ArmenPress
Jan 13 2005

ARMENIANS TO MARK THIS YEAR THE 1,600-TH ANNIVERSARY OF THEIR
ALPHABET

YEREVAN, JANUARY 13, ARMENPRESS; The government of Armenia is
planning to hold an extensive range of events this year to mark the
1600-th anniversary of invention of Armenian alphabet. A special
commission was set up, chaired by prime minister Andranik Margarian,
to steer the preparation of events.
The events will include, particulalry, a theater performance
showing Mesrop Mashtots, the inventor of the scripts and his
disciples’ return from Syria where they worked to create the first
Armenian alphabet.
The origins of the Armenian alphabet were derived after the
official adoption of Christianity by King Tiridates III in 301 AD.
The difficult task of inventing the alphabet was assigned to Mesrop
Mashtots whom the Armenian Church reveres among her saints.
St. Mesrop was born in the year 361 in the village of Hatzekatz in
the province of Taron, now in Turkey. In his early years, he learned
both Greek and Persian and served in the Armenian Royal Court. Later,
he decided to enter the ranks of the clergy and with some other young
men, he went to preach in the province of Goghtn around 395 A.D.
During this period he felt the great need of the Armenian people for
an “Alphabet” of their own so he petitioned the Catholicos Sahak and
together they requested the aid of King Vramshapouh.
After receiving the approval of Catholicos Sahak, the saintly head
of the Armenian Church and himself a scholar, Mesrop set out on this
enormous undertaking at a time when Armenian religious and cultural
integrity was threatened by the Persian regime to assimilate the
Armenian population.
Mesrop determined a need of 36 characters for the alphabet and
decided to write the characters from left to right as in Greek. He
retained a number of Greek letters and altered others to fit in with
the aesthetic pattern that they had adopted, thereby retaining the
order of the Greek alphabet as much as possible. Three letters were
added in the 10th-12th cc, for a total of 39 letters.
After much research and many travels, Mesrop was able to come up
with the skeleton of an alphabet. However, it did not meet the needs
of the Armenian language. According to tradition, while meditating in
a cave near the village of Palu, the saint had a vision in which,
“the hand of God wrote the alphabet in letters of fire”.
Upon his return to the Catholicos and King, the saint was received
with great honors and much joy. Mesrop completed the Armenian
alphabet in 405 AD.
The original Armenian alphabet was written in large capital
letters of a monumental character and size. Though nowadays written
in modern cursive script, the Armenian alphabet has continued in use
to the present day with the original set of characters.