Origin from 250
An abjad, descended from the Aramaic-derived Palmyrene alphabet, that the prophet Mani reportedly devised or adapted himself in the third century CE to write his own Manichaean scripture, and which was subsequently used across a strikingly wide geographic range, from Middle Persian and Parthian texts in Mesopotamia and Iran to Old Turkic and Sogdian Manichaean texts recovered from Central Asian sites such as Turfan. Manichaean scribes prized it as a clearer, more precisely vowel-marked alternative to the Pahlavi script already in use for Middle Persian, avoiding much of Pahlavi's letter-shape ambiguity. Nearly all surviving Manichaean-script material comes from manuscript fragments rather than monumental inscriptions.
Facts
Directionality In Use Since (Year) Directionality (class) Classification
Script StatusClassified 'extinct' per this entity's own cited source and standard scholarly consensus on the script's current use; checked 2026-09-27. Connections
Descends From
Source Wikipedia: Manichaean Alphabet
Is Of Script Type
Abjad, 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
The Manichaean script was an abjad introduced specifically for writing Middle Persian by the prophet Mani (216-274 CE); it was later adapted for other Middle Iranian languages including Parthian and Sogdian, not yet live as language entities on this atlas (gap record).
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Manichaean Alphabet
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