d’Athenes al’e ́poque classique, examined the uses of public and private
writing in Athens.
New theoretical perspectives have also arisen concerning the uses of
writing on materials and in texts that do not in large part survive. The
study of archives has proven to be very productive: see Woolf, chapter 3,
in this volume for discussion of the multivolume collection entitledLa
me ́moire perdue(Demougin 1994, Moatti 1998, 2000). This ambitious
collection addresses the use of written records in such areas of Roman
public life as banking, politics, the Senate, law, the administration of
public lands, and religion—to name only some of the topics covered in
the first volume (Demougin 1994). The second volume (Moatti 1998)
delves into two broad areas of investigation: first, the use of archives in
Roman religious contexts, and second, the production of records con-
nected with the grain distribution. The third volume (Moatti 2000) is
concerned with judiciary archives. Another collection of essays on con-
cepts of record keeping in the ancient world was compiled by Brosius
(ed.) 2003. Census archives have supplied the subject for yet another
substantial collective work,Les archives du census(Moatti 2001).
Our goal in this essay is to give an overview—given the volume of
scholarship it can be no more than skeletal—of the many-faceted and
stimulating work on ancient literacy published in the last generation.
Although the bibliography in Harris 1989 is taken as a point of rough
chronological departure, this essay (following the direction of the chap-
ters in this book) adopts a perspective rather different from that of Harris:
our aim is not so much to define the levels of literacy in ancient popula-
tions but rather to ponder the cultural and social significances of literacy
and literate behavior. Thus, major scholarship from earlier decades is
occasionally included in this bibliography as we touch on areas not cov-
ered by Harris.
A logical starting point is recent work on the origins and diffusion of
the alphabet in Greece and its adaptation in Italy into the Etruscan and
Roman alphabets. Baurain, Bonnet, and Krings (eds.) 1991,Phoinikeia
Grammata, address the genesis of the Phoenician alphabet, the transfer of
the alphabet to Greece, and writing in Phoenicia, Cyprus, Greece, and the
western Mediterranean. Even within the covers of this collection a long-
standing controversy on the moment of and reasons for the introduction
of the alphabet into the Greek world continues. Whereas Powell 1991
argues that the Greek alphabet was created by a single man at a single time
for the purpose of writing down theIliadand theOdyssey, Isserlin 1991
believes that the hypothesis that the Greek alphabet had multiple origins
extending over a range of time is worth considering. The origins of the
alphabet are discussed in other books and articles that take a variety of
perspectives: Thomas 1992 (above) discusses the origins of the Greek
alphabet within the context of literacy and orality; Robb 1994,Literacy
and Paideia, discusses the spread of literacy in its relation topaideiain
Greece; in an article, Ruijgh 1995 considers the introduction of the
334 Bibliographical Essay