Good evening everyone!
Today I feel extremely bubbly and chatty even though the weather doesn't help in Yerevan.
We started our visa gathering routine and it started in the best manner, as we got out Iranian transit visas!
I want to tell you about our arrival in Yerevan.
We left Tbilisi on Friday morning and after a 6-hour long drive across the mountains, cramped in the back seats of a marshrutka, having a walnut churchkela and tangerines for lunch, we arrived in Armenia.
On Saturday we started exploring the city, spending the afternoon in the History Museum in Republic Square.
Shame the most interesting parts were explained only in Armenian!
Talking about Armenian language, its beautiful alphabet has indeed an interesting story.
In 387 AD Armenia was split in two, Western Armenia (under the Byzantine empire) and Eastern Armenia, which was independent and reigned by the Arsacid dynasty.
The two Armenias then were growing with significant socio-cultural differences.
In 405 the future saint Mesrop Mashtots, supported by Sahak Partev and king Vramshapuh, started creating the first form of Armenian alphabet.
Someone claims that Mashtots invented the Georgian and Caucasian Albanian alphabets as well, but it hasn't been historically confirmed.
What we know is that this alphabet was the only thing which managed to keep the two Armenias together, and helped people keeping their identity alive through the centuries.
To know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding
This was the very first sentence, taken from Solomon's Book of Proverbs, which has been translated in the new alphabet.
It is also the motto of the Holy Translators, who managed to preserve some ancient works in Greek and Syriac which have been lost in their original language.
I truly believe in the amazing power of languages. And you?
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