Being ourselves the users of a writing which structurally is the Greek alphabet, we are at a disadvantage working backward in time toward the moment of the alphabet's invention. For we carry an expectation about the way writing is bound to work that makes it hard for us to see what sort of innovation the Greek alphabet was. We will need to turn our attention to the structure of writing systems in general, if we wish to place the invention of the alphabet in context in the history of writing. It will be necessary to assess, however briefly, the history of writing before the Greek alphabet, and to examine in some detail, using a consistent terminology, the actual functioning of early writing systems. Let us choose three specimens of early writing, for the purpose of our analysis: (1) Egyptian hieroglyphics, usually thought to be the oldest ancestor of the Greek alphabet; (2) the Cypriote syllabary, a prealphabetic writing that recorded the Greek language; and (3) Phoenician, the alphabet's immediate predecessor. Important to our inquiry will no longer be shapes, names, and sounds, but how signs were used in combination, their syntax in transforming speech, fact, idea, into a physical record.