User:Susuman77/sandbox

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Origin

The origins of the Georgian alphabet are to this date poorly known, and no full agreement exists among Georgian and foreign scholars as to its date of creation, who designed the script and the main influences on that process. The oldest uncontested example of Georgian writing is an inscription in the Asomtavruli script dated 430 AD, in a church in Bethlehem, Palestine. The oldest example of the script being used in Georgia is found in the church of Bolnisi Sioni, dated 494 AD.[1][2]

The scholarly consensus points to the Georgian alphabet being created in the 4th century AD,

Georgian, by monks in Georgia and Palestine.[4]

A point of contention among scholars is the role played by

Koryun, a fifth century historian and biographer of Mashtots,[5] and has been widely quoted in Western sources,[6][7] but has been criticized by scholars, both Georgian[8] and Western,[4] who judge the passage in Koryun unreliable or even a later interpolation. Other scholars quote Koryun's claims without taking a stance on its validity.[9][10] Many agree, however, that Armenian clerics, if not Mashtots himself, must have played a role in the creation of the Georgian script.[3][11]

A competing Georgian tradition, first attested in medieval chronicles such as the Lives of the Kings of Kartli (ca. 800),

Tamaz Gamkrelidze offers an alternate interpretation of the tradition, in the pre-Christian use of foreign scripts (alloglotography in the Aramaic alphabet) to write down Georgian texts.[12]

Another scientific controversy regards the main influences at play in the Georgian alphabet, as scholars have debated whether it was inspired more by the Greek alphabet, or by Semitic writing systems such as Aramaic.[12] Recent historiography focuses on greater similarities with the Greek alphabet than in the other Caucasian writing systems, most notably the order and numeric value of letters.[4][13] Some scholars have also suggested as a possible inspiration for particular letters certain pre-Christian Georgian cultural symbols or clan markers.[1]

References

  1. ^
    ISBN 978-90-272-0055-6. Retrieved 19 September 2013.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link
    )
  2. ^
    ISBN 978-90-272-3802-3
    . Retrieved 19 September 2013.
  3. ^
    ISBN 978-1-4443-3361-9
    . Retrieved 19 September 2013.
  4. ^ a b c d e Seibt, Werner. "The Creation of the Caucasian Alphabets as Phenomenon of Cultural History".
  5. ^ Koryun's Life of Mashtots
  6. ^
    ISBN 0-7007-1163-5
    . P. 19. "The Georgian alphabet seems unlikely to have a pre-Christian origin, for the major archaeological monument of the 1st century 4IX the bilingual Armazi gravestone commemorating Serafua, daughter of the Georgian viceroy of Mtskheta, is inscribed in Greek and Aramaic only. It has been believed, and not only in Armenia, that all the Caucasian alphabets — Armenian, Georgian and Caucaso-Albanian — were invented in the 4th century by the Armenian scholar Mesrop Mashtots.<...> The Georgian chronicles The Life of Kartli - assert that a Georgian script was invented two centuries before Christ, an assertion unsupported by archaeology. There is a possibility that the Georgians, like many minor nations of the area, wrote in a foreign language — Persian, Aramaic, or Greek — and translated back as they read."
  7. ISBN 0-674-51173-5. P. 289. James R. Russell
    . Alphabets. "Mastoc' was a charismatic visionary who accomplished his task at a time when Armenia stood in danger of losing both its national identity, through partition, and its newly acquired Christian faith, through Sassanian pressure and reversion to paganism. By preaching in Armenian, he was able to undermine and co-opt the discourse founded in native tradition, and to create a counterweight against both Byzantine and Syriac cultural hegemony in the church. Mastoc' also created the Georgian and Caucasian-Albanian alphabets, based on the Armenian model."
  8. ^ Georgian: ივ. ჯავახიშვილი, ქართული პალეოგრაფია, გვ. 205-208, 240-245
  9. ISBN 0198263732. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help
    )
  10. ISBN 90-429-1318-5
    . P. 450. "There is also the claim advanced by Koriwn in his saintly biography of Mashtoc' (Mesrop) that the Georgian script had been invented at the direction of Mashtoc'. Yet it is within the realm of possibility that this tradition, repeated by many later Armenian historians, may not have been part of the original fifth-century text at all but added after 607. Significantly, all of the extant MSS containing The Life of Mashtoc* were copied centuries after the split. Consequently, scribal manipulation reflecting post-schism (especially anti-Georgian) attitudes potentially contaminates all MSS copied after that time. It is therefore conceivable, though not yet proven, that valuable information about Georgia trans¬mitted by pre-schism Armenian texts was excised by later, post-schism individuals."
  11. ^ Greppin, John A.C.: Some comments on the origin of the Georgian alphabet. — Bazmavep 139, 1981, 449-456
  12. ^
    ISBN 978-90-272-8382-5. Retrieved 20 September 2013.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link
    )
  13. ISBN 978-3-11-019400-5. Retrieved 20 September 2013. {{cite book}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |editor= (help
    )
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