[B-Greek] Greek letters discontinued
Ben and Jo Crick
ben.crick at argonet.co.uk
Mon Jul 14 19:16:17 EDT 2003
On Mon 14 Jul 2003 (14:17:44), mitchlarramore at yahoo.com wrote:
> Can someone tell me what happened to the following
> Greek letters? Did they all stop being used at the
> same time and for the same reason?
>
> Digamma
> San
> Koppa
Dear Mitch
The Greek Numerical System was not standardised until about the 2nd century
BCE, because the fiercely individual Greek city-states would not co-operate.
By the 2nd century BCE, the letters Digamma (aka Stigma), San, Qoppa and Sampi
were obsolete. Digamma was a W, Qoppa a Q and Sampi another S (IIRC). Digamma
was also called Stigma because it resembled a ligature of a Sigma and a Tau
when handwritten; but like a capital F in inscriptions ("double Gamma").
The letter San was written like an M (7th century BCE), or a "lazy Pi" =| (5th
century BCE). San was the equivalent of the Hebrew Tsadhe, TS, like a Russian
Tseh.
When the numerical system was standardised, the system to represent all
numbers from 1 to 999 needed 27 symbols, not 24. So the now obsolete Stigma,
Qoppa and Sampi were pressed into service thus:
1 alpha 10 iota 100 rho
2 beta 20 kappa 200 sigma
3 gamma 30 lambda 300 tau
4 delta 40 mu 400 upsilon
5 epsilon 50 nu 500 phi
6 [digamma/stigma] 60 xi 600 chi
7 zeta 70 omicron 700 psi
8 eta 80 pi 800 omega
9 theta 90 [qoppa] 900 [sampi]
The obsolete letters survive in ancient inscriptions. No doubt the List
afficionados will give us details on which letter dropped out first, when
and why.
HTH
ERRWSQE
Ben
--
Revd Ben Crick BA CF, and Mrs Joanna (Goodwin) Crick
<ben.crick at argonet.co.uk>
232 Canterbury Road, Birchington, Kent, CT7 9TD (UK)
http://www.cnetwork.co.uk/crick.htm
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