Old Udi script

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Old Udi script, sometimes called Caucasian Albanian is the alphabet of the Caucasian Albanians, one of the Ibero-Caucasian peoples, ancient and indigenous population of modern Azerbaijan and Daghestan. It was rediscovered by a Georgian scholar, Professor Ilia Abuladze, in 1937.^[1] The alphabet was found in Matenadaran MS No. 7117, an Armenian language manual of the 15th century. This manual presents different alphabets for comparison: Armenian, Greek, Latin, Syriac, Georgian, Coptic, and Old Udi among them. The Old Udi alphabet was titled: "Aluanic girn e" (Albanic letters). Abuladze made an assumption that this alphabet was based on Georgian letters.

The Udi language, spoken by 8000 people mostly in Azerbaijan, and also Georgia, is thought to be the last remnant of the language once spoken in Caucasian Albania.^[2]

Armenian historian, Koriun, in his book The Life of Mashtots, wrote:

“

Then there came and visited them an elderly man, an Albanian named Benjamin. And he Mesrob Mashdots inquired and examined the barbaric diction of the Albanian language, and then through his usual God-given keenness of mind invented an alphabet, which he, through the grace of Christ, successfully organized and put in order. [3]

”

According to Moses Kalankaytuk, the Old Udi script was created by Mesrob Mashdots, an Armenian monk, theologian and translator.^[4] Mesrob Mashdots is also credited for creating the Armenian alphabet.

The first reasonably long work in Old Udi was discovered on a palimpsest in St. Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai in 2003 by Dr. Zaza Alexidze; it was an lectionary dating to the late 4th or early 5th century AD, with a Georgian Patericon written over it.^[5] Alexidze believes that Old Udi was ancestral to modern Udi.

Jost Gippert, professor of Comparative Linguistics at the University of Frankfurt (Main), is preparing an edition of the manuscript.^[6]

[edit] References

1. ^ Ilia Abuladze. "About the discovery of the alphabet of the Caucasian Aghbanians". In the Bulletin of the Institute of Language, History and Material Culture (ENIMK), Vol. 4, Ch. I, Tbilisi, 1938.
2. ^ "Caucasian Albanian Script. The Significance of Decipherment" (2003) by Dr. Zaza Alexidze.
3. ^ Koriun, The life of Mashtots, Ch. 16.
4. ^ Moses Kalankaytuk, The History of Aluank, I, 27 and III, 24.
5. ^ Alexidze, Zaza and Betty Blair. 2003. Caucasian Albanian Alphabet: ancient script discovered in ashes. Azerbaijan International 11.3:56,57.
6. ^ http://titus.fkidg1.uni-frankfurt.de/armazi/framee.htm?armaz3m.htm#dProjekt Digitization of the Albanian palimpsest manuscripts from Mt. Sinai

[edit] External links

• Armazi project:
  • Jost Gippert: The "Albanian" Alphabet as preserved in Armenian Tradition – has images of glyphs
  • Zaza Aleksidze: A Breakthrough in the Script of Caucasian Albany
• For a specimen of the 'Caucasian Albanian Palimpsest', see : Wolfgang Schulze “The Language of the ‘Caucasian Albanian’ (Aluan) Palimpsest from Mt. Sinai and of the ‘Caucasian Albanian’ inscriptions”
• Multiple articles on the script: [1]