Mesrop Mashtots

Born to a prosperous farmer in the land of Taron, west of Lake Van near modern-day Mush, Mesrop received an education that set him apart. Fluent in Persian, Syriac, Aramaic, and Greek, his linguistic prowess earned him a position as a royal scribe in the capital of Dvin, serving under King Khosrov V’s army. But swords could not shield Armenia from the ambitions of empires. As a soldier, Mesrop witnessed defeat after defeat—until the 387 partition of Armenia between Persia and Rome rendered the struggle futile.

Disillusioned, he took monastic vows and retreated to Goghtn (modern-day Nakhchivan), determined to spread Christianity among the still-pagan Armenians of Zangezur’s mountains. There, a stark reality confronted him: translating scripture required an alphabet capable of capturing Armenian speech. None of the existing scripts—Greek, Aramaic, or Persian—sufficed. The solution, Mesrop reasoned, was an alphabet tailored to Armenian phonetics—one that would also fortify cultural identity against assimilation.

Returning to Vagharshapat, he convinced the clergy of this vision. The origins of Armenian writing remain debated: some claim pre-Christian Armenians used Greek, Aramaic, or Assyrian scripts, while others argue for a lost native alphabet. In 404, Syrian bishop Daniel sent the Armenian king a set of letters, later dubbed the “Danielian script.” Some scholars insist it was a rediscovered ancient Armenian alphabet; others, including myself, find it likelier an Aramaic adaptation. Either way, the clergy soon abandoned it—the script was impractical.

What followed was a feat of scholarship unmatched in its time. Mesrop traversed Armenia, documenting its dialects, then ventured to Mesopotamia and Syria in search of lost scripts. He consulted scholars, pored over manuscripts in Edessa’s libraries, and analyzed Greek, Middle Persian, and even Ethiopic writing (whose visual resemblance to Armenian still strikes observers today). His goal: a clean, phonetic alphabet free of diacritics—uniquely Armenian, useless to others.

By 405, he delivered. The new alphabet, with its 38 precise characters, was instantly adopted. A decade later, he crafted scripts for Georgia (though many Georgians dispute this) and Caucasian Albania (proto-Azerbaijan). The Albanian script vanished under Islamic rule, but Armenia’s endured—virtually unchanged for 1,600 years, a testament to its perfection.

Mashtots’ later years were no less consequential. He founded Armenia’s first seminary in Vagharshapat, served as acting Catholicos, and completed the Armenian Bible translation. Yet political pressure from the Sassanids forced him from the capital. The Amatuni princes sheltered him in Oshakan, where he died en route to Vagharshapat. Buried beneath Didi Kond hill, his original tomb-church crumbled with time. The current Surp Mesrop Church, built in 1875–76, stands in its place—its unconventional design, with a bell tower over the altar rather than the entrance, echoes early Christian martyria.