The alphabet is one of the few technologies that is as essential to our daily life. In a narrative that meanders from Herodotus to the present day, via Jewish mystics, Arabic intellectuals, early modern typographers, and 18th-century antiquarians, the alphabet has been continuously recreated by each generation of thinkers.
The assumption that the Greeks created the alphabet is embedded in modern mentality, according to Drucker. Contrary to what the Greeks themselves believed, however, they were aware that it was a borrowed object.
All of the issues that have perplexed historians are brought up by the invention of the alphabet.
Drucker only turns to studies of the alphabet based on inscriptions as opposed to historical accounts when we get closer to the present. Not only was interest in Greek, Roman, and Hebrew writing on the rise in the 18th century, but also in northern European writing systems like runes.
From the philosophical speculations of the earliest historians to the empirical procedures used by contemporary linguists and archaeologists, Drucker takes us on a tour through centuries of intellectual history. The alphabet, a creation that is both universally commonplace and radically new, is at the center of it all.
REF: www.historytoday.com
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