The Greek Alphabet developed from the Phoenician script at some point around the 8th century BCE. The earlier Mycenaean Linear B script, used primarily for lists and inventories, had been lost during the Greek Dark Age, and the technology of the written word remained unavailable until the invention of the alphabet, which influenced the later Latin script. The basis for the writing system known as the 'alphabet' came from the Near East, specifically the Levant, but, as scholar Barry B. Powell, points out, these earlier systems were not the alphabet: From an historical point of view, "alphabet" and "Greek alphabet" are one and the same. The Greek alphabet was the first writing that informed the reader what the words sounded like, whether or not he knew what the words meant. The word "alphabet" itself is Greek, formed from the Greek names of the first two signs in the series . Earlier writings, including such West Semitic writings as Phoenician and Hebrew, were in this sense not alphabets. All later alphabets, the Latin or Cyrillic or the International Phonetic Alphabet, are modifications of the Greek alphabet, having the same internal structure. (3) Unlike the Mycenaean Linear B Script, which seems to have served a primarily utilitarian function, the alphabet was quickly used in preserving the literary oral tradition by writing down the Iliad and the Odyssey (attributed to Homer) and religious traditions as recorded by Hesiod in his Theogony, all three dated to the 8th century BCE. New works were also created, however, such as Hesiod's Works and Days, and inscriptions such as the one from Nestor's Cup (also dated to the 8th century BCE), among the earliest extant examples of Greek writing. From the 8th century BCE onwards, the Greek alphabet was used to produce all of the famous works of the civilization on topics ranging from astronomy and astrology to botany, biology, creative writing, literary criticism, history, the medical arts, philosophy, science, sociology, veterinary medicine, and zoology, among many others, standardizing knowledge and allowing for further developments. The Greek alphabet was adopted by the Etruscans and transmitted by them to the Romans who used it to develop the Latin script, which became the basis for modern alphabetic scripts.
