Ge'ez and Armenian

Armenian in typescript today looks like it could be modern Cyrillic. But it is not. Cyrillic is pretty much an update of Byzantine Greek to fit the Slavic voice, with maybe a few nods to Latin (like the Cyrillic D), and (some say) old-school takings from runes and Glagolitic. Armenian by contrast looks like a cypher.

Apparently - I didn't know - some observers thought old Armenian looked like Ethiopic. But false-friends abound; even some Linear B can be abused to look like Greek with sufficient wishful-thinking. But lately announced, someone's run it through AI.

If we are to believe this, we must ask: why. The Hayots "Armenian" language is enough like Greek (or like old Bactrian for that matter) you'd think that, if you lived there and you were sick of the Pahlavi system, you'd just use some assemblage of Greek and Bactrian, analogous to what the Slavs would use. Like the Copts abandoned their serviceable-for-centuries Demotic, for that Greek alphabet; and Egyptian was nothing like Greek or Bactrian or Armenian in-between.

Here is one point: politics. The Iranian overlords REALLY did not like Greek, nor Latin for that matter. Armenians seen writing in the western scripts would be accused of western sympathy. The Sasanians further made a push to Aryanise the culture; they tolerated the 'Iraq as Aniran but not Armenia. Bactria kept its Greek alphabet basically because it's Afghanistan, which half the time the Sasanians abandoned to the Huns. The Romans when and where in charge simply didn't care as much; they'd just say "learn Greek bro".

For Armenian patriots, a None Of The Above script had to do. Aramaic scripts were available, like that used for Hebrew; but they went in the wrong direction and were designed for Semitic languages which do not include Armenian. As none-of-the-above, anyone looking for inspiration might have to go afield. Hey, like to where Glagolitic was used! - except by now these Armenians were Christians. To the Holy Land it was, then.

I do wonder if we are talking about Ge'ez proper, or to South Arabian and/or "Thamudic" scripts. I understand that Safaitic and Hismaic were no longer in use, but the musnads were still running strong in Saba.