Avestan

Origin

The Avestan alphabet was created in the 3rd century AD for writing the hymns of Zarathustra (a.k.a Zoroaster). Many of the letters are derived from the old Pahlavi alphabet of Persia, which itself was derived from the Aramaic alphabet. Greek influence, in the form of the full representation of vowel sounds, is also present.

The Avestan alphabet was replaced by the Arabic alphabet after Persia converted to Islam during the 7th century AD.

Notable Features

Type of writing system: alphabet
Direction of writing: right to left in horizontal lines

Used to write

Avestan, an extinct Indo-Iranian language related to Old Persian and Sanskrit.

Avestan alphabet

Sample text in Avestan

Source: http://www.avesta.org/gifs/samples.htm

Links

Free Avestan fonts
http://minerva.stkate.edu/offices/academic/
classics.nsf/pages/avestafonts/

Infomartion about Avestan
http://www.avesta.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avestan_language

Details of the Avestan language, including sample texts
http://www.farvardyn.com/avesta.php
http://titus.fkidg1.uni-frankfurt.de/
didact/idg/iran/avest/avestbs.htm

Related languages

Avestan, Baluchi, Kurdish, Ossetian, Pashto, Persian, Tajik, Wakhi

Other alphabets

Armenian, Avestan, Bassa (Vah), Beitha Kukju, Coptic, Cyrillic, Elbsan, Etruscan, Fraser, Georgian (Asomtavruli & Nuskha-khucuri), Georgian (Mkhedruli), Glagolitic, Gothic, Greek, Hungarian Runes, Irish, Kayah Li, Korean, Latin, Lycian, Lydian, Manchu, Meroïtic, Mongolian, N'Ko, Ogham, Old Church Slavonic, Oirat Clear Script, Old Italic, Old Permic, Orkhon, Pollard Miao, Runic, Santali, Somali, Sutton SignWriting, Tai Dam, Thaana, Uyghur

ALPHABETUM is a Unicode font specifically designed for ancient languages that includes Avestan, and many other ancient scripts
http://guindo.pntic.mec.es/~jmag0042/alphabet.html

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