This weird feeling, when I try to read ancient greek words on these pictures, it feels like just a broken cyrillic. Like seeing a newspaper, just a very old one...
Right, I know, but it's still feels unusual, like adding some level of reality to these ancient times, making them seem closer. I'm not getting this impression seeing old latin, for example.
>like adding some level of reality to these ancient times, making them seem closer
In that vein it would be interesting to note that while Ancient Greek (from the times of 8-4th century BC as taught in humanities programs) are not spoken today, their simplified version from the times of Alexander the Great and his heirs, "koine" are more or less the same, and perfectly understandable by any modern Greek or Cypriot.
That's the language the Old Testament was translated into (Septuagint), which is 2300 years old -- and still understood (or at least 99% of it, spare some words that have fallen in disuse).
Well, I wouldn't say "perfectly" (I'm Greek). It helps if one has grown up with religious relatives and so was exposed to the language of the new testament for a few years. I was- I can read the new testament easily enough.
On the other hand, the further back texts go -Plutarch, Xenophon, Herodotus- it gets harder and harder to understand. Homer in particular is nigh-on incomprehensible to me. It's how I imagine Greek sounds to people who don't know any :)
Interestingly there's a pretty good argument that Cyril and Methodius didn't create Cyrillic at all but instead were the creators of Glagolitic, a now-more-or-less-extinct script that was developed in what's now (roughly) the Czech Republic and was used in Croatia until the 20th Century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glagolitic_script
Exactly how Cyril got credit for the script he didn't invent is unclear.
