Caucasian Albanian Alphabet: Ancient Script Discovered in the Ashes

[Peter Kirk]

I have found a new script which may need to be encoded in Unicode. Well, 
I haven't found it myself, Zaza Alexidze has done that. I was previously 
aware of this Caucasian Albanian script, but I have only just found out 
that for the first time an extensive document - 300 pages of a 
lectionary, dating probably from the 5th century CE - has been found 
written in this alphabet, and in an ancient form of the Udi language. It 
seems to be a truly separate alphabet, although distantly related to 
Georgian and Armenian. But it is not even roadmapped for Unicode.

See 
http://www.azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/ai113_folder/113_articles/113_zaza_script_ashes.html 
and the related articles, also 
http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/%7Ewschulze/Cauc_alb.htm and 
http://titus.fkidg1.uni-frankfurt.de/armazi/sinai/2kor.htm.

These discoveries of a new ancient language and of a 5th century text of 
much of the New Testament are also very significant in their respective 
fields.

Note that this script should not be assigned quickly to the SMP. There 
seems a real possibility of it being revived for the modern Udi language 
- which lacks a satisfactory Latin or Cyrillic alphabet for its large 
inventory of phonemes. If the script is brought back into current use, 
it will be a candidate for the BMP.

--
Peter Kirk
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (work)
http://www.qaya.org/