Mesrop Mashtots

Mesrop Mashtots was born in 362, a linguist and theologian in an Armenia that had no script of its own. Around 405 AD he solved that: he created the Armenian alphabet, giving the language a written architecture and the culture a tool for preservation. The work didn't stop there — he's credited with devising the Caucasian Albanian script and possibly the Georgian one, though scholars still argue over the latter. He composed hymns, served as a statesman, and spent his final decades cementing literacy across Armenia. He died on 17 February 440, venerated as a saint, having left a people with the…