The Origins of Alphabetisation in Greek

Any bureaucracy, whether ancient or modern, needs a simple and convenient system of ordering and presenting textual data such as names, titles and other words that also makes possible their ready retrieval for checking and further processing. The accumulation of human knowledge and the birth of systematic scholarship also require a simple method for ordering and presenting textual information in collections such as lexica and encyclopaedia. Alphabetisation, that is, the arranging of words in the set order of the alphabet, whatever the actual alphabet used might be, offers precisely such a simple, clear and easy-to-use system that is widely accepted and understood among both administrators and intellectuals and indeed anybody capable of reading. A clear proof of the utility and convenience of the method of alphabetisation is the fact that, thousands of years after its birth, we still use it widely around the world and across countless cultures, languages and scripts. Whilst the system of alphabetisation is easy to grasp, its origins are far less well understood. Of all European scripts, the earliest demonstrable application of the principle of alphabetisation occurs in Greek. However, the precise time and circumstances of its appearance are still largely unclear. One of the reasons for this is that little research has been invested in clarifying alphabetisation in Greek, particularly its origins and early history. Another problem is the tendency towards rigid specialisation of researchers, who, consequently, may be unable to take into account research into neighbouring ancient cultures, languages and scripts. This project proposes to fill exactly this major gap in research. The first half of the project will be dedicated to the decipherment and scholarly text edition of a key new source for the early history of alphabetisation in Greek, P.Vindob. G 60514-60518, the hitherto earliest extensive administrative papyrus displaying the application of alphabetisation in Greek, which is today kept in the Papyrus Collection of the Austrian National Library in Vienna. The second half of the project will examine the questions of the place of this source in the early history of alphabetisation and how the growing number of sources for alphabetisation in Greek, ancient Egyptian and North-West Semitic languages (Hebrew and Ugaritic) can help us understand the emergence of this method in Greek: whether it was an independent, internal Greek invention or whether, like the alphabet itself, it was borrowed from a foreign civilisation. In addition to the early history of Greek alphabetisation, P.Vindob. G 60514-60518 is also rich in new information about a range of key aspects of the social, cultural, economic and administrative history of Hellenistic Egypt such as onomastics, ethnicity, taxation and bureaucratic practices. Its publication and scholarly study are therefore highly important also for the history of Ptolemaic Egypt and the Hellenistic world.