Mesrop Mashtots creates the Armenian alphabet
The monk Mesrop Mashtots invents an alphabet for the Armenian language, opening a golden age of translation and writing that gives Armenians a literature of their own.
- Saint Mesrop Mashtots — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- The History of Armenia: From the Origins to the Present — Simon Payaslian, Palgrave Macmillan (2007)
- The Armenians — A. E. Redgate, Blackwell (1998)
- The Armenians: From Kings and Priests to Merchants and Commissars — Razmik Panossian, Columbia University Press (2006)
By 400 Armenia was Christian, but its kingdom had been divided between Rome and Persia in 387, and its church used Greek and Syriac, languages few ordinary Armenians understood. Mesrop Mashtots, a former royal secretary turned monk, set out with the backing of King Vramshapuh and the Catholicos Sahak to give Armenian its own script. Around 405, after studying other alphabets, he created one of 36 letters (two more were added in the Middle Ages), carefully designed to capture every sound of Armenian.
- Saint Mesrop Mashtots — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- The History of Armenia: From the Origins to the Present — Simon Payaslian, Palgrave Macmillan (2007)
The effect was dramatic. Within decades Mashtots, Sahak and their pupils had translated the Bible, the church fathers and Greek philosophy, and Armenians began writing their own histories. Armenians call the fifth century their “golden age” of literature, and the translators are honoured as saints. Mashtots is also credited with alphabets for the Georgians and Caucasian Albanians, though Georgian scholars dispute his role in theirs.
- The Armenians — A. E. Redgate, Blackwell (1998)
- Saint Mesrop Mashtots — Encyclopaedia Britannica
The alphabet gave Armenians something that outlasted every kingdom: a written language that tied together communities from Cilicia to Isfahan to Los Angeles. Mashtots is buried at Oshakan, and Yerevan’s great manuscript library, the Matenadaran, bears his name.
- The Armenians: From Kings and Priests to Merchants and Commissars — Razmik Panossian, Columbia University Press (2006)
- The History of Armenia: From the Origins to the Present — Simon Payaslian, Palgrave Macmillan (2007)
Why it matters today
Armenians love their alphabet with a passion that surprises outsiders. Its letters appear on jewellery, carpets and a giant open-air monument near Mount Aragats, and many Armenians believe it is the reason the nation survived centuries without a state. In the diaspora, Saturday Armenian school, learning to read and write those 36 letters, is a rite of passage.