The Greek language is one of Europe's oldest languages. The first documents written in Greek are more than 3.700 years old! The ancient Greek civilisation was not only a huge empire – it was the most advanced civilisation of its time.
Ancient Greek was in any sense a world language. It was widely used and of great importance until the Roman Empire established its supremacy. If you wanted to make a living in trade, diplomacy or just be regarded as an educated person 2.000 years ago, you had to be fluent in Ancient Greek.
But even after the downfall of the ancient Greek empire, the Greek language didn't lose any of its importance: It was THE language that coined and defined all terms of culture, science and religion. From its early stages on, Greek was a written language. The Greek alphabet derived from the Phoenician script, the oldest consonant alphabet. The Greek alphabet deserves credit for adding letters for vowels to the written alphabet and therefore building the basis of today’s well-known and wide-spread scripts in Europe. The roots of this script go back to the year 800 BC.
From its earliest stages on texts on philosophy, science and literature were recorded in Greek script and they literally constituted the cradle of the European culture.