Asomtavruli

Asomtavruli is the oldest form of the Georgian script, serving as the monumental or uppercase component of the early Georgian writing system. It is primarily found in inscriptions and ecclesiastical texts and is often described as the capital letters of the Georgian alphabet. The letterforms are broad, angular, and square in appearance, and the script predates the later Nuskhuri and Mkhedruli forms.

The script appeared in the early medieval period, with evidence dating to the 5th century in the ancient kingdom of Iberia (Georgian precursor to modern Georgia). Asomtavruli shows influence from Greek uncial writing and developed within a Christian cultural sphere. It was used for formal, ceremonial writing and royal or church inscriptions, where its grand, monumental style conveyed authority and reverence.

In the medieval period, Asomtavruli coexisted with Nuskhuri within the system known as Khutsuri, which used Asomtavruli for capital letters and Nuskhuri for smaller letters inside the same words. This ecclesiastical or liturgical script was common from roughly the 9th through the 14th centuries. A later development, Mkhedruli, emerged in the 10th–11th centuries and gradually supplanted Khutsuri for secular writing, becoming the standard script in Georgia by the late medieval era.

Today, Asomtavruli survives mainly in ceremonial contexts, architectural inscriptions, and heraldry, and is studied in the field of Georgian palaeography as part of the script’s historical lineage. It is encoded in Unicode among the Georgian script blocks and remains a symbol of Georgian literary heritage.