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The Origins of the Alphabet and How It Spread Across the World with Wayne T. Pitard
Spurlock Museum of World Cultures
600 S. Gregory St.
Urbana, Illinois 61801
(217) 333-2360
Category
Hours
View Website
This lecture will provide a tour of the extraordinary development
of the alphabet from its beginnings to its eventual spread across
the Mediterranean and the world. We will examine the script’s origin
and how the signs were conceptualized by their creator(s).
We will look at the alphabet’s extension, first across the
eastern Mediterranean where it developed into the distinctive
Ugaritic, Phoenician, Hebrew, and Aramaic scripts, and then
moved southward into the Arabian Peninsula, where it evolved
into the Arabic system. Then we will examine how the early
alphabet, which only expressed consonants, was revolutionized
by the Greeks, who began using some of the letters as vowels.
We will follow the development of the Greek alphabet into both
the Latin and the Cyrillic alphabets that exist throughout Europe
and much of northern Asia. Finally, we will touch upon the spread
of the Arabic alphabet across northern Africa and eastward into India,
and the Latin alphabet’s movement to the Americas and parts
of southern Africa during the European colonial period of the
15th-20th centuries. All of this has made the alphabetic
writing system the most widespread method of writing in the world.
All are welcome.
Sponsored by: AIA-Central Illinois (Urbana) Society, Archaeological Institute of America