other · 405 · Vagharshapat
Armenian had no script of its own. Liturgy was in Greek or Syriac and had to be interpreted aloud, which meant the faith arrived in a foreign language and stayed there. About 405 Mesrop Mashtots, a monk who had been a royal secretary and knew several scripts, devised an alphabet for it — thirty-six letters, fitted to the sounds actually spoken, and so well fitted that it is still in use with two later additions. Isaac, the catholicos and the last of Gregory the Illuminator's line, backed him and organised the rest: students sent to Edessa and Constantinople to be trained, a college of translators, and within a generation the whole Bible, the liturgy, and the Greek and Syriac fathers in Armenian. The translation is called the Queen of Translations by people who can read both, and the fifth century that followed it is still called the golden age. What this dataset should notice is the timing. It happens in the same decades that Armenia is partitioned between Rome and Persia and loses its monarchy, and the church with its own script and its own books is what survived the loss. A written language was the political act.
What does it take to make a nation out of a church?
Thirty-six letters, and a generation of translators.