Georgia keeps three alphabets in use by giving each its own work

Why Georgian keeps three alphabets in use

The three Georgian scripts share one set of letter names and one alphabetical order, and all three are written from left to right. What separates them is the shape of the letters and, since the tenth century, the work each one does.

Asomtavruli is the oldest. Its name means "capital letters", although it has no lower case, and it is also called Mrgvlovani, "rounded", after the round forms of its letters. The earliest inscriptions found in it date from the fifth century, at Bir el Qutt and at Bolnisi. Nuskhuri developed from it as a graphic variant in the ninth century: its first inscription, in the Ateni Sioni Church, dates to 835, and the first surviving manuscripts written in it to 864. Mkhedruli appears in the same church in an inscription of 982 and next in the eleventh-century royal charters of Bagrat IV.

How the older scripts found narrower work

Nuskhuri letters slant to the right and simplify the Asomtavruli shapes, which made manuscripts faster to write, and Nuskhuri overtook the older script in books from the tenth century. Asomtavruli then kept the tasks where speed did not matter. Scribes used it for titles and for the capital that opened each new section of a text, at first marked out only by size and sometimes by cinnabar ink, and from the tenth century illuminated with birds, fish and other animals. The combination of Nuskhuri text and Asomtavruli capitals acquired its own name, Khutsuri, "clerical", and was the usual hand for the lives of saints. Inscriptions cut in stone between the tenth and eighteenth centuries went on using Asomtavruli, and its letters grew more decorative as they lost everyday use.

Mkhedruli took the other side of the division. The name comes from mkhedari, "horseman" or "knight", and in the Kingdom of Georgia it was the civil, royal and secular script, used for charters, histories and inscriptions outside the church. Khutsuri remained in religious books into the nineteenth century. Mkhedruli became the universal script outside the church in the same century, once printed Georgian fonts were made and spread.

What the division looks like since the inscription

UNESCO's description of the practice, inscribed on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2016, sets out who keeps which script. Mrgvlovani and Nuskhuri are practised and taught informally, mostly within the community of the Georgian Orthodox Church, in psalms and hymns and on icons and other objects displayed in churches. The goldsmiths, embroiderers, icon painters and sculptors who make pieces for churches are named as practitioners and transmitters, along with theological schools, linguists and historians. The school system is based on Mkhedruli, which is taught in primary and high school and passed on at home from older to younger generations, and the two older scripts are taught in school at a basic level. Georgia had given the practice national intangible heritage status in 2015.

The older letters also stay in view wherever text is carved or painted: iconography, murals, the exteriors of buildings and stone engraving. Georgian type comes in a single typeface, and where a Latin text would set a heading in bold or italic, Georgian tradition set chapter and section titles in Asomtavruli.

Why the Georgian alphabet shrank

Georgian was first written with 38 letters and is written now with 33. The Society for the Spreading of Literacy among Georgians, founded by Prince Ilia Chavchavadze in 1879, discarded five that had become redundant. One had dropped out of pronunciation altogether, and another, a sound written ჴ, had merged with the sound of ხ and was replaced by it. Four of the five are still used in the Svan alphabet.

One attempt to bring an old script back into daily use failed. In the 1950s the linguist Akaki Shanidze proposed using Asomtavruli letters as capitals at the start of sentences, as Latin script does, and the proposal did not catch on. Mkhedruli has its own capital forms, Mtavruli, and they appear only in text set wholly in capitals, for titles or emphasis.

Who is credited with inventing the Georgian alphabet

The origin of the script is poorly documented, and Georgian and foreign scholars disagree about when it was made, who made it and what it was modelled on.

A tradition first recorded in the chronicle Lives of the Kings of Kartli, of about 800, names King Pharnavaz I of Iberia, of the third century BC, as its inventor. Scholarly consensus now treats that account as legendary, since no archaeological evidence supports it. Tamaz Gamkrelidze proposed reading the story differently: Pharnavaz may have introduced writing in which Georgian speech was translated and recorded in Aramaic script by a specialist. A. Potskhishvili argued for Greek letters in the same role. In the 1980s Levan Chilashvili found fragments of Asomtavruli inscriptions at the ruined town of Nekresi in Kakheti and dated them to the second or first century BC, and that dating has not been accepted.

