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 Mesrob-Mashtotz whom the Armenian Church reveres among her saints.

St. Mesrob was born in the year 361 in the village of Hatzegatz in the province of Daron. 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 Koghtn 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 Sahag and together they requested the aid of King Vramshabouh.


St Mesrob-Mashtotz

After receiving the approval of Catholicos Sahak, the saintly head of the Armenian Church and himself a scholar, Mesrob 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

Mesrob 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..

After much research and many travels, Mesrob 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. Mesrob completed the Armenian alphabet, probably in 404 or 406 AD.


St. Mesrob died at a ripe old age in 440 AD and is buried in the crypt of the church at Oshakan in the province of Vaspouragan where a beautiful cathedral has been built in his honor, and where one may go and pay homage at the saint’s tomb to the present.


The Armenian Alphabet

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. This fact is a great tribute to Mesrob.

The book of ritual used in the Armenian Church bears the name "Mashdotz" and is dedicated to this great saint. Althoughit has been compiled at a later date, it was based on a sacramental anthology attributed to Mashdotz.


 Wall Plate from our Giftshop

The Armenian classical language, as written by St. Mesrob, is known as "GRABAR" or "Book Language." From the 15th century onward, poets and scribes began to use the popular spoken idiom of the people known as "ASHKHARABAR".

During the 19th century, two main spoken and literary languages, Eastern Armenian, based on the Armenian of the Ararat region, and Western Armenian, based on the idiom of the Armenians of Istanbul, were developed.

The Armenian language, reflecting its ancient legacy contains Caucasian roots and is an independent branch of the Indo-European family. It is considered an extremely precise language. Due to its utter lack of ambiguity, the Armenian language was recommended by anthropologist, Margaret Mead, for use as an "international language."