Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Open Questions

Who devised the Avestan alphabet?

Citation Formats

General Reference

APA Style

BibTeX

Open Question

The script is placed in Sasanian Iran with reasonable confidence and its purpose is not in doubt, but no source names the person or the body that designed it. This is not a case of scholars holding rival candidates; there are no candidates. The work was begun and left without a conclusion.

What would resolve this A Sasanian or early post-Sasanian text, a colophon in an early manuscript, or an inscription that names the deviser or the commissioning authority. Failing that, a comparative study of the earliest surviving Avestan hands against dated Pahlavi material, which might at least narrow the milieu.
OpenIranian philology and Zoroastrian manuscript studiesPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.), The World's Writing Systems
Cross-Tradition Connections

Question On

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)
Sources
The World's Writing Systems
Peter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.), Oxford University Press, 1996View the Source
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.

View At A Past Year

The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.