Sampi (modern: ϡ; ancient shapes: Ͳ, ) is an archaic letter of the Greek alphabet. It was used as an addition to the classical 24-letter alphabet in some eastern Ionic dialects of ancient Greek in the 6th and 5th centuries BC, to denote some type of a sibilant sound, probably or , and was abandoned when the sound disappeared from Greek.
It later remained in use as a numeral symbol for 900 in the alphabetic ("Milesian") system of Greek numerals. Its modern shape, which resembles a π inclining to the right with a longish curved cross-stroke, developed during its use as a numeric symbol in minuscule handwriting of the Byzantine era.
Its current name, sampi, originally probably meant "san pi", i.e. "like a pi", and is also of medieval origin. The letter's original name in antiquity is not known. It has been proposed that sampi was a continuation of the archaic letter san, which was originally shaped like an M and denoted the sound in some other dialects. Besides san, names that have been proposed for sampi include parakyisma and angma, while other historically attested terms for it are enacosis, sincope, and o charaktir.
Alphabetic sampi
As an alphabetic letter denoting a sibilant sound, sampi (shaped ) was mostly used between the middle of the 6th and the middle of the 5th centuries BC, although some attestations have been dated as early as the 7th century BC. It has been attested in the cities of Miletus, Ephesos, Halikarnassos, Erythrae, Teos (all situated in the region of Ionia in Asia Minor), in the island of Samos, in the Ionian colony of Massilia, and in Kyzikos (situated farther north in Asia Minor, in the region of Mysia). In addition, in the city of Pontic Mesembria, on the Black Sea coast of Thrace, it was used on coins, which were marked with the abbreviation of the city's name, spelled "".
Sampi occurs in positions where other dialects, including written Ionic, normally have double sigma (), i.e. a long sound. Some other dialects, particularly Attic Greek, have (long ) in the same words (e.g. vs. 'sea', or vs. 'four'). The sounds in question are all reflexes of the proto-Greek consonant clusters or . It is therefore believed that the local letter sampi was used to denote some kind of intermediate sound during the phonetic change from the earlier plosive clusters towards the later sound, possibly an affricate , forming a triplet with the Greek letters for and .C. Brixhe, "History of the Alpbabet", in Christidēs, Arapopoulou, & Chritē, eds., 2007, A History of Ancient Greek
Among the earliest known uses of sampi in this function is an abecedarium from Samos dated to the mid-7th century BC. This early attestation already bears witness to its alphabetic position behind omega (i.e. not the position of san), and it shows that its invention cannot have been much later than that of omega itself.
The first known use of alphabetic sampi in writing native Greek words is an inscription found on a silver plate in Ephesus, which has the words "" ("four") and "" ("forty") spelled with sampi (cf. normal spelling Ionic "" vs. Attic ). It can be dated between the late 7th century and mid 6th century BC. An inscription from HalicarnassusBritish Museum No. 886, has the names "Ἁλικαρναͳέ[ω]ν" ("of the Halicarnassians") and the personal names "Ὀαͳαͳιος" and "Π[α]νυάͳιος". All of these names appear to be of non-Greek, local origin, i.e. Carian. On a late 6th century bronze plate from Miletus dedicated to the sanctuary of Athena at Assesos, the spelling "" ("to Athena of Assessos") has been identified. This is currently the first known instance of alphabetic sampi in Miletus itself, commonly assumed to be the birthplace of the numeral system and thus of the later numeric use of sampi.
It has been suggested that there may be an isolated example of the use of alphabetic sampi in Athens. In a famous painted black figure amphora from c.615 BC, known as the "Nessos amphora", the inscribed name of the eponymous centaur Nessus is rendered in the irregular spelling . The expected regular form of the name would have been either Attic "" – with a double "τ" – or Ionic "". Traces of corrections that are still visible underneath the painted "Τ" have led to the conjecture that the painter originally wrote , with sampi for the σσ/ττ sound.
Pamphylian sampi A letter similar to Ionian sampi, but of unknown historical relation with it, existed in the highly deviant local dialect of Pamphylia in southern Asia Minor. It was shaped like . According to Brixhe it probably stood for the sounds , , or . It is found in a few inscriptions in the cities of Aspendos and Perge as well as on local coins. For instance, an inscription from Perge dated to around 400 BC reads: (="Vanássāi Preiíāi Klemútas Lwarámu Vasirwōtas anéthēke", "Klemutas the vasirwotas, son of Lwaramus, dedicated this to the Queen of Perge").. Other editions read "Klevutas" and "Lwaravu". "Ͷ" (transliterated "V") here stands for a second nonstandard letter, "Pamphylian digamma". The same title "Queen of Perge", the local title for the goddess Artemis, is found on coin legends: . As is known to be the local feminine form of the archaic Greek noun , i.e. (w)anax ("king"), it is believed that the letter stood for some type of sibilant reflecting Proto-Greek .