Most scholars link the alphabet to the Christianisation of Iberia and place it between the conversion under King Mirian III, in 326 or 337, and the Bir el Qutt inscriptions of 430. Its first use was translating the Bible and other Christian texts, by monks in Georgia and in Palestine.

A second dispute concerns Armenian involvement. Koryun, the fifth-century biographer of Mesrop Mashtots, credits Mashtots, generally acknowledged as the creator of the Armenian alphabet, with the Georgian one as well, and the Armenian linguist Hrachia Acharian defended Koryun and dated the invention to 408. Georgian scholarship and some Western scholars reject the passage as unreliable or a later interpolation, and the historian Ivane Javakhishvili concluded that it was added in the sixth or seventh century. Some Western scholars quote the claim without taking a position on it.

On influence, recent work has stressed the Greek alphabet over Semitic ones, chiefly because the order and numeric value of the letters follow Greek. Letters for sounds particular to Georgian are grouped at the end.

How Georgian polyphony moved into the church

UNESCO first proclaimed Georgian polyphonic singing in 2001 and inscribed it on the Representative List in 2008. Its description calls the tradition secular, sung in Georgian in a country whose language and culture were often oppressed by invaders. The songs are built on three voices, a tuning system based on perfect fifths and a harmony rich in parallel fifths and dissonances.

Three regional forms are distinguished. Svaneti sings a complex polyphony; Kakheti in the east sings a dialogue of voices over a sustained bass; and western Georgia sings a contrasted polyphony in three parts, each partly improvised. Many of the songs are linked to the cult of the grapevine, and many date back to the eighth century.

The repertoire followed people through the working day. The Naduri, sung during field work, builds the sounds of physical effort into the music. Other songs were sung to cure illness, and the Alilo are Christmas carols. Chakrulo, a song for ceremonies and festivals, is known for its metaphors and for the krimanchuli, a yodel, and the "cockerel's crow", both sung by a male falsetto. Chakrulo was also one of 27 pieces of music placed on the Voyager Golden Records, and it left on Voyager 2 on 20 August 1977.

The tradition also moved from the village into the liturgy. Byzantine hymns sung in Georgian churches absorbed the polyphonic technique so fully that UNESCO describes them as an expression of the tradition in their own right. A secular way of singing survived by taking on sacred work, much as Asomtavruli survived by leaving everyday writing for church titles. The twelfth-century hymn Shen Khar Venakhi, "Thou Art a Vineyard", is attributed to King Demetre I and takes its title from the vine.

UNESCO's description also lists the pressures on the tradition. Socialist cultural policy worked against it during the Soviet period, and since then the threats named are rural exodus and the spread of pop music. Recordings of polyphonic songs survive in many archives from the beginning of the twentieth century, but UNESCO judges them insecure for long-term preservation. The culture sources for this article name the Rustavi Choir among Georgian choirs and Erisioni and Sukhishvilebi among its dance companies.

Why Georgian wine still ferments in the ground

How qvevri wine is made

The qvevri is an egg-shaped earthenware vessel used to make, age and store wine, and UNESCO added the method to its Representative List in 2013. Grapes are pressed, and the juice goes into the qvevri together with the skins, stalks and pips. The vessel is then sealed and buried, and the wine ferments underground for five to six months before it is drunk. The Wikipedia summary of Georgian culture dates the clay vessels themselves to the eighth century BC.

According to UNESCO, most farmers and most city dwellers in Georgia make wine this way. The skill is taught by watching. Children learn from their elders how to tend vines, press grapes, ferment the juice, collect the clay, and shape and fire the vessels, and families, neighbours and friends join in the harvest and the wine-making. The same text records that the wine cellar is still regarded as the holiest place in a family home.

