Avestan script
The Avestan script is much younger than the spoken language Avestan . It was most likely developed in the era of the Sassanid Empire for writing the Avestan language and was also used for Middle Persian texts.
After the Islamic conquest of Iran, the “Pahlavi” and the Avestian script were replaced by the Arabic script for the writing of the Persian. Today it is only used by Zoroastrians .
It is based on the mistaken Pahlavi script called Aramaic cursive script (which was used further), but in contrast to this a full alphabet of 37 consonants and 16 vowels. Another difference is that the letters are connected, as in Arabic , for example . The writing is left-handed, so it is written from right to left.
See also
Web links
- Avestan Alphabet and Language (English)
- Revised proposal for the coding of the Avestian script in the UCS SMP (English) (PDF file; 1.25 MB)
Individual evidence
- ^ AV Williams Jackson, The Avestan Alphabet and its Transcriptions, Stuttgart 1890