by Edwin D. Floyd
Iliad 6.168-170, in which writing is fairly clearly referred to, has often seemed embarrassing to recent scholars, trained to regard Homer as fundamentally oral in outlook. With a seeming paradox, for example, Powell says that the passage shows that Homer himself - for whose composition Powell argues Greek alphabetic writing was developed - had no specific understanding of the new art.
In contrast, this presentation will argue that the Iliad passage specifically adumbrates the concept of writing - and contrasts it with ancient, Indo-European poetic patterns. There are important literary results of this, but this presentation will merely glance at them. Instead, I will concentrate on the seeming anachronism of Homer's including, centuries after any attested use of Linear B, references and allusions to Bronze Age writing. My solution is to appeal, with Deecke and Jeffery, to the Cypriote syllabary.
Besides being of importance for understanding Homer, the Cypriote syllabary may also have been pivotally important in the development of the Greek alphabet. Most broadly, it can have suggested the idea of including vowels in a writing system; in fact, a tantalizing case can be made that Cypriote "u" suggested the shape of upsilon. Also, there may be some inspiration from the Cypriote syllabary for the "supplementals" (phi, chi, psi).