Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS) is a project funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 677758), and based in the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge.

Understanding Relations Between Scripts II: Early Alphabets is the first volume in this series, bringing together ten experts on ancient writing, languages and archaeology to present a set of diverse studies on the early development of alphabetic writing systems and their spread across the Levant and Mediterranean during the second and first millennia BC. By taking an interdisciplinary perspective, it sheds new light on alphabetic writing not just as a tool for recording language but also as an element of culture.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1. Introduction: Issues in studying early alphabets: Philip J. Boyes and Philippa M. Steele
• 2. A ‘top-down’ re-invention of an old form: Cuneiform alphabets in context: Silvia Ferrara
• 3. Variation in alphabetic cuneiform: Rethinking the ‘Phoenician’ inscription from Sarepta: Philip J. Boyes
• 4. Ancient Egypt and the earliest known stages of alphabetic writing: Ben Haring
• 5. Much ado about an implement! – the Phoenicianising of Early Alphabetic: Reinhard G. Lehmann
• 6. Vowel representation in the Archaic Greek and Old Aramaic scripts: A comparative orthographic and phonological examination: Roger D. Woodard
• 7. Mother or sister? Rethinking the origins of the Greek alphabet and its relation to the other ‘western’ alphabets: Willemijn Waal
• 8. The development of Greek alphabets: Fluctuations and standardisations: Philippa M. Steele
• 9. Between scripts and languages: Inscribed intricacies from geometric and archaic Greek contexts: Giorgos Bourogiannis
• 10. The matter of voice – the Umbrian perspective: Karin W. Tikkanen
• 11. Writings in network? The case of Palaeohispanic scripts: Coline Ruiz Darasse
• Bibliography