Historical Question

[Jordan St. Francis]

When did the sigma begin to be written looking like "c" ?

A book I bought for some supplementary translations, the "teach yourself" series "ancient Greek" writes all its sigmas as "c" or "C".

In the course of two years in my university courses, the sigma was never written this way . I had thought it was perhaps a medieval or byzantine development.

Is this an error on the part of this text book?

[anglicus]

It's not an error. I've heard it's becoming more popular to use the lunate sigma since it avoids the issue of having two forms of the same letter. Supposedly it derives from some ancient variant of the alphabet, but was popularized more in the middle ages, I think. I'm sure someone here has more details.

I started learning with that book and thought it was weird, but got used to it and wrote out all my flash cards using it. But once I started reading other things, I started to get annoyed with it, so now I've gone over to σ and ς.

[cb]

hi, the lunate sigma is ancient; see this table of letters used in ancient papyri (remove spaces):

www . freewebs . com / mhninaeide / Thompson . pdf

cheers

[demetri]

When did the sigma begin to be written looking like "c" ?

A book I bought for some supplementary translations, the "teach yourself" series "ancient Greek" writes all its sigmas as "c" or "C".

In the course of two years in my university courses, the sigma was never written this way . I had thought it was perhaps a medieval or byzantine development.

Is this an error on the part of this text book?

Indeed, it is a medieval Byzantine development. Note the ICXC iconic abbreviation for "Jesus Christ" from the first and last letters of each word in Greek.

[cb]

hi, it's not a byzantine development. it's ancient. see the link in my above post, cheers

[demetri]

hi, it's not a byzantine development. it's ancient. see the link in my above post, cheers

Sure thing. I wouldn't want to disturb your homework project.

[annis]

Is this an error on the part of this text book?

It's more a fad.

[demetri]

Is this an error on the part of this text book?

It's more a fad.

Chuckle...very good.