Latest / The Story of Armenia: Survival Through Empires and Genocide — Fexingo History / Armenia's First Alphabet: Mesrop Mashtots and the Birth of Armenian Letters
Transcript
- Lucas: So a lot of our episodes have touched on the power of writing — Moses of Khoren compiling Armenian history, the Mkhitarists preserving manuscripts. But we've never actually talked about the moment Armenian writing itself was born. Luna: You mean the creation of the alphabet? Lucas: Exactly. The Armenian alphabet as we know it — those thirty-six elegant letters — was invented in the early fifth century by a scholar-priest named Mesrop Mashtots. It's one of those rare moments in history where you can point to a single person and say: before this man, there was no written Armenian. Luna: Wait — so everything before that, the Urartu kings, the Bagratid inscriptions, those were in other scripts? Lucas: Right. Urartu used cuneiform. Under the Hellenistic period and the Roman era, Armenian was mostly an oral language. When it was written — for official decrees or church documents — they used Greek, Syriac, or Persian scripts. But there was no way to write Armenian itself. And that created a real problem, especially for the church. The liturgy was in Greek or Syriac, which most people didn't understand. Luna: So Mashtots's invention was partly a religious project? Lucas: Almost entirely. The Catholicos of Armenia at the time was Sahak Partev — a descendant of Gregory the Illuminator — and he and King Vramshapuh wanted to strengthen Armenian Christianity against Zoroastrian pressure from the Sassanid Empire. They believed a written language would let them translate the Bible and resist assimilation. So around 405 AD, Mashtots travelled to Edessa and then to Samosata, studying scripts, and reportedly had a vision that gave him the form of the letters. Luna: A vision? Like divine inspiration? Lucas: That's how the tradition tells it. The historian Koriun, who was Mashtots's student, wrote that God showed him the alphabet in a vision. But scholars today think Mashtots was a brilliant linguist who synthesized elements from Greek, Pahlavi, and Syriac scripts, adapting them to Armenian phonetics. He created thirty-six letters — originally there were thirty-six — each representing a distinct sound. And he placed them in an order that roughly follows the Greek alphabet, alpha beta gamma, but with Armenian sounds inserted where needed. Luna: So it's not just a copy of Greek. Lucas: No, it's original. Mashtots added letters for sounds that don't exist in Greek — like the hard 'gh' sound or the aspirated 'p'. And he made sure the alphabet could represent all the nuances of spoken Armenian. The result was so precise that it's been virtually unchanged for sixteen hundred years. When you read classical Armenian today, you're reading the same letters Mashtots designed. Luna: That's incredible consistency. Lucas: It is. And the first thing they did with it was translate the Bible. Sahak Partev and his team produced the Armenian version of the scriptures, known as the 'Queen of Translations' for its accuracy and beauty. That translation became the bedrock of Armenian identity. It unified the dialects, gave the church a native liturgy, and sparked a golden age of literature — histories, hymns, theological works. Mashtots himself travelled across Armenia and even into Georgia and Caucasian Albania, creating alphabets for those languages too. Luna: He made alphabets for other languages? I didn't know that. Lucas: Tradition credits him with inventing the Georgian script — though that's debated — and an alphabet for the now-extinct Caucasian Albanian language. He was a missionary at heart. But for Armenia, his legacy is foundational. Every Armenian text — from medieval chronicles to modern novels — descends from those thirty-six letters. And the alphabet became a symbol of survival. When Armenia was partitioned between empires, when the language was banned or suppressed, the alphabet was a quiet rebellion. Luna: So the alphabet itself is a kind of resistance. Lucas: Exactly. And there's a beautiful tradition connected to it. Every year on October 12th, Armenians celebrate the Feast of the Holy Translators — honoring Mashtots, Sahak, and the early translators. It's not just about the alphabet; it's about the act of making knowledge accessible in your own tongue. And that's something we really believe in on this show — that history should be accessible, not locked away in academic jargon. Luna: That's a good connection. Speaking of which, I think a lot of our listeners appreciate that we keep this show free and ad-free. It's a choice we make. Lucas: It is. We deliberately don't run ads. No sponsors, no commercials. That's because we think history conversations work best when they're unhurried and genuine, not interrupted by product pitches. So if you want to support that choice, there's a simple way: buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That's it. No tiers, no perks, just knowing you're helping keep history free for everyone. Luna: Every little bit helps, and it keeps us independent. Lucas: Right. And speaking of independence — Mashtots's alphabet gave Armenians a tool to define themselves. But it also created a problem. Once you have a written language, you need people who can read it. So Mashtots and Sahak established schools across Armenia, training scribes and priests. Within a generation, there was a literate class. And that's when the real work began — not just translating, but writing original histories, like the works of Koriun and later Movses Khorenatsi. Luna: So the alphabet directly enabled the historians we've talked about. Lucas: Absolutely. Without Mashtots, no Khorenatsi. Without the alphabet, no golden age of Armenian literature. And the script itself has a unique visual beauty — those rounded forms, the distinctive tail on the 'Չ' and 'Ջ'. When you see illuminated manuscripts from the medieval period, with the letters painted in gold and surrounded by intricate miniatures, you understand that writing was not just communication — it was art. Luna: Is there any controversy about Mashtots's invention? I mean, was he the sole creator? Lucas: There's some debate. A few scholars suggest that an earlier script may have existed, perhaps used by the pagan priesthood, and that Mashtots reformed it. The evidence is thin — mostly references in later chronicles. But the overwhelming consensus, based on Koriun's contemporary account, is that Mashtots invented it from scratch. Another controversy: some Georgian historians argue that their alphabet predates Mashtots, but that's a nationalistic claim not supported by the evidence. Luna: So we stick with Mashtots as the creator. Lucas: For now, yes. And it's a remarkable achievement. He gave Armenia a tool that not only preserved its culture through centuries of foreign domination but also became a marker of identity anywhere Armenians went — from the diaspora in New Julfa to the modern republic. When you see the letters on a khachkar or a church wall, they're saying: we are still here. Luna: And we can still read them, sixteen hundred years later. Lucas: Exactly. The alphabet is a thread that connects modern Armenians to their ancient past. And that's a rare thing in human history — a continuous written tradition that hasn't changed fundamentally. It's a testament to Mashtots's genius and to the resilience of a people who refused to let their voice be erased.