1. Where was ancient Greek spoken?
2. What is the history of the Greek alphabet?
3. How do Greek letters look on an ancient page?
4. How do we know about ancient Greek literature?
5. When did ancient Greek literature originate?
1. Where was ancient Greek spoken?
In early times ancient Greek was spoken in what is now modern Greece and the western coast of Turkey.
In the 4th century BC, Alexander the Great made Greek an international language throughout what is now Turkey, the Middle East, and Egypt. Greek remained the international language of this wide area for nearly a thousand years, until the Arabs conquered the Middle East.
Yet most people spoke Greek in the Byzantine empire (comprising much of modern Turkey), whose capital was in Constantiinople (now Istanbul), until the Turkish conquest in the 15th century AD.
In Greece, Greek has been spoken continuously, even through the Turkish domination, which lasted into the 19th century AD. Presently, modern Greek is written in the ancient Greek alphabet. Because of the continuous use of the Greek New Testament in Orthodox churches, modern Greek still resembles the international Greek language of the first centuries AD.
2. What is the history of the Greek alphabet?
The Greek alphabet developed in the 8th century BC. It was based on the alphabet of the Phoenicians, people who spoke a Semitic language (related to Hebrew) and lived in the area of modern Lebanon.
The Greeks' innovation, though, was using some of the letters for vowel sounds. From among many early variations, the alphabet that was adopted by Athens became dominant. The Romans based their alphabet on this Greek one, and the modern English alphabet is based on Latin letters.
3. How do Greek letters look on an ancient page?
In this illustration, Greek words are written all in capital letters, with no spaces between words. The "paper" is papyrus, made from Egyptian marsh grass, which survives because it did not rot when buried in the dry sands of Egypt.
Modern scholars can read ancient Greek inscriptions on stone; for instance, on gravestones and public notices on walls. Clay pottery from excavations sometimes shows Greek writing; for instance, a potter's name.
4. How do we know about ancient Greek literature?
Greek literature from ancient libraries was copied by hand on papyrus scrolls and later in books on pages made of parchment, from animal skins. Christian monks recopied and preserved most of the surviving ancient Greek literature, but much was lost.
Some ancient manuscripts preserve translations from Greek into languages such as Syriac and Latin.
During modern times in Egypt archeologists have found ancient scraps of papyrus with Greek writing, not only literature, but also thousands of documents from daily life in Hellenistic and Roman times.
5. When did ancient Greek literature originate?
From before 1000 BC, the earliest surviving legends now known may have been recited orally, such as the sagas of the Trojan War. These legends were shaped in the form of epic poems in the 8th century BC and were gradually written down after the introduction of the alphabet in the 7th and 6th centuries BC.
From that time on people have composed literature in Greek until the present.
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