Pahlavi Alphabet

Pahlavi or Pahlevi derived from  Imperial Aramaic  10840–1085F in III-II centuries B.C. It was used to render Middle Persian language inscriptions before Arabian strangle and contagion of their language which became an ancestor for  Avestan alphabet  10B00–10B3F .

There were several variants of the alphabet differed with count of letters and their fonts: Northwest Pahlavi (Inscriptional Parthian), or Arsacid Pahlavi, can be seen mostly on the coins. It had been spoken and written from III century B.C. until III century. It included 22 letters. Southwest Pahlavi, or Sasanian Pahlavi had been used in the period of III-VI centuries. The oldest surviving example of the Pahlavi literature is from fragments of the so-called “Pahlavi Psalter”, a 6th- or 7th-century-AD translation of a Syriac Psalter found at Bulayiq on the Silk Road, near Turpan in north-west China. It is in a more archaic script than Book Pahlavi.