Numeric sampi
In the alphabetic numeral system, which was probably invented in Miletus and is therefore sometimes called the "Milesian" system, there are 27 numeral signs: the first nine letters of the alphabet, from alpha (A) to theta (Θ) stand for the digits 1–9; the next nine, beginning with iota (Ι), stand for the multiples of ten (10, 20, etc. up to 90); and the last nine, beginning with rho (Ρ), stand for the hundreds (100 – 900). For this purpose, the 24 letters of the standard classical Greek alphabet were used with the addition of three archaic or local letters: digamma/wau (Ϝ, , originally denoting the sound ) for "6", koppa (Ϙ, originally denoting the sound ) for "90", and sampi for "900". While digamma and koppa were retained in their original alphabetic positions inherited from Phoenician, the third archaic Phoenician character, san/tsade (Ϻ, denoting an sound), was not used in this way. Instead, sampi was chosen, and added at the end of the system, after omega (800).
From this, it has been concluded that the system must have been invented at a time and place when digamma and koppa were still either in use or at least still remembered as parts of the alphabetic sequence, whereas san had either already been forgotten, or at least was no longer remembered with its original alphabetic position. In the latter case, according to a much debated view, sampi itself may in fact have been regarded as being san, but with a new position in the alphabet.
The dating of the emergence of this system, and with it of numeric sampi, has been the object of much discussion. At the end of the 19th century, authors such as ThompsonThompson, Handbook, p. 114. placed its full development only in the 3rd century BC. Jeffery states that the system as a whole can be traced much further back, into the 6th century BC. An early, though isolated, instance of apparent use of alphabetic Milesian numerals in Athens occurs on a stone inscribed with several columns of two-digit numerals, of unknown meaning, dated from the middle of the 5th century BC., also known as IG I² 760.
While the emergence of the system as a whole has thus been given a much earlier dating than was often assumed earlier, actual occurrences of the letter sampi in this context have as yet not been found in any early examples. According to Threatte, the earliest known use of numeric sampi in a stone inscription occurs in an inscription in Magnesia from the 2nd century BC, in a phrase denoting a sum of money ("), also known as Syll³ 695.b. but the exact numeric meaning of this example is disputed. In Athens, the first attestation is only from the beginning of the 2nd century AD, again in an inscription naming sums of money.
Earlier than the attestations in the full function as a numeral are a few instances where sampi was used in Athens as a mark to enumerate sequences of things in a set, along with the 24 other letters of the alphabet, without implying a specific decimal numeral value. For instance, there is a set of 25 metal tokens, each stamped with one of the letters from alpha to sampi, which are dated to the 4th century BC and were probably used as identification marks for judges in the courts of the Athenian democracy.
In papyrus texts from the Ptolemaic period onwards, numeric sampi occurs with some regularity.
At an early stage in the papyri, the numeral sampi was used not only for 900, but, somewhat confusingly, also as a multiplicator for 1000, since a way of marking thousands and their multiples was not yet otherwise provided by the alphabetic system. Writing an alpha over sampi ( or, in a ligature, ) meant "1×1000", a theta over sampi () meant "9×1000", and so on. In the examples cited by Gardthausen, a slightly modified shape of sampi, with a shorter right stem (), is used. This system was later simplified into one where the thousands operator was marked just as a small stroke to the left of the letter (͵α = 1000).
Glyph development
In early stone inscriptions, the shape of sampi, both alphabetic and numeric, is . Square-topped shapes, with the middle vertical stroke either of equal length with the outer ones or longer , are also found in early papyri. This form fits the earliest attested verbal description of the shape of sampi as a numeral sign in the ancient literature, which occurs in a remark in the works of the 2nd-century AD physician Galen. Commenting on the use of certain obscure abbreviations found in earlier manuscripts of Hippocrates, Galen says that one of them "looks like the way some people write the sign for 900", and describes this as "the shape of the letter Π with a vertical line in the middle" ("").
From the time of the earliest papyri, the square-topped forms of handwritten sampi alternate with variants where the top is rounded (, ) or pointed (, ). The rounded form also occurs in stone inscriptions in the Roman era. In the late Roman period, the arrow-shaped or rounded forms are often written with a loop connecting the two lines at the right, leading to the "ace-of-spades" form , or to . These forms, in turn, occasionally have another decorative stroke added on the left (). It can be found attached in several different ways, from the top () or the bottom (). From these shapes, finally, the modern form of sampi emerges, beginning in the 9th century, with the two straight lines becoming more or less parallel (, , ).
In medieval western manuscripts describing the Greek alphabet, the arrowhead form is sometimes rendered as .Gardthausen, Palaeographie, p.167.
Origins
Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, many authors have assumed that sampi was essentially a historical continuation of the archaic letter san (), the M-shaped alternative of sigma (Σ) that formed part of the Greek alphabet when it was originally adopted from Phoenician. Archaic san stood in an alphabetic position between pi (Π) and koppa (Ϙ). It dropped out of use in favour of sigma in most dialects by the 7th century BC, but was retained in place of the latter in a number of local alphabets until the 5th century BC.Jeffery, Local Scripts, p. 33. It is generally agreed to be derived from Phoenician tsade.