Before Georgia had a printing press, Georgian books existed almost entirely as manuscripts, copied by hand in monastic centers such as Mount Sinai in Egypt and the region around Jerusalem. Yet the first book ever printed in Georgian did not appear in Georgia at all, but in Rome, in 1629.

As the first-published work by the newly-created Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, or Propaganda Fide, the Dittionario georgiano e italiano was created to help missionaries with the Georgian language and spread Catholicism in non-Catholic countries such as Georgia. It’s important to note that Georgia has been Christian since the early 4th century and Eastern Orthodox almost continuously, so Propaganda Fide’s goal was conversion, not support of an existing Catholic church.

The dictionary itself is more functional than literary. It is divided into three columns: the Georgian word, its Latin transliteration, and the Italian translation. Although early criticism focused on errors supposedly caused by the compilers’ distance from the language, later research suggests a more complex production process. Georgian Ambassador, Nikifor Irbach, appears to have provided the Latin transliterations but was not in Rome for the entire compilation. The Georgian script itself was likely added by linguist Stefano Paolini, while a Greek translator was also involved in preparing the text. This helps explain the inconsistencies1 in the dictionary, without reducing the book to simple incompetence [1].

The initial efforts of the Holy See led to Italian priests studying Georgian and being sent to the Caucasus, with the end result of producing the first book of Georgian grammar. As one article on the origins of Georgian printing notes [2]:

Until the 19th century, these books were the only sources through which Western European scholarly circles became acquainted with the Georgian language. Moreover, through their publication, Georgians sought to break through the hostile Muslim encirclement and to re-establish connections with the Western Christian world.

From the start, Georgian printing took shape outside Georgia, through exile and diplomacy.

Kings commissioning type

The next book in Georgian was a product of exile when, in the 1680s, King Archil of Imereti requested the assistance of intermediaries. This led to renowned Hungarian typographer Nicholas Kis being commissioned to make Georgian typefaces out of Amsterdam, which included asomtavruli, nuskhuri, and mkhedruli letters. The result was that in 1705 the first Georgian book of Psalms - the “Davitni”, or Psalms of David - was printed in Russia [3].

A mere few years later, in 1708-09, through the efforts of King Vakhtang VI of Kartli, it was finally possible to create the first publishing house in the country. The needed technical equipment was brought in, via Bulgaria, thanks to printers Mihai Ishtvanovich and Antim Iverieli. One of the first books published in “Vakhtang’s Printing Press” was the 12th-century epic poem The Knight in the Panther’s Skin (Vep’khistkaosani) by Shota Rustaveli. In all, 19 books - mostly religious - were the first to be published not only in the Georgian language but in Georgia itself, that is, until the Turkish invasion of 1722 put a halt to things.

It wasn’t until 1749 that, through King Heraclius II, the printing press could be restarted but, by 1795, it was destroyed along with the entire city of Tbilisi due to the Persian invasion. This on again, off again relationship with printing, in Georgia and by Georgians, was due to the dozens of invasions and major campaigns by foreign armies, over several centuries.

Georgian print culture was both resilient and fragile, emerging in bursts rather than as a continuous tradition. Read together, these episodes explain why Georgian literary life remained manuscript-heavy long after the printing press had transformed Europe. Printing failed because each attempt was shaped by exile, invasion, and interruption. Yet the repeated return to printing speaks to a persistent determination to preserve language, assert political agency, and anchor cultural life in a written tradition of their own.

Sources

1 - Saqartvelos Biblioteka 2020 (pg 14)

2 - ქართული ბეჭდური წიგნის სათავეებთან

3 - From Soviet to European Copyright: The Challenges of Harmonizing the Copyright Legislations of Post-Soviet Non-EU States with the European Copyright Law (Georgian Case)

When was the Georgian alphabet created, and what gave impetus to its creation? These questions have long concerned Georgian society, because the Georgian alphabet itself represents one of the main pillars of Georgia’s statehood and its cultural heritage. Georgian writing played a crucial role in the unification of the Georgian people and in the formation of a single state [1].

Asomtavruli, meaning “capital letters”, is the oldest of the three Georgian scripts and goes back to at least the early 5th century. It was created with only one case (ie, no lowercase) since carving onto stone and clay were the only forms of preservation at a time when authority mattered and literacy was limited.

When the Caucasian Iberia1 was Christianized in the 4th century under King Mirian III, the Georgian script likely emerged along with it. Some scholars argue that writing in the region may have existed earlier, in the pre-Christian era, based on mentions in Greek and Roman sources and analyses of Asomtavruli letter forms [2]. Its use was initially for translation purposes, when monks converted the Bible into Georgian.

Because parchment was scarce and costly, early Georgian manuscripts were frequently reused. Even though the first Georgian texts were “serious” theological works, monasteries still removed older writings to make room for new ones. Earlier translations might be replaced by outdated versions or simply sacrificed to meet the immediate need for copying new texts.

The oldest layers of Georgian writing survive mainly as palimpsests2, not because they were unimportant, but because they were written early enough to be overwritten later. The earlier writing isn’t truly gone, as it survives faintly underneath and can sometimes be recovered with careful study or modern imaging. These palimpsests - preserve archaic editions of the Holy Scriptures, Christian liturgy, hagiography, and hymnography - are the oldest evidence of Georgian writing and language, dating back to the 5th-6th centuries [1].

Features of Asomtavruli

Asomtavruli is immediately recognizable by its large geometric characters. Its letters are round in overall shape3 and written at a uniform height, giving the script an all-caps appearance. Straight strokes are either horