Manichaean script

The Manichaean script is an abjad-based writing system rooted in the Semitic family of alphabets and associated with the spread of Manichaeism from southwest to central Asia and beyond, beginning in the third century CE. It bears a sibling relationship to early forms of the Pahlavi scripts, both systems having developed from the Imperial Aramaic alphabet, in which the Achaemenid court rendered its particular, official dialect of Aramaic. Unlike Pahlavi, the Manichaean script reveals influences from the Sogdian alphabet, which in turn descends from the Syriac branch of Aramaic. The Manichaean script is so named because Manichaean texts attribute its design to Mani himself. Middle Persian is written with this alphabet. The Iranologist Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst notes that the Manichaean script was mainly used to write numerous Middle Iranian languages (Manichaean Middle Persian, Parthian, Sogdian, Early New Persian, Bactrian), and Old Uyghur (a Turkic language). The Manichaean script is closely related to the Palmyrene alphabet of Palmyrene Aramaic and the Estrangelo script of Syriac. The term "Manichean" was introduced as designation for the script by the German scholar Friedrich W. K. Müller, because of the use of the script in Manichean texts. Müller was the first scholar in modern times (in 1903/4) to read the script. Older Manichaean texts appear in a script and language that is still identifiable as Syriac/Aramaic and these compositions are then classified as Syriac/Aramaic texts. Later texts using Manichaean script are attested in the literature of three Middle Iranian language ethnolects: Sogdian — the dialect of Sogdia in the east, which had a large Manichean population. Parthian — the dialect of Parthia in the northeast, which is indistinguishable from Medean of the northwest. Middle Persian — the dialect of Pars (Persis, or Persia proper) in southwest Iran. The Manichaean system does not have a high incidence of Semitic language logograms and ideograms inherited from chancellery Imperial Aramaic that are an essential characteristic of the Pahlavi system.