Bir el Qutt inscriptions [SEP] time of discovery
Bir el Qutt inscriptions
The Bir el Qutt inscriptions () are the Old Georgian "Byzantine mosaic" inscriptions written in the Georgian "Asomtavruli" script which were excavated at a "St. Theodore" Georgian monastery in 1952 by Italian archaeologist Virgilio Canio Corbo near Bir el Qutt, in the Judaean Desert, 6 km south-east of Jerusalem and 2 km north of Bethlehem. Georgian inscriptions were found on a mosaic floor. Two inscriptions are dated AD 430 and the third one AD 532.
The monastery where the inscriptions
the Georgian and Caucasian Albanian alphabets around the same time. However, most scholars link the creation of the Georgian script to the process of Christianization of Iberia, a core Georgian kingdom of Kartli. The alphabet was therefore most probably created between the conversion of Iberia under Mirian III (326 or 337) and the Bir el Qutt inscriptions of 430, contemporaneously with the Armenian alphabet. Traditionally, the following phrase translated from Solomon's "Book of Proverbs" is said to be the first sentence to be written down in Armenian by