Archaic Period (600–480 bc)

Athens and other areas of Greece owed a cultural debt to many Eastern civilizations, including the Egyptians and Phoenicians. Greek sculpture from the Archaic period resembles its Egyptian precedent in stature; the Greek male kourosstatues stand with one foot forward and fists clenched. The Greeks, however, adapted foreign sculptural methods and made their artwork their own. Greek kouros statues were nude, unlike their Egyptian predecessors. Unique to Greece is the “Archaic smile” commonly worn on the faces of sculptures and reliefs. Archaic Athenian sculptors like Exekias produced the finest black figure pottery, known for depicting the deeds of heroes and deities in a refined technique that produced a red background with the figures painted in black.

The Phoenicians developed an alphabetic system comprised of consonants during the Bronze Age and the system was transmitted to Greece sometime within the eighth century bc. The Greeks adapted the alphabet to fit their own language and added vowels.