How it began
According to tradition the Armenian script was invented in 405 by Mesrop Mashtots, a monk, theologian and linguist who served as chancellor to King Vramshapuh. The king supported the project, as did Sahak the Great, head of the Armenian church, and a Greek called Rufanos is also said to have helped. Mashtots was born in Hatsik, in what is now Turkey, and the World History Encyclopedia states that he compiled the letters while in Samosata, also outside modern Armenia. The project belonged to the Armenian court and church, and he died at Vagharshapat and was buried at Oshakan, both in present-day Armenia.
Before it existed
Spoken Armenian had no written form of its own. As a missionary in remote parts of Armenia, Mashtots saw that people could not read the Gospel in their own language. He first looked for an existing script that could be adapted and, finding none suitable, decided that a new alphabet was needed. Christianity in Armenia was not yet secure and was under pressure from the religion of neighboring Persia.
How it works
Mashtots created 36 signs to capture the sounds of Armenian, and two more were added in later centuries. Britannica gives 38 letters, 31 consonants and 7 vowels, and calls the script well adapted to the language. It was probably patterned on the Pahlavi script of Persia, itself descended from Aramaic, but shows Greek influence in having letters for vowels and in running left to right. Mashtots ordered the letters after the Greek alphabet where he could and tested them on pupils.
What changed first
The alphabet was first used to translate the Bible. Mashtots translated the New Testament and the Book of Proverbs, and Sahak founded a school of translators. Mashtots sent scholars to Constantinople, Alexandria and Rome in search of manuscripts. The new script was taken up quickly across Armenia and opened a period regarded as the golden age of Armenian Christian literature.
What lasted
By fixing Armenian speech in writing, the script supported the unity of the Armenian nation and church, in Britannica's words. The oldest surviving documents in Armenian date from the 9th to 10th century. The first biography written in Armenian, by Mashtots's pupil Koriun, also credits him with the Georgian and Caucasian Albanian alphabets, a claim that is debated.
Where it stands today
The alphabet is still in use. The upper case letters are those Mashtots devised, while the lower case comes from the medieval script. The Armenian church marks the alphabet and the work of the fifth-century translators each October with the feast of the Holy Translators, which is observed in Armenia and in the diaspora as a celebration of Armenian literature and books.
