The Development of Literacy in the Caucasian Territories

The development of specific alphabetic scripts in the context of Christianisation in the early 5th century CE meant the beginning of literacy and, by consequence, a decisive step towards independent statehood for three distinct ethnic groups in the Caucasus: Armenians, Georgians, and the so-called ""Caucasian Albanians"".

While the former two developed their written heritage steadily until today, the literacy of the ""Albanians"" ended with the Arab conquest in about the 8th c., and only a few specimens of their language have survived, mostly in palimpsests detected in St Catherine’s Monastery on Mt Sinai.

For Armenian and Georgian, too, only a limited number of original written texts have been preserved from the ""early"" centuries, i.e. the period between the 5th and 10th cc.

CE, and most of these, too, are palimpsest materials.Over the last 20-years, considerable progress has been made in the analysis of the oldest written materials of the three languages preserved in palimpsest form, and the results have provided substantial new insights into their historical development.

These insights, which have hitherto been confined to the individual languages, are now for the first time ever to be brought into a cross-language synthesis, which will yield a completely new view on the emergence and spread of writing in the region, taking into account the interrelations between the three languages and the Christian cultures represented by them as well as the influence of external religious and linguistic factors.In a novel interdisciplinary approach, the project combines investigations into palaeography, historical linguistics, codicology, and philology, addressing, e.g., the structure of the alphabets, manuscript types and their chronological development, and the emerging literary canons.

Based upon a great amount of preparatory work, it will yield the first comprehensive account of the development of literacy in the Caucasus including online and printed editions and a handbook.