The Greek Alphabet Adds Vowels

c. 700 BC

The Dipylon inscription — among the earliest known Greek alphabetic writing, scratched on a vase c. 740 BC, including the now-famous vowels. Greek scribes adapt the Phoenician consonantal alphabet and repurpose five unused consonants as vowels — α, ε, η, ι, ο. Writing becomes phonetic in a way the Phoenician system was not. The Greek alphabet then becomes the Etruscan alphabet, then the Latin one.