Invention of the Armenian Alphabet and Earliest Bible Translation

Mesrop Mashtots (traditional attribution) · c. AD 405 (traditional) · Vagharshapat (Etchmiadzin) (Armenia) · history

composition: traditionalauthorship: traditional

witness: Koriun's mid-5th-century biography of Mashtots is the earliest surviving account of the invention; no autograph or immediate specimen of the first alphabet or translation survives

Traditional attribution: Armenian tradition credits the monk Mesrop Mashtots, working with the support of King Vramshapuh and Catholicos Sahak Partev, with devising a dedicated Armenian alphabet around AD 405 and immediately organizing the translation of scripture into Armenian, beginning with Proverbs and completed as a full Bible within a generation; the traditional narrative, transmitted chiefly through Mashtots's pupil Koriun (see the separate Life of Mashtots entry), telescopes what was likely a longer, more collaborative process of script design and translation into a single inventive act, and no specimen of the alphabet's earliest form or the earliest translated pages survives independently of that later account.