Many local variants of the Greek alphabet were employed in ancient Greece during the archaic and early classical periods, until around 400 BC, when they were replaced by the classical 24-letter alphabet that is the standard today. All forms of the Greek alphabet were originally based on the shared inventory of the 22 symbols of the Phoenician alphabet, with the exception of the letter Samekh, whose Greek counterpart Xi (Ξ) was used only in a sub-group of Greek alphabets, and with the common addition of Upsilon (Υ) for the vowel. The local, so-called epichoric, alphabets differed in many ways: in the use of the consonant symbols Χ, Φ and Ψ; in the use of the innovative long vowel letters, in the absence or presence of Η in its original consonant function ; in the use or non-use of certain archaic letters ; and in many details of the individual shapes of each letter. The system now familiar as the standard 24-letter Greek alphabet was originally the regional variant of the Ionian cities in Anatolia. It was officially adopted in Athens in 403 BC and in most of the rest of the Greek world by the middle of the 4th century BC.
The phrase Ἔδοξεν τῇ Βουλῇ καὶ τῷ Δήμῳ ("The Council and the Citizens have decided") is typically spelled Εδοχσεν τει Βολει και τοι Δεμοι in inscriptions of the Athenian democracy prior to 403 BC.
Corinthian black-figure column-krater, showing the name ΗΙΠΠΟΛΥΤΟΣ (Hippolytos) in Corinthian script.
The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as well as consonants. In Archaic and early Classical times, the Greek alphabet existed in many local variants, but, by the end of the 4th century BC, the Euclidean alphabet, with 24 letters, ordered from alpha to omega, had become standard and it is this version that is still used for Greek writing today.
Dipylon inscription, one of the oldest known samples of the use of the Greek alphabet, c. 740 BC
Early Greek alphabet on pottery in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens
A 16th-century edition of the New Testament (Gospel of John), printed in a renaissance typeface by Claude Garamond
A page from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century Bible manuscript in Gothic