Editing Digamma (section)

===Epigraphy===
Digamma was derived from Phoenician waw, which was shaped roughly like a Y (<span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Phoenician waw.svg|x14px]]</span>). Of the two Greek reflexes of waw, digamma retained the alphabetic position, but had its shape modified to <span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Digamma oblique.svg|x16px]]</span>, while the [[upsilon]] retained the original shape but was placed in a new alphabetic position. Early Crete had an archaic form of digamma somewhat closer to the original Phoenician, <span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Digamma 02.svg|x16px]]</span>, or a variant with the stem bent sidewards (<span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Digamma 09.svg|x16px]]</span>). The shape <span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Digamma oblique.svg|x16px]]</span>, during the archaic period, underwent a development parallel to that of [[epsilon]] (which changed from <span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Epsilon archaic.svg|x16px]]</span> to "E", with the arms becoming orthogonal and the lower end of the stem being shed off). For digamma, this led to the two main variants of classical "F" and square <span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Digamma angular.svg|x16px]]</span>.<ref name="jeffery">{{cite book |last=Jeffery |first=Lilian H. |title=The local scripts of archaic Greece |place=Oxford |publisher=Clarendon |year=1961 |pages=24f |oclc=312031 }}</ref>

The latter of these two shapes became dominant when used as a numeral, with "F" only very rarely employed in this function. However, in Athens, both of these were avoided in favour of a number of alternative numeral shapes (<span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Digamma numeric 01.svg|x16px|Ϝ]]</span>, <span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Digamma numeric 02.svg|x16px|Ϝ]]</span>, <span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Digamma numeric 03.svg|x16px|Ϝ]]</span>, <span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Digamma numeric 04.svg|x16px|Ϝ]]</span>, <span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Digamma numeric 05.svg|x16px|5]]</span>, <span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Digamma numeric 06.svg|x16px|6]]</span>).<ref name="tod">{{cite journal|last=Tod|first=Marcus N.|title=The alphabetic numeral system in Attica|journal=Annual of the British School at Athens|volume=45|year=1950|pages=126–139|doi=10.1017/s0068245400006730|s2cid=128438705 }}</ref>