Latest / The Story of Armenia: Survival Through Empires and Genocide — Fexingo History / The Armenian Alphabet: Mesrop Mashtots and a Nation's Soul — Part 2: The Lost Scripts
Transcript
- Lucas: So, last time we talked about Mesrop Mashtots and the creation of the Armenian alphabet in 405 AD. But one thing we skimmed over is the question: what were Armenians writing in before that? Luna: I've always wondered that. Was it just Greek and Persian? Lucas: Partly, yeah. But it's more complicated. The Armenian kingdom was a crossroads of empires. For centuries, official documents were written in Aramaic, the lingua franca of the Achaemenid Persians. Then later, royal inscriptions and church records shifted to Greek and Syriac. But there's this persistent legend — and some evidence — that Armenians had their own ancient script, long before Mashtots. Lucas: The historian Movses Khorenatsi, writing in the 5th century, claimed that a 2nd-century Assyrian philosopher named Bardesanes — one of his students was an Armenian prince — knew Armenian letters. Movses says Bardesanes wrote a history of Armenia using those letters. If true, that would mean an Armenian alphabet existed over two hundred years before Mashtots. Luna: Wait — Bardesanes? That name sounds familiar. Wasn't he associated with some Gnostic texts? Lucas: Exactly right. Bardesanes of Edessa was a noted theologian and philosopher. He wrote in Syriac, but Movses insists he learned Armenian script. Now, no physical example of that script survives, so most scholars are skeptical. But the legend persists — and it fuels a kind of nationalist pride in the idea that the alphabet wasn't invented from scratch, but revived. Lucas: Then there's the story of Ara the Beautiful. You know the myth — Queen Semiramis of Assyria fell in love with Ara, and when he refused her, she invaded Armenia. He was killed in battle. Well, there's a tradition that on Ara's tombstone near Van, there were mysterious carvings — what some called 'Armenian hieroglyphs.' Archaeologists in the 19th century actually found ancient inscriptions there, but they turned out to be Urartian cuneiform. Luna: So not Armenian, but a precursor script from the kingdom of Urartu? Lucas: Exactly. Urartu, which flourished in the Armenian highlands from the 9th to 6th centuries BC, used a cuneiform script borrowed from Assyria. When Urartu fell, that writing system died out. So by the time of the Achaemenids, Armenians were using Aramaic, then Greek under the Seleucids, then Parthian and Syriac. By the 4th century AD, the situation was a mess — the court used Greek, the church used Syriac, and common people spoke Armenian but couldn't write it. Lucas: That was the real problem. Without a native script, how do you translate the Bible? How do you preserve your identity under Persian and Byzantine pressure? That's why Catholicos Sahak Partev and King Vramshapuh commissioned Mashtots to create an alphabet. And he did it brilliantly — 36 letters, perfectly matching Armenian phonetics, with each letter representing a unique sound. Luna: And it's still used today, essentially unchanged. That's remarkable. Lucas: Yeah, except for two letters added in the 12th century. What's even more impressive is that the alphabet gave rise to a golden age of literature in the 5th century — the Golden Age of Armenian translation and original historiography. Movses Khorenatsi, Yeghishe, Ghazar Parpetsi — all writing in the new script, creating a national history and theology. Lucas: But let's get back to the idea of lost scripts. In the 19th century, when European scholars began studying Armenian history, they were fascinated by the claim of a pre-Mashtots alphabet. Some even claimed to have found examples — like the 'Armenian alphabet of Daniel,' a set of letters supposedly brought from Mesopotamia by a Syrian bishop. Mashtots himself is said to have experimented with those letters but found them inadequate for Armenian sounds. Luna: So there was a prototype? An earlier attempt? Lucas: According to the historian Koriun, Mashtots's contemporary and biographer, yes. Koriun writes that Mashtots first tried to adapt existing scripts — Greek, Syriac, maybe Aramaic — but they couldn't represent Armenian phonology. So he invented his own. But that 'Daniel script' might have been an actual earlier alphabet, now lost. Lucas: There's also a mysterious inscription at the monastery of Geghard — a rock-cut cross and a few letters that some 19th-century travelers called 'pre-Mashtotsian.' But modern paleographers say it's just a medieval graffito. So the case for a lost script remains unproven. Luna: It's fascinating how much we don't know. But also how much we do — the alphabet is a tangible link to that past. Lucas: Absolutely. And it's not just a tool for writing — it's a symbol of national survival. Every time an Armenian child learns their ABCs, they're connecting to a project that began 1,600 years ago, when a monk and his students sat down to give their language a voice that empires couldn't silence. Luna: It's amazing that such a small thing — a set of letters — can carry so much weight. Lucas: Quick honest thing — a handful of listeners chip in monthly through buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, and that's literally what funds making shows like this one possible. If it's been valuable to you, we'd be grateful for your support. Luna: Yeah, it's a small community but it makes a big difference. Keeps us ad-free and independent. Lucas: So back to the alphabet — it's also interesting how the script has evolved. Classical Armenian, or grabar, was the literary language for centuries, even after spoken Armenian diverged. It's like Latin in Europe. Then in the 19th century, modern Armenian, ashkharhabar, became the standard, with two dialects: Eastern Armenian in the republic, and Western Armenian in the diaspora. Luna: And both use the same alphabet, right? Lucas: Yes, with some minor differences in pronunciation. That's another testament to Mashtots's original design — it's flexible enough to accommodate both. So when you see an Armenian inscription in Jerusalem or Venice or Boston, it's the same letters Mashtots devised in 405. That continuity is rare in world history. Lucas: Before we go, I want to mention one more 'lost script' theory. In the early 20th century, a scholar named Artashes Abeghyan claimed that the Urartian cuneiform was actually a form of early Armenian writing — that the Urartians were proto-Armenians. Most linguists reject that, but it shows how the search for origins is tied to identity. Luna: It's like every culture wants its alphabet to be as old as possible. Lucas: Exactly. But the real story is more interesting: a people without a script saw the power of writing, and their greatest minds created one that has endured through centuries of foreign rule, genocide, and diaspora. That's not a legend — that's history.