanite-Greek-Roman alphabet, which has cuneiform precedents going at least as far back as Ugarit c. 1400 BC.
Snodgrass[1] (1980: p. 79) has remarked that “Linear B was essentially an administrative script, used by palace scribes for official documentation, and occasionally by craftsmen… We infer that very few people could read the script… If it was the almost exclusive preserve of the palace bureaucracies, as seems likely, then their disappearance will have removed its raison d’être. The early alphabetic inscriptions show a sharp contrast. … They refer to private matters—ownership, entertainment, personal comments; a striking proportion of them are in verse. … and permanent inscriptions on stone follow” “[a]lready before 700 BC.”
Can you help add context about what Linear B is? Perhaps you can help add some context about Mycenaean Greek as per Wikipedia if that applies here, as no civilization is specified in or right before the second paragraph quoted above. Context can be added in a footnote or as a link in the chapter body text.
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- ↑ Anthony Snodgrass, Archaic Greece: The Age of Experiment (London: 1980), p. 79.
