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Armenian Alphabet

ar-MEE-nee-un
Also Known As Aybuben
Alphabets
Origin from 405

The Armenian alphabet is a true alphabet created around CE 405 by Mesrop Mashtots and Isaac of Armenia (Sahak Partev) to give Armenian its own literacy and Christian scripture. Its letterforms show some resemblance to Pahlavi and Syriac, but the general scholarly consensus is that it was modeled after the Greek alphabet, supplemented with letters invented for Armenian sounds Greek did not have.

Facts
Script Type
Alphabet 1
Directionality
Written horizontally, left to right. 1
In Use Since (Year)
from 405 1
Directionality (class)
Left-to-right 1
Classification
Script Status
Living (in Current Use) 1
Classified 'living' per this entity's own cited source and standard scholarly consensus on the script's current use; checked 2026-09-27.
Connections

Influenced By

Greek Script, Scripts

General scholarly consensus, though the alphabet also shows some resemblance to Pahlavi and Syriac.

Source Wikipedia: Armenian Alphabet

Is Of Script Type

Alphabet, Scripts

Entity-backed identity for the script type value this script already carries as an enum fact, resolved to a script entity by an explicit value-to-entity map (phase 3 bucket conversion, docs\design_entity_backed_browse_buckets_20260928.md). The enum fact itself stays on the entity unchanged.

Script Of

Armenian, Languages
Source Wikipedia: Armenian Language
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Armenian Alphabet
  • Origin section
    The Armenian alphabet was introduced by Mesrop Mashtots and Isaac of Armenia (Sahak Partev) in CE 405.
  • Lead section
    այբուբեն, aybuben, named after the first two letters of the Armenian alphabet
View the Source
Wikipedia: Armenian Language
WikipediaScript Of: Armenian, Writing system section
Quote, Script Of: Armenian, Writing system section
The Armenian alphabet was created by Mesrop Mashtots in 405, at which time it had 36 letters.
View the Source

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