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In article <32f18057.336302392@news.pi.net> mcv@pi.net
(Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) writes:

>Yes, at least in Athens.  When, due to the loss of certain consonants (*w, *j,
>*s) two e's or two o's ran together, the resulting long /e:/ and long /o:/
>were closed, unlike the open /E:/ and /O:/ written eta and omega (from
>etymologic /a:/ or /e:/ in the case of eta, /o:/ in the case of omega).  These
>closed varieties of /e:/ and /o:/ were written <ei> and <ou> in Athenian
>Greek, merging (at least in writing) with the result of etymological /ei/ and
>/ou/.

The long close vowels also arise from *Vns > V:s, as in the accusative plural
of non-neuter o-stem nouns ("2nd declension").

The history of eta and omega is not quite so simple, either, as eta can result
from a contraction of *ea < *esa (as in neuter nom/acc plural of s-stems), and
omega from a contraction of *ao (as in a-stem "contract" verbs).

However, the writing system of Athens was more complicated than this:  Before
the 5th century BCE (499-400 BCE), the Athenian alphabet made no distinction of
length or height in the mid vowels, writing all mid-front vowels as <E> and all
mid-back vowels as <O>.  It is only with the adoption of the *Ionian* alphabet
(late in the 6th or early in the 5th century--I forget when, exactly) that the
use of <H> and <omega>, and the so-called "spurious diphthongs," arises in
Athens.

However, this *does* have advantages as well as disadvantages:  We know that
the long diphthongs ("iota subscripts") were still diphthongs in 6th century
Athens, because they are written with <I>.
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_