Amaras and Armenian Alphabet

The Amaras Monastery is known to host the first school where the newly-invented Armenian Alphabet was used for teaching by its inventor St. Mesrob Mashtots—an early medieval Armenian linguist, theologian, evangelizer and musician.

St. Mesrob was born in 361 or 362 in the village of Hatsekats in West Armenian province of Taron—far from modern-day Nagorno Karabakh. He died on February 17, 440. His tomb is located inside a large memorial church in the town of Oshakan, 30 miles from Armenia’s capital city of Yerevan.

In addition to the Armenian Alphabet, St. Mesrob is credited with the invention of separate scripts for two other languages—Georgian and Gargarean (a dead North Caucasian language). Not surprising, both Gargarean alphabet and the early version of the Georgian script (known as Asomtavruli or Mrgvlovani) bear striking graphical similarity to the Armenian Alphabet.

There are several historical sources about the life and accomplishments of this spectacular individual. Mashtots’ biography was written by his disciple Koryun, and is called “The Life of Mashtots” (Armenian: Վարք Մաշտոցի). Armenia’s foremost historian, Movses Khorenatsi (c. 410–490s)—another disciple of Mashtots—included a chapter in his “History of Armenia” dedicated to his beloved mentor and the story of the development of the alphabet.

Somewhat similarly to St. Gregory the Enlightener, who founded the Amaras Monastery, Mesrob Mashtots undertook several journeys to Armenia’s eastern provinces of Artsakh and Utik. They are described in chapters 27, 28 and 29 of Book One, and chapter 3 of Book Two of the 7th century manuscript known as “The History of the Land of Aghvank” (Armenian: Պատմություն Աղվանից Աշխարհի). The authorship of the book is attributed to two natives of Artsakh—Movses Kaghankatvatsi and Movses Daskhurantsi. The authors refer to Mashtots as “saint,” “evangelizer,” and “enlightener,” and give impressive details about his missionary expeditions. Overall, St. Mesrob made three trips to Armenia’s east where he toured not only Artsakh and Utik but also pagan territories to the north of the River Kura. Similarly to St. Grigoris of Amaras, Mashtots reached the foothills of the Greater Caucasus and studied North Caucasian languages in order to convert the heathen tribes to Christianity.