The vineyards are worked in ways that differ by district. In one method, maglari, vines are trained up the trunks of fruit trees and hang down among the fruit as they ripen. The wine regions include Kakheti, divided into the areas around Telavi and Kvareli, along with Kartli, Imereti, Racha-Lechkhumi and Kvemo Svaneti, Adjara and Abkhazia. What happened to the export trade after the Russian embargo of 2006 is covered in Georgia: economy.

What the supra puts around the wine

A supra, the "Georgian table", is a feast at which a large number of dishes are served and wine is always poured. It is run by the tamada, the toastmaster, whose position is an honoured one: the tamada proposes the toasts, often long and philosophical, and watches that every guest is looked after. UNESCO files the polyphonic songs under feasts as well as festivals, and Chakrulo is among those sung at ceremonies.

The food on the table depends on the province. Each historical region keeps its own cooking, and the list runs from Abkhazian, Megrelian and Kakhetian to Imeretian, Svanetian, Pshavian, Tushian, Kartlian, Gurian, Meskhian, Rachian and Adjarian. Khinkali, meat dumplings, come from the eastern mountains, and khachapuri belongs mainly to Imereti, Samegrelo and Adjara. The cuisine is rich in meat dishes and carries a long list of vegetarian ones, and it absorbed ideas carried along the Silk Road by merchants and travellers, alongside influences from the rest of the Caucasus, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

How the Orthodox Church shaped Georgian art

Christianity became the state religion of Iberia, the eastern Georgian kingdom, in the first half of the fourth century, after the missionary work of Saint Nino; Britannica dates the conversion to about 330. The church became autocephalous in the early Middle Ages. Russian rule abolished that status, it was restored in 1917, and the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople recognised it fully in 1989. The constitution and a Concordat of 2002 give the Georgian Orthodox Church a special status, and under the Concordat it is the only recognised church: other religious bodies register as civil organisations.

The religion figures reported with the 2024 census put Eastern Orthodox Christians at 82% of the population, Muslims at 11.1%, Armenian Christians at 2.6% and Roman Catholics at 0.5%. The Muslim population is several communities: Azerbaijani Shia in the south-east, Georgian Sunni Muslims in Adjara, the Kists of the Pankisi Gorge and Sunni communities along the Turkish border. Georgian Jews trace their community to the sixth century BC, and emigration to Israel had reduced it to several thousand by the early 2000s.

What the builders and goldsmiths made for it

Church architecture developed its own plan. Before the ninth century most Georgian churches were basilicas; from that century builders combined the dome with the basilica in what is called the Georgian cross-dome style. Britannica credits Georgian architecture, together with Armenian, with a part in forming the Byzantine style. Georgians also built abroad: the Iviron monastery on Mount Athos in the tenth century, the Monastery of the Cross in Jerusalem in the ninth, and the Bachkovo Monastery in Bulgaria, founded in 1083 by the military commander Grigorii Bakuriani.

Metalwork has the longer record. Bronze, gold and silver objects of high technical standard have been recovered from tombs of the first and second millennia BC, including burial mounds at Trialeti. Between the tenth and thirteenth centuries Georgian goldsmiths produced cloisonné enamel and repoussé work, notably icons, crosses and jewellery, and two of them, Beka and Beshken Opizari, are known by name from the eleventh century. The Khakhuli icon of the Virgin belongs to the twelfth century. This is the craft UNESCO names as a carrier of the older scripts, since icons carry inscriptions in the older scripts.

The World Heritage List holds four Georgian properties. Three are cultural: the Historical Monuments of Mtskheta and Gelati Monastery, both inscribed in 1994, the second listed with a further date of 2017, and Upper Svaneti, inscribed in 1996, whose medieval fortifications the Wikipedia account singles out. The fourth, the Colchic Rainforests and Wetlands, is natural and was inscribed in 2021. Fourteen more sites stand on Georgia's Tentative List, among them David Gareji, Ananuri and the Tbilisi Historic District, all three entered in 2007.

Which languages Georgia speaks beside Georgian

Georgian belongs to the Kartvelian family, which also includes Svan, Mingrelian and Laz, and it is neither Indo-European, Turkic nor Semitic. Georgians call themselves Kartveli and their country Sakartvelo; the word Georgian derives from Gorj, the Persian name for them. Georgian is the official language, and Abkhaz has official status within the autonomous region of Abkhazia. At the 2014 census ethnic Georgians made up about 86.8% of the population, and the rest included Azerbaijanis, Armenians, Russians, Ossetians, Abkhazians, Greeks, Yezidis, Kists, Assyrians, Ukrainians and Jews.

The script also writes other languages. Mingrelian is written with 36 letters: the 33 of modern Georgian, one letter Georgian has dropped and two added for sounds shared with Svan. Laz, as written in Georgian letters, uses 35. Svan is rarely written, and when it is it borrows the Mingrelian set with one further obsolete letter. Abkhaz and Ossetian were written in Mkhedruli until the 1940s, and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the Armenian community of Tbilisi occasionally wrote Armenian in Georgian letters. Azerbaijanis in Georgia have also used the script.

Radio broadcasts in Georgian and several minority languages, and television in Georgian and Russian, according to Britannica. Abkhazian writing has a shorter history, dated to the late nineteenth century, and its writers include Dmitri Gulia, Samson Chanba, Bagrat Shinkuba and Fazil Iskander, who wrote in Russian.

How Georgian writers answered two empires

The surviving record of Georgian literature opens with the Martyrdom of the Holy Queen Shushanik by Iakob Tsurtaveli, written between 476 and 483. By the twelfth century the academies at Ikalto and Gelati were teaching a wide range of subjects, and Shota Rustaveli wrote the epic The Knight in the Panther's Skin. The chronicles collected as Kartlis Tskhovreba carry the history of the kingdoms into the fourteenth century.

Georgian printing began abroad. The first press to print Georgian was set up in Italy in the 1620s, and the first in Georgia opened in Tbilisi in 1709, introduced by Vakhtang VI, who also had the Georgian annals edited by a commission of scholars. Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani wrote in the eighteenth century.

Under the Russian Empire the national revival was led from literature. Ilia Chavchavadze, novelist, poet and dramatist, led the literary and social group known as the First Group and founded the literacy society that trimmed the alphabet. Akaki Tsereteli, Alexander Qazbegi and Vazha-Pshavela wrote in the same decades. A national theatre was founded in Tbilisi in 1791 by the writer and diplomat Giorgi Avalishvili, and Britannica names the playwright Giorgi Eristavi, of the nineteenth century, as the founder of modern Georgian theatre. The Tbilisi opera and ballet theatre opened in 1851, the first cinema in Tbilisi on 16 November 1896, and the first Georgian feature film, Kristine, was shot in 1916.

The Soviet period is described in two ways by the sources for this article. The Wikipedia account records a policy of Russification that many Georgians resisted. Britannica records that Georgian language and literature were promoted and that a national intelligentsia grew in number and influence. Britannica also records the cost to writers under Stalin: the novelist Mikhail Javakhishvili and the poet Titsian Tabidze were executed, and the poet Paolo Iashvili, censured by the government, killed himself. Tengiz Abuladze's Repentance, an allegory of the Stalin-era repressions, won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1987.

The other arts produced names known outside Georgia: the painter Niko Pirosmani, the choreographer George Balanchine and his father, the composer Meliton Balanchivadze, Vakhtang Chabukiani, founder of Georgian ballet, and the composer Zakaria Paliashvili.

Why rugby counts as the Georgian national sport

Rugby union is regarded as the national sport. Its local ancestor is lelo, a traditional game very close to rugby that was widely played in the nineteenth century alongside polo. Wrestling has a longer recorded history. Some historians think the Greco-Roman style took in many Georgian elements. The Kakhetian style is among those most practised, and the mountain region of Khevsureti alone had three styles of its own. Basketball has a following as well, and Dinamo Tbilisi won the EuroLeague in 1962.