Historical story

New discoveries about Ancient Greek during Week of the Classics

Classical languages, the writing system of the ancient Greeks; it sounds like a clear case. What kind of news is there left to discover? A lot, according to recent research. Willemijn Waal and Luuk Huitink will tell you more about this for the Week of the Classics.

Ancient Greek, we also call it a dead language because we no longer speak it. The sources are centuries old:epitaphs, mythological texts, plays, historiography and so on. “The total of these Ancient Greek sources, the corpus, doesn't change much anymore. Archaeologists sometimes find something, but that doesn't affect the grammar much," says Luuk Huitink (University of Amsterdam). The classicist is one of the authors of a new version of Ancient Greek grammar. It hadn't changed for over a hundred years.

Does the grammar of a dead language change then? “Definitely!” says Huitink enthusiastically. “That depends on the interpretation. The most important and defining linguist of the last seventy years, the American Noam Chomsky, is convinced that language is not about communication, but about grammar. Not everyone agrees with that these days and neither do we. The context in which we communicate determines grammar. Don't I talk to you differently than when I give a lecture on this subject? We provide that context in the new grammar book.”

Small words

As mentioned, Ancient Greek is a dead language, so there is no spoken language available. How then can you distinguish in the situation in which the speaker finds himself? Huitink:“Of course we have many different types of texts that have functioned in different contexts:a tragedy uses different language than a speech in court. On a more detailed level, we have particles, small words of two or three letters that emphasize something. Until now we did not know their precise function, but we have found that they can tell more about a speaker's attitude. For example, they stand for expressions such as 'well yaaaa!' or 'I really did!' This shows whether the speaker likes a statement or thinks his own opinion of it.”

This knowledge does not change the content of well-known classical texts enormously, but it does show the tone of the people who are speaking. How polite characters are to each other, for example, says something about their character. “Take Socrates, who is famous for his irony. But partly through our research we found out that he could also be very rude. For example, if he constantly addresses his interlocutors with 'my best man', this is not simply meant to be polite:linguistic research within and outside the classics shows that a dominant speaker often uses such forms of address to corner his interlocutor.”

The author's intentions are also seen in a different light with the new grammar rules. For example, Homer pointed out important highlights in his text by starting sentences with the particle 'ara'. “With this, Homer builds up tension, warns the reader or listener that an important moment is approaching,” explains Huitink. So pay attention!

Bomb

Not only the interpretation of the ancient grammar is subject to change, but also the age of the ancient Greek alphabet. Willemijn Waal (Leiden University) has researched the oldest inscriptions and argues that the Ancient Greek script is a lot older than we think:“In 1933 it was proposed that the Greek alphabet is as old as the oldest inscriptions we have found, which date from the eighth century BC. This idea is generally accepted, but it just doesn't make sense.”

With this Waal throws a bomb in the world of the classics. According to Waal, the oldest known literary work, Homer's epics, could have been written much earlier than in the eighth century BC. And thus have not been handed down orally for centuries, as is now generally accepted. What's going on here?

Oral tradition

According to Waal, there are a number of elements in Homer's work that indicate that the text originated as early as the Late Bronze Age (1600-1200 BC), such as the descriptions of armor:“Homer only talks about bronze weapons, while around 800 BC. the weapons were of iron. And he describes a soldier tripping over his man-sized shield, while the shields around 800 BC. had become much smaller.” Scholars agree that Homer's epic poems are much older than the time Homer would have lived – the 8th century BC – but they usually assume that they were transmitted orally.

“I have strong doubts about a centuries-long complete oral tradition”, says Waal firmly. “Take, for example, the list of ships in book two:a ship's catalog of over 250 lines of verse listing all the ships that sailed from Greece to Troy to fetch the chess Helena, and the places from which they departed. Apart from the fact that they mention places that were important in the Late Bronze Age, but which had mostly disappeared or become less relevant by 800, such long lists are in themselves an unlikely part of a purely oral tradition.”

According to some anthropologists, such elements are more characteristic of a written composition, as is the structure of Homer's work, according to Waal. “The epic of heroes consists of 24 books, and is a fairly tightly arranged story. Strictly oral traditions are generally freer, looser, and generally do not have such a fixed structure.” Of course, the fact that the stories were written down does not mean that they could not also be recited orally.

No cradle

Not only the oldest Greek literary work could use an update, but also the age of the ancient Greek script itself. “We need to get rid of the outdated idea that only the Greek alphabet is the cradle of our own alphabet and even of our civilization, and that the Greeks were the driving force behind its spread. Greece was only one of the countries in the region to use an alphabetic script, and there is no reason to believe that the Greeks played a central role in the development of the alphabet,” said Waal.

The surrounding countries, such as Egypt and Mesopotamia, have known writing since the fourth millennium BC. In Greece, the precursor of Greek has been preserved on clay tablets from the Late Bronze Age, the last dating to around 1200 BC. “The theory is that this was followed by a dark period of four hundred years, during which nothing happened. No trade, no writing, until around 800 a sudden explosion of inscriptions took place. It is true that at that time the Greek alphabet is popping up everywhere and in all kinds of forms, such as graffiti, grave texts and names on pottery, but I do not believe in a so-called 'alphabetic Big Bang' theory.”

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Excavations over the last thirty years have shown that trade contacts continued between Greece and the surrounding countries, where writing was also used. According to Waal, it is more logical that the rise of the Ancient Greek alphabet was gradual and that the Greeks initially started writing on perishable material, such as papyrus, which has not survived.

“People usually use writing for the first time for practical purposes, such as commerce and administration. We love making lists. The oldest inscriptions in Ancient Greek, however, are playful private expressions, such as pornographic graffiti on rocks and small poems on pottery. This is an unlikely first use of writing. In addition, it would be quite a coincidence that the oldest inscriptions found are also exactly the oldest written inscriptions. It is more plausible to assume that it was written before than the oldest evidence we have.”

Walloon theory seemed mostly that, a theory, because there was no tangible evidence of Ancient Greek being older. Until last May:New radiocarbon dates from northern Greece indicate that the oldest inscriptions are 100 to 150 years older than we previously thought, dating back to the ninth or even the tenth century BC. Would Homer's work have also been written earlier? The future will tell.