Everyone knows how words are formed today: a ready-made word is taken, a ready-made suffix or a prefix with a certain meaning is added to it - and we have something new: ecstasy is a basin that was in use. It is clear that the formation of words proceeds on the basis of already developed concepts: ancient words "grow" with suffixes and prefixes, changing their meaning. But it is also clear that the very first words were formed differently.
Each letter carries a certain concept. For example, the beginning is associated with the letter "A" - the main, starting point of our physical and spiritual actions. Categories of energy correspond to the letters "E", "E", "I", and the first two have a shade of cosmic energy, and the letter "I" tends to more "earthly" forms of its manifestation. The initial meaning of everything is contained in the sounds and letters of the alphabet. And the very first words were formed in accordance with this original meaning.
That is why the alphabet can be safely considered the first code, and applicable to any language - modern or ancient. Why does the word start with two "a"? Do you feel something in common between the words layer, stroke, floor, palm, plateau? Or, for example, remember the word yell, which means to plow, to cultivate the land. Among the Sumerians, Ur-Ru meant to plow; in Hebrew, Khoreysh is a plowman, in Lithuanian and Latvian arti is to plow; in Latvian to plow is aro; in Old High German art, a plowed field; in Hindi, Harvaha, a plowman. Modern English Earth - the land is related to Old Scandinavian ertha, Old High German erda, modern German Erde; aro is to plow in Latin, with which English and French are associated arable - arable. After all these examples, it is clear that the Aryan means first of all a tiller, and not what we usually think.
We often cannot accurately determine the "fine" structure of the meanings of words - since we do not set ourselves such a task - but we can always feel it. And - thanks to the creators of the alphabets - to see it in the letter. They managed to isolate the smallest particles of meaning - sounds from the flow of information that brings reality down on us - and stop them, leave them on parchment, paper, metal or wood. That's right, we are talking about letters. The invention of the real alphabet can be considered the largest cultural revolution in human history.
The ancients were much more aware of the importance of the alphabet than we did. They perceived it as something whole, as a model of the world, of the macrocosm - that is why on vases, urns, medallions from ancient burials, we find complete records of various alphabets that played the role of an atoning sacrifice. Moreover, naturally, if the alphabet as a whole was a model of the world, then its individual signs were considered as elements of the world.
We do not know the ancient "proper name" of the alphabet, it may have been taboo. All alphabets are named by their first letters: Latin ABCD-arium (or abecedarium), Church Slavonic alphabet, Russian alphabet, Greek alphabet, German Abc.
Historians cannot give an exact answer to the question of when society became ready for the emergence of a real alphabet. Wars, fires, wrong dates and long-standing stereotypes are too many obstacles to find out how things really were. The art of writing is described in the Mahabharata, and, based on these data, it appeared long before the writing of the Sumerians and at least two thousand years earlier than the Phoenician alphabet. There are more questions than answers in this area of knowledge. But we will not yet look into the depths of millennia - even with respect to the relatively young Cyrillic alphabet, there is a lot that is unclear.
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History of Slavic writing
Since the Slavs settled quite widely - from the Elbe to the Don, from the northern Dvina to the Peloponnese, it is not at all surprising that their groups of alphabets had many options. But if you "look at the root", then these groups, replacing each other, you can distinguish three - runes, Glagolitic and Cyrillic.
Slavic runes
At the end of the 17th century in the village of Prilvits, about fifty figurines and ritual objects of ancient Slavic deities were found with runic inscriptions applied to them, among which the inscriptions of Retra and Radegast were most often found. Scientists concluded that the collection of these items belonged to the Temple of Radegast from the city of Retra. German Andreas Gottlieb Mash acquired this collection and published a catalog of objects with engravings in Germany in 1771. The collection disappeared shortly after publication. At the end of the 19th century, three stones (Mikorzyn stones) were found in the Poznan Voivodeship in Poland with inscriptions carved on them in the same alphabet as on Retrins.
Slavic runes in Scandinavian sources are called "Venda Runis" - "Vendian runes". We know practically nothing about them, except for the very fact of their existence. Runes were used for short inscriptions on gravestones, border signs, weapons, jewelry, and coins. Cult figurines with runic inscriptions are scattered across museums in different countries, and there they mostly remain undeciphered.
Runic writing was the first, preliminary stage in the development of writing, when there was no special need for it: messengers were sent with the news, they all lived together, knowledge was kept by the elders and priests, and songs and legends were passed from mouth to mouth. Runes were used for short messages: an indication of the road, a border post, a sign of ownership, etc. The real writing of the Slavs appeared along with the verb.
Glagolitic and Cyrillic
Scientists have an established opinion about the invention of Glagolitic and Cyrillic - something like this. The appearance of these alphabets is associated with the adoption of Christianity by the Slavs. The brothers Cyril (in the world - Constantine the Philosopher) and Methodius invented Glagolitic on behalf of the Byzantine Empire on the basis of some rudiments of Slavic writing in order to translate liturgical books into this alphabet and prepare the ground for the adoption of Christianity by the Slavs. A little later, after 20-30 years, the Cyrillic alphabet was invented, more convenient than the Glagolitic alphabet, and therefore it rather quickly replaced the latter. Although the Cyrillic alphabet is named by the monastic name of Constantine the Philosopher, it was not he himself who invented it, but, apparently, one of his students. Thus, Slavic writing did not appear earlier than 863, and all written monuments dating back to the 860s,were swept aside by science as false and impossible.
In itself, this statement can cause surprise. Indeed, it is at least strange to assume that a normal people did not have a normal script, while everyone around already had it. And the very formulation of the question of the "invention" of the alphabet at a certain point in time is extremely doubtful. The need for writing among the Slavs appeared centuries earlier. Knowing about the existence of the runic, Latin, Greek, Hebrew and other letters, the Slavs probably either adapted other people's alphabets for their own needs, or gradually developed their own. The Slavic pagan epic mentions that Svarog, the god of heaven, carved the laws for people on a stone called Alatyr - that is, the population should already be able to read and, therefore, write. So what is the merit of Constantine the Philosopher?
Konstantin filosov, aka Cyril, brother of Methodius
Constantine the Philosopher was a man of extraordinary mind, strong character and high education, and Constantinople, using these qualities, often entrusted him with various diplomatic tasks. During the years of Constantine's life, the situation in Byzantium could not be called calm: not only did discontent arose within the country, it also experienced a significant threat from the growing power of the Slavic tribes. All this together called into question the existence of the Byzantine Empire itself.
The only salvation for her could only be the conversion of these pagans to Christianity. Byzantium made several unsuccessful attempts, but the idea did not capture the masses. And then in Constantinople it was quite reasonably decided that it would be more successful to present Christianity to the Slavs in their native language. In 860, Constantine the Philosopher was sent to Chersonesus to translate liturgical books - Crimea at that time was a crossroads, where communication between Russia and the Byzantine Empire usually took place. Constantine had to study the Slavic alphabet, translate Christian prayer books with it, and generally prepare the ground for the Christianization of all of Russia.
Constantine spent four years in Crimea, and then was sent together with his brother Methodius to the Moravian ruler Rostislav, to whom, according to the chronicles, he brought prayer books written in Glagolitic. Perhaps, on this basis, it was concluded that the Glagolitic alphabet became the invention of Constantine on the coastal shores of Chersonesos.
However, as the "Life of Constantine" testifies, in 858, being in Chersonesos, he found the Gospel and the Psalter there, written in Russian letters, and also met a person who spoke Russian, was able to somehow explain to him, and then quite quickly learned to read and speak this language. Constantine learned to read so quickly that it seemed to his fellow Greeks that a great miracle had happened. In fact, even though the writing was alien, unfamiliar - judging by the fact that Constantine still had to learn to read, but the Old Russian language turned out to be quite close to the language of the Macedonian Slavs, which was Konstantin the Philosopher.
It turns out that more than a hundred years before the official baptism of Russia, the Slavs already had translations of church books into the Slavic language and their own developed writing system, different from Greek. What kind of writing was it? And what does Constantine have to do with her?
It was probably Glagolitic. And for sure the writing at that time was already quite developed - in any case, not the beginnings. The statement that the Slavic writing appeared only together with Christianity is not true. Chernorizets the Brave (Bulgaria, end of the 9th century) in the "Legend of Slavic Writings" writes that the Slavs have long read and written, using special "features and cuts" for this.
Constantine got acquainted not with the rudiments of Slavic writing, but with a developed writing - probably unsystematized, so that he had not so much to invent a new alphabet as to reform the existing one. What was this Slavic alphabet like?
Glagolitic
The history of the origin of the Glagolitic alphabet is also quite ambiguous. As a Slavic alphabet, it appeared at least in the 4th century. Glagolitic was born on the Balkan Peninsula, where it still exists in a dying form. The Glagolitic alphabet among the Western Slavs (Czechs, Poles, etc.) did not hold out for a relatively long time and was replaced by the Latin script, while the rest of the Slavs switched to the Cyrillic alphabet. But the Glagolitic alphabet was used until the beginning of the Second World War in some settlements of Italy, where newspapers were even printed in this font.
Its invention, or at least its introduction into everyday life, is associated with Bishop Ulfila, the primacy of the so-called small Goths who lived on the Balkan Peninsula. In fact, these were the Getae, who fell victim to consonance with the Goths, but to distinguish them, "small" was added to their name. Thucydides also mentioned the geth, and their history goes back to the Trojan War. The Getae in ancient times possessed a high culture - the Greeks themselves stated that the Getae were almost indistinguishable from the Greeks. It is very likely that the Slavs were hiding under a part of the Getae, and the holy books of Christians were translated by them long before Cyril.
It is not known whether Bishop Ulfilas invented the verb himself or improved the Getae runes in this way. But it can be argued that the Glagolitic alphabet is at least five centuries older than the Cyrillic alphabet. Knowing this, many historical documents can be overestimated, because they were dated on the basis that the Glagolitic alphabet was created only in the 9th century, although the Slavs had their own written language by the end of the 4th century. There are few traces of it left, and this legacy is little studied and is not appreciated, since it does not fit into the picture of the invention of Slavic writing by Cyril and Methodius.
What are the most characteristic features of this mysterious alphabet?
The Glagolitic alphabet lacks the Greek letters "xi" and "psi", which are in the Cyrillic alphabet. The author of the Glagolitic alphabet was more independent of the Greek alphabet than Cyril, and decided that there was no need to introduce a third letter to combine sounds that already have their own designations. In Glagolitic there are two letters to denote hard and soft "g", which is more consistent with the phonetics of Slavic speech. In Glagolitic there are two different letters for the sounds "dz" and "z". In the Cyrillic alphabet initially there was only the letter "z", but later the Cyrillic alphabet was improved to the degree of glagolitic and the diphthong "dz" began to be transmitted by the crossed out letter "z".
It turns out that if the original was written in Verb and was rewritten in Cyrillic, then the scribe, mechanically repeating the letters of the original, actually changed the date - often for decades. This explains some discrepancy in the dates. Glagolic graphics are very intricate and evoke associations with Armenian or Georgian writing. By the shape of the letters, two types of Glagolitic can be noted: round Bulgarian and Croatian (Illyrian, Dalmatian) - more angular.
As we can see, the Glagolitic alphabet differs significantly from the Greek script, which was used in Byzantium. This is another argument against Constantine's invention. Of course, we can assume that Konstantin "from scratch" created a new writing system, which was so radically different from his usual one. But then the question demands its own answer: where did he get these outlines, this design principle, because he was running out of time - Byzantium sent Constantine on a rather urgent mission.
The statement that the "Cyril letter" was created later in Constantinople by one of Cyril's followers also raises doubts, and it adapted the Greek alphabet for the needs of the Slavic languages. The Cyrillic alphabet was a very subtle adaptation - in general, the internal system of the Glagolitic alphabet was preserved in it, however, the verb letters were replaced by new ones similar to the Greek ones, and additional letters to designate special Slavic sounds were stylized like Greek ones. Thus, this letter was Greek in its graphics, but in phonetics it was originally Slavic. The unknown follower of Constantine must have been a respectable scholar. It is hard to imagine that he would keep silent about his role and allow his brainchild to be called by a false name.
Moreover, when the Cyrillic alphabet, which belonged to some unknown creator, began to supplant the Glagolitic alphabet, the students and admirers of Cyril and Methodius could not but react to this, because the transition from Glagolitic to Cyrillic actually nullified all the work of the brothers. Imagine: translating liturgical books for years, using them for at least 20 years - and suddenly give up everything and start rewriting all the literature into the Cyrillic alphabet? Such a revolution was supposed to cause a struggle between the supporters of innovation and its opponents. The transition to a new type was impossible without the convening of a special church council, without disputes, differences of opinion, but there is not a word about this in history. Not a single church book written using Glagolitics has survived either.
From all this, the conclusion suggests itself that Konstantin the Philosopher invented not the verb, but the Cyrillic alphabet. And most likely, he did not even invent, but reformed the already existing alphabet. Even before Cyril, the Slavs used alphabets of both non-Greek and Greek patterns. In the 18th century, a diploma of Pope Leo IV (847-855), written in Cyrillic, was in the hands of the Montenegrin house of princes Chernoevich. One of the reasons why the document was declared fake was that Cyril had to invent the Cyrillic alphabet only in 863.
Another example is the image of Christ on a towel, the so-called image of Veronica, kept among other relics in the Vatican. It is generally accepted that it belongs to the first centuries of Christianity. On it, in addition to the letters IC (Jesus) XC (Christ), there is a clear inscription: "IMAGE GSPDN ON UBRUS" (ubrus - face towel).
The third example is the icon of the Apostles Peter and Paul, recorded in the catalog of Giacomo Grimaldi in 1617 at number 52. By the nature of the letter, it belongs to the first centuries of our era. In the central part of the icon at the top is the image of the Savior with the Cyrillic inscription "ICXC". On the left is the image of St. Peter with the inscription: "STY PETRI". On the right is the image of St. Paul with the inscription: "STA PAUL".
The Slavs used alphabets of the Greek type for centuries before Cyril, so he took the already existing alphabet as a basis, supplemented it and created church literature on it. He could not base on the verb language: it was unsuitable for quick writing due to its complexity, in addition, Ulfila, not particularly revered by the Orthodox Church, stood behind it. Finally, the Glagolitic alphabet alienated Byzantium with its Greek script and the Slavs.
Rome was quite loyal to the Glagolitic alphabet. Since 1554, French kings, ascending the throne, swore allegiance to the Gospel in Reims Cathedral. The Gospel consists of two parts: the first is written in Cyrillic and contains readings from the New Testament according to the Slavic rite; the second is written in verb and concludes the readings from the New Testament according to the Catholic rite. On the text of the Glagolitic alphabet there is an inscription in French: “Years of the Lord 1395. This Gospel and Epistle are written in the Slavic language. They must be sung throughout the year when the episcopal service is performed. As for the other part of this book, it corresponds to the Russian rite. It was written by St. Procop, abbot, and this Russian text was donated by the late Charles IV, Emperor of the Roman Empire, for the perpetuation of St. Jerome and St. Prokop. God give them eternal rest. Amen . It should be noted that St. Prokop, abbot of the monastery in Sazava (died February 25, 1053), served the liturgy according to the Roman Catholic rite, but in the Old Slavonic language. According to legend, the first king to swear in this Gospel was Philip I, son of Henry and Anna, daughter of Yaroslav the Wise, who were married in 1048. The gospel may have belonged to Anna, and her son swore on it out of respect for his mother. In any case, the Cyrillic and Glagolitic alphabet for many centuries coexisted peacefully in the Roman Catholic Church, in contrast to the Orthodox, where the verb was deliberately avoided, although both alphabets were used in parallel in everyday life.son of Henry and Anna, daughter of Yaroslav the Wise, who were married in 1048. The gospel may have belonged to Anna, and her son swore an oath on it out of respect for his mother. In any case, the Cyrillic and Glagolitic alphabet for many centuries coexisted peacefully in the Roman Catholic Church, in contrast to the Orthodox, where the verb was deliberately avoided, although both alphabets were used in parallel in everyday life.son of Henry and Anna, daughter of Yaroslav the Wise, who were married in 1048. The gospel may have belonged to Anna, and her son swore an oath on it out of respect for his mother. In any case, the Cyrillic and Glagolitic alphabet for many centuries coexisted peacefully in the Roman Catholic Church, in contrast to the Orthodox, where the verb was deliberately avoided, although both alphabets were used in parallel in everyday life.
Glagolitic is much older than Cyrillic and phonetically more perfect. Along with the Glagolitic language, the Slavs also used the alphabets of the Greek type, and it fell to Cyril only to finalize what was in general use, but did not have rules and a canon. Thus, both Glagolitic and Cyrillic are compiled specifically for the Slavic language. The Cyrillic alphabet is graphically a variant of Greek writing (it was often called "Greek writing"), and in terms of its sound structure, it is an imitation of the Glagolitic alphabet. The Glagolitic alphabet is rather a product of the West - there it developed, there it became more and more consolidated, and there it still exists.