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The Life of Mashtots (Armenian: Վարք Մաշտոցի,Vark’ Mashtots’i) is the only known work by the Armenian writer Koriun (ca. 5th century AD) about the creator of the Armenian alphabet Mesrop Mashtots. It is the earliest known original work written in Armenian.

History

The oldest fragments of the incomplete manuscript are in the 643 pages dated to the 12th century, which are kept in Paris's Bibliothèque nationale (Arm. 178) and were copied by the scribe Poghos, Two shorter versions are dated the middle of the 14th century and are in the Matenadaran (M 3787 and M 3797) and one longer version is dated the late 17th century. All earlier writers called the inventor of the Armenian alphabet Mashtots' and the name Mesrop is not found in other authors until the 8th century.

References

1. La Porta, Sergio (2018). "Koriwn". In Nicholson, Oliver (ed.). The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-866277-8.
2. Matevosyan, Artashes (ed.). (1994). Koryun - Varkʻ Mesrop Mashtotsʻi Վարք Մեսրոպ Մաշտոցի [Life of Mashtots] (in Armenian) [Life of Mashtots] (PDF). With 1941 introduction and translation into modern Armenian by Manuk Abeghian. Yerevan: Hayastan. p. 15.
3. Koriun (2022). The Life of Mashtots' by His Disciple Koriwn: Translated from the Classical Armenian with Introduction and Commentary. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-284741-6.
4. Moses; Thomson, Robert W. (1978). History of the Armenians. Harvard Armenian texts and studies (in English and Armenian). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. pp. 2–3. ISBN 978-0-674-39571-8.

• Armenian literature
• Late Antique literature