probably by the Andokides painter. The invention of the red-figure technique in Athens came at around the same time as the development of other techniques such as the white ground technique and Six's technique. Literature The earliest extant Greek literature comes from the archaic period. Poetry was the predominant form of literature in the period. Alongside the dominant lyric and epic traditions, tragedy began to develop in the archaic period, borrowing elements from the pre-existing genres of archaic Greek poetry. By the sixth century BC the first written prose in Greek literature appeared. Writing After the end of the Mycenaean period, the art of writing was lost in Greece: by the ninth century probably no Greeks understood the Bronze Age Linear B writing system. From the ninth century BC objects inscribed with Phoenician writing began to be brought into the Greek world, and it was from this Phoenician script that the Greek alphabet developed in the eighth century BC. By the middle of the eighth century BC, pottery inscribed in Greek begins to occur in the archaeological record. The earliest known inscriptions in Greek tend to identify or explain the object on which they are inscribed. Possibly the earliest known Greek inscription is found on a jug from the first half of the eighth century BC, discovered in Osteria dell'Osa in Latium. Most early inscriptions were written in verse, though some from Ionia were in prose, influenced by the prose traditions of Ionia's eastern neighbours. From the beginning of the seventh century, curses and dedications began to be inscribed on objects, and by the sixth century, surviving inscriptions include public records such as law codes, lists of officials, and records of treaties. Poetry Greek literature in the archaic period was predominantly poetry, though the earliest prose dates to the sixth century BC. Archaic poetry was primarily intended to be performed rather than read, and can be broadly divided into three categories: lyric, rhapsodic, and citharodic. The performance of the poetry could either be private (most commonly in the symposium) or public. Though there would certainly have been a pre-existing literary tradition in Greece, the earliest surviving works are by Homer. Homer's poetry, though it dates to around the time that the Greeks developed writing, would have been composed orally – the earliest surviving poetry to have certainly been composed in writing is that of Archilochus, from the mid-seventh century BC.