As you may know, it is generally held that the Phoenician alphabet, the oldest fully matured one in history, contained only consonants and it was the Hellenes (not Greeks!) who actually invented and added vowels to it after they adopted it, yet this is not quite true on a couple of accounts.

First, later versions of the Phoenician contained letters/symbols, known as matres lectionis (‘mothers of reading’), that were used as vowels whilst definitely four vowel letters that emerged in the later Hellenic alphabets derived on such; A out of Aleph, E out of He, Y out of Waw and I out of Yodh.

That said, early Phoenician script itself presented a few matres lectionis already.

Second, the Phrygian alphabet, which is older than any of the Aeolian/Lesbian (later called early Hellenic) ones, contained vowels in the full sense, five of them, and it is actually the very first one to do so: A, E, I, O, Y.

In fact, the Aeolian/Lesbian alphabets are almost identical to the Phrygian and emerged in Lesbos which could have been under Phrygian rule but definitely under heavy influence by them as the culture of the island indicates at the time.

Moreover, the Aeolians most likely came to Lesbos from nearby Aeolia in northwest Anatolia (Minor Asia) rather than Thessaly so were definitely already in at least close contact with the Phrygians.

The wider use of the Phoenician alphabet started through the Syro-Hittite states that emerged in southeast Anatolia around the same time that the Phrygian kingdom surfaced in the west central region thereof following the collapse of the Hittite empire in the late 13th and early 12th century BC.

Therefore, it makes perfect sense that Phrygians, who adopted and adapted it to their own language, functioned as the conductor that conveyed the Phoenician alphabet through Anatolia before it later arrived and was further spread and adjusted over the Aegean.

On top of it, there has got to be said that the extent of the Phrygian kingdom may have been considerably greater than admitted but I will expand on the matter in a separate post.