Possible antecedents One of the classical accounts of the existence of an Armenian alphabet before Mesrop Mashtots comes from
Philo of Alexandria (20 BCAD 50), who in his writings notes that the work of the
Greek philosopher and historian
Metrodorus of Scepsis (),
On Animals, was translated into Armenian. Metrodorus was a close friend and a court historian of the Armenian emperor
Tigranes the Great and also wrote his biography. A third century Roman theologian,
Hippolytus of Rome (170–235), in his
Chronicle, while writing about his contemporary, Emperor
Severus Alexander (), mentions that the Armenians are amongst those nations who have their own distinct alphabet.
Philostratus the Athenian, a
sophist of the second and third centuries, wrote: According to the fifth-century Armenian historian
Movses Khorenatsi,
Bardesanes of Edessa (AD 154–222), who founded the
Gnostic current of the
Bardaisanites, went to the Armenian castle of
Ani and there read the work of a pre-Christian Armenian priest named Voghyump, written in the script of the Armenian temples, named after
Mihr, the
Armenian national god of light, truth, and the sun. In Voghyump's work, amongst other histories, an episode was noted of the Armenian King
Tigranes VII (who reigned from 144 to 161, and again from AD 164–186) erecting a monument on the tomb of his brother, the Mithraic High Priest of the
Kingdom of Greater Armenia, Mazhan. Movses of Khoren notes that Bardesanes translated this Armenian book into
Syriac (
Aramaic), and later also into
Greek. Another important evidence for the existence of a pre-Mashtotsian alphabet is the fact that the pantheon of the ancient Armenians included
Tir, who was the patron god of writing and science. A 13th-century Armenian historian,
Vardan Areveltsi, in his
History, notes "that an Armenian script existed of old is attested" during the reign of King
Leo the Magnificent (), after coins naming idolatrous kings were found stamped with the script. The evidence that the Armenian scholars of the Middle Ages knew about the existence of a pre-Mashtotsian alphabet can also be found in other medieval works, including the first book composed in the Mashtotsian alphabet by the pupil of Mashtots, Koriwn, in the first half of the fifth century. Koriwn notes that Mashtots was told of the existence of ancient Armenian letters which he was initially trying to integrate into his own alphabet.
Creation by Mashtots , 5th century from
Jerusalem, 5–6th centuries in
Jerusalem. It is dated to the second half of the
VII century The Armenian alphabet was introduced by
Mesrop Mashtots and
Isaac of Armenia (Sahak Partev) in CE 405. Medieval Armenian sources also claim that Mashtots invented the
Georgian and
Caucasian Albanian alphabets around the same time. However, most scholars link the creation of the Georgian script to the process of
Christianization of Iberia, a core Georgian kingdom of
Kartli. The alphabet was therefore most probably created between the conversion of Iberia under
Mirian III (326 or 337) and the
Bir el Qutt inscriptions of 430, Traditionally, the following phrase translated from Solomon's
Book of Proverbs is said to be the first sentence to be written down in Armenian by Mashtots: Various scripts have been credited with being the prototype for the Armenian alphabet.
Pahlavi was the priestly script in Armenia before the introduction of Christianity, and
Syriac, along with Greek, was one of the alphabets of Christian scripture. Armenian shows some similarities to both. However, the general consensus is that Armenian is modeled after the
Greek alphabet, supplemented with letters from a different source or sources for Armenian sounds not found in Greek. This is suggested by the Greek order of the Armenian alphabet; the
ow ligature for the vowel , as in Greek; the similarity of the letter in shape and sound value to
Cyrillic Ии and
(Modern) Greek Ηη; and the shapes of letters which "seem derived from a variety of cursive Greek", including Greek/Armenian pairs /, /, and /. It has been speculated by some scholars in African studies, following Dimitri Olderogge, that the
Ge'ez script had an influence on certain letter shapes, but this has not been supported by any experts in Armenian studies. There are four principal calligraphic
hands of the script. , or 'ironclad letters', seen as Mesrop's original, was used in manuscripts from the 5th to 13th century and is still preferred for epigraphic inscriptions. , or 'cursive', was invented in the 10th century and became popular in the 13th. It has been the standard printed form since the 16th century. , or 'minuscule', invented initially for speed, was extensively used in the Armenian diaspora in the 16th to 18th centuries, and later became popular in printing. , or 'slanted writing', is now the most common form. The earliest known example of the script's usage was a dedicatory inscription over the west door of the
church of Saint Sarkis in Tekor. Based on the known individuals mentioned in the inscription, it has been dated to the 480s. The earliest known surviving example of usage outside of Armenia is a mid-6th century mosaic inscription in the chapel of St Polyeuctos in Jerusalem.
A papyrus discovered in 1892 at
Fayyum and containing Greek words written in Armenian script has been dated on historical grounds to after the creation of the script, i.e. after 400, and on paleographic grounds between the 5th and 7th centuries. It is now in the
Bibliotheque Nationale de France. The earliest surviving manuscripts written in Armenian using Armenian script date from the 9th–10th century.
Later development Certain shifts in the language were at first not reflected in the orthography. The digraph (
au) followed by a consonant used to be pronounced [au] (as in
luau) in
Classical Armenian, but due to a
sound shift it came to be pronounced , and has since the 13th century been written (
ō). For example, classical (, , 'day') became pronounced , and is now written (). (One word has kept
aw, now pronounced : () 'pigeon', and there are a few proper names still having
aw before a consonant: Tauros, Faustos, etc.) For this reason, today there are native Armenian words beginning with the letter (
ō) although this letter was taken from the Greek alphabet to write foreign words beginning with
o . The number and order of the letters have changed over time. In the Middle Ages, two new letters ( , ) were introduced in order to better represent foreign sounds; this increased the number of letters from 36 to 38. From 1922 to 1924,
Soviet Armenia adopted a
reformed spelling of the Armenian language. The reform changed the digraph and the ligature into two new letters, but it generally did not change the pronunciation of individual letters (
see the footnotes of the chart). Those outside of the (former)
Soviet sphere, including all Western Armenians as well as Eastern Armenians in
Iran, have rejected the reformed spellings and continue to use the
traditional Armenian orthography. They criticize some aspects of the reforms and allege political motives behind them. == Alphabet ==