The advent of alphabetic scripts has usually been taken to be crucial to the remarkable cultural florescence of Archaic Greece. The alphabet encouraged widespread literacy which in turn placed Greece on the Royal Road to rationality. This view makes Greeks seem very much 'like us'. In his work, Prof. Dr. James Whitley (Cardiff University) suggests that this standard view is fundamentally mistaken. He develops this argument through a close examination of early Inscriptions from Eretria, Athens, Pithekoussai, Cumae, Methana, Delos and various Cretan cities looking especially at inscribed cups, tombstones and votive statues (e.g. Nikandre). Concepts of agency and personhood will be invoked to argue that the ontology of Archaic Greece was quite other than that of Euro-American modernity.

The evening lecture is organized by the CRC 933 subprojects A01 UP1 "Lettered and Inscribed. Inscriptions in Urban Space in the Greco-Roman Period and Middle Ages" and A10 "Text and Image in Greek Sculpture: A Case-Study on Athens and Olympia From Archaic to Imperial Age". It results from the cooperation of the following institutions of Heidelberg University: the CRC 933 "Material Txtcultures", the Institute for Classical Archaeology and Byzantine Archaeology, and the Seminar for Ancient History and Epigraphy. 

KONTAKT
CRC 933, A01 UP1 "Lettered and Inscribed. Inscriptions in Urban Space in the Greco-Roman Period and Middle Ages"
Anna Sitz – anna.sitz@uni-heidelberg.de