On Pharnavaz and the Georgian script

Chronicle tradition credits King Pharnavaz I (c. 302 BCE) with unifying Kartli and creating the Georgian alphabet.

The Kartlis Tskhovreba (the corpus of Georgian chronicles) presents Pharnavaz I as the founder of the kingdom of Kartli and the creator of the Georgian script.

By tradition Pharnavaz «spread the Georgian tongue» and introduced writing; the chronicle thus links to him both the birth of Georgian statehood and the beginning of letters.

Historians debate the dating of the earliest Georgian inscriptions (the surviving ones are of the 5th century AD), but the tradition itself reflects the importance of language and script for Georgian identity from the earliest times.