Various alphabetic writing systems were in use in

Iron Age The Iron Age () is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progre ...

Anatolia Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...

to record

Anatolian languages The Anatolian languages are an extinct branch of Indo-European languages that were spoken in Anatolia. The best known Anatolian language is Hittite, which is considered the earliest-attested Indo-European language. Undiscovered until the late ...

and Phrygian. Several of these languages had previously been written with

logographic In a written language, a logogram (from Ancient Greek 'word', and 'that which is drawn or written'), also logograph or lexigraph, is a written character that represents a semantic component of a language, such as a word or morpheme. Chinese c ...

and syllabic scripts. The alphabets of Asia Minor proper share characteristics that distinguish them from the earliest attested forms of the Greek alphabet. Many letters in these alphabets resemble Greek letters but have unrelated readings, most extensively in the case of Carian. The Phrygian and Lemnian alphabets by contrast were early adaptations of regional variants of the

Greek alphabet The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as wel ...

; the earliest Phrygian inscriptions are contemporary with early Greek inscriptions, but contain Greek innovations such as the letters Φ and Ψ which did not exist in the earliest forms of the Greek alphabet. The Anatolian alphabets fell out of use around the 4th century BCE with the onset of the

Hellenistic period In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the R ...

Alphabets

*The Lydian script, an alphabet used to record the

Lydian language Lydian is an extinct Indo-European language, Indo-European Anatolian languages, Anatolian language spoken in the region of Lydia, in western Anatolia (now in Turkey). The language is attested in graffiti and in coin legends from the late 8th centu ...

from ca. the 5th to 4th centuries BCE; a related script is the "Para-Lydian" alphabet known from a single inscription in

Sardis Sardis ( ) or Sardes ( ; Lydian language, Lydian: , romanized: ; ; ) was an ancient city best known as the capital of the Lydian Empire. After the fall of the Lydian Empire, it became the capital of the Achaemenid Empire, Persian Lydia (satrapy) ...

. * The Para-Lydian script, known from a single inscription found in Sardis Synagogue, language unknown, undeciphered but closely resembles the Lydian script, hence the name. *The Carian script, recording the

Carian language The Carian language is an extinct language of the Luwic languages, Luwic subgroup of the Anatolian languages, Anatolian branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family, spoken by the Carians. The known corpus is small, and the ...

, known from inscriptions in

Caria Caria (; from Greek language, Greek: Καρία, ''Karia''; ) was a region of western Anatolia extending along the coast from mid-Ionia (Mycale) south to Lycia and east to Phrygia. The Carians were described by Herodotus as being Anatolian main ...

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

and

Athens Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...

. Only partially understood, there were 45 letters. Many of these resemble the Greek alphabet in form, but have different values. *The Lycian script, an alphabet recording the

Lycian language The Lycian language ( )Bryce (1986) page 30. was the language of the ancient Lycians who occupied the Anatolian region known during the Iron Age as Lycia. Most texts date back to the fifth and fourth century BC. Two languages are known as Lycian ...

from the 5th to 4th centuries BCE. *The Sidetic script, an alphabet of 25 letters, only a few of which are clearly derived from Greek, known from coin legends in what might be a Sidetic language. *The Pisidian script, an alphabet used to write the Pisidian language. It is attested in about 30 inscriptions around the region of

Pisidia Pisidia (; , ; ) was a region of ancient Asia Minor located north of Pamphylia, northeast of Lycia, west of Isauria and Cilicia, and south of Phrygia, corresponding roughly to the modern-day province of Antalya in Turkey. Among Pisidia's set ...

. *The Phrygian script, an alphabet of 21 letters used for the

Phrygian language The Phrygian language () was the Indo-European language of the Phrygians, spoken in Anatolia (in modern Turkey), during classical antiquity (c. 8th century BCE to 5th century CE). Phrygian ethno-linguistic homogeneity is debatable. Ancient Gre ...

(22 for the

Mysian language Mysian was spoken by Mysians inhabiting Mysia in north-west Anatolia. Little is known about the Mysian language. Strabo noted that it was, "in a way, a mixture of the Lydian language, Lydian and Phrygian languages". As such, the Mysian language ...

) which is very similar to early Greek epichoric alphabets, except for the presence of a special character for j.

References

External links

Alphabets of Asia Minor
(indoeuro.bizland.com)

(titus.uni-frankfurt.de)
Lycian inscribed pillar
(holylandphotos.org) Ancient Greek Anatolian languages

Asia Minor Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...

Iron Age Anatolia {{alphabet-stub

Alphabets

See also

References

Further reading

External links