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Latest comment: 2 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
Does anybody have information on why this abecedary has been linked to Greek in the first place? As far as I understand, its letter inventory is purely that of the original Phoenician (from aleph to taw), without the crucial and specifically Greek addition of upsilon. Since it's purely an abecedary (no actual words recorded), how can the linguistic background of its writers be known? Fut.Perf.☼ 00:46, 10 March 2012 (UTC)Reply
I had the same question. It's not mentioned is my sources for early Greek writing. Is it maybe just a good graphic match to early Greek? — kwami (talk) 05:07, 25 May 2012 (UTC)Reply
The shapes of the letters are the clue. The last letter of the Phoenician alphabet is taw, pronounced [t] and written by the Phoenicians as X. But the shape of the last letter on the Fayum tablets alphabet is not X but T, the Greek tau, pronounced [t]. Similarly, the sixth letter of the Phoenician alphabet is waw, pronounced [w] and written Y. But the sixth letter in the alphabet of the Fayum tablets is written as Ϝ, the Greek digamma, pronounced [w]. In short: although many of the letters on the tablets could be Phoenician or Greek (as you would expect since one was adapted from the other), the shape of a few letters point unequivocally to the alphabet being a Greek alphabet not a Phoenician one. Lloyd Bye (talk) 21:01, 27 April 2022 (UTC)Reply
