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THE GREEK ALPHABET AND ITS OFFSHOOTS 461 citizens, accounts of moneys expended and received by temples, votive offerings, sepulchral inscriptions, lettering on vases, on coins, and so forth, They are of paramount importance for history in all its branches, and they form the subject of a special field of study, Greek epigraphy, Greek manuscripts, ancient and mediaval, numbering many thousands, form one of the main bases of modern civilization: Greck palæography deals with their study and deciphering.
CONCLUSION
The Greek alphabet occupies a unique place in the history of writing. It transformed the consonantal Semitic script into a modern alphabet, and gave it symmetry and art. Through its direct and indirect descendants, the Etruscan and Latin alphabets (see the following Chapters) on the one hand, and the Cyrillic alphabet (see below) on the other, it has become the progenitor of all the European alphabets. In the course of its long history ir produced some other offshoots, which will be dealt with in this chapter.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The many tens of thousands of Greek inscriptions are collected in Corpus Inscriptiomum Graecarum, Berlin, + vols., 1825-77, and in its successor, Inscriptiones Graecae, Berlin, 14 vols., sub-divided into many parts, arranged geographically. Early inscriptions (prior to 403 B.C.) are collected in H. Rohl, Imagines inscriptiomum Greecarton Antiquissimarum, etc., 3rd ed., Berlin, 1907
Convenient selections are: Ch. Michel, Recueil d'inscriptions grecques, Brussels, 1900 (Two supplements were issued in 1912 and 1927): Hicks and Hill, Greek Historical Inscriptions, and ed., Oxford, 1gor: this book has been superseded by M. N. Tod, A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions, vol. I, Oxford, 1933 (2nd ed., 1946), vol. II, 1948: W. Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Greecarum, 4 vols., 3rd ed., Leipsic, 1915-1924.
Photographic facsimiles: 0. kem, Inscriptiones Gixeca, Bonn, 1913: W. Wattenbach, Scripture Grecea specimina in uston scholarton, 4th ed., Berlin, 1936.
E. S. Roberts, Introduction to Greek Epigraphy, Vol. I. Cambridge, 1887: Vol. II, with E. A. Gardner, The Inscriptions of Attica, Cambridge, 1903.
A. Kirchhoff, Studien zur Geschichte des griechischen Alphabets, 4th ed., Guetersloh, 1887.
F. G. Kenyon, The Paleography of Greek Papyri, Oxford, 1899.
E. M. Thompson, Handbook of Greek and Latin Paltography, 3rd ed., London, 1906, and . Introduction to Greek and Latin Palaograply, Oxford, 1912.
Marie Vogel and V. Gardthausen. Die griechischen Sclereiber des Mittelalters und der Renaissance, Leipsie, 1909.
V. Gardthausen, Ursprung und Entwickelung der griechisch-lateinischen Schrift, Heidelberg. Igog; Griechische Palcographie, and ed, Leipsic, 1911-13.
W. Schubart, Papyri Graece Berolinenses, Bonn, 1911; Einfuehrung in die Papyruskunde, Berlin, 1918; Das Buch bei den Griechen und Rumenn, 2nd ed., Berlin and Leipsic, 1921; Griechische Palæographie (in Mueller, Handbuch der Altertumstvissenschaft, Vol. 1), Munich, 1925: Zeitstil und Gattungsstil in der griech. Schrift, Berlin-Leipsic, 1938: Die Papyri als Zeugen antiker Kultur, Berlin, 1938.
PSIC, 1938: Die Pau 1925; Zeitstil und cucller, Handbuch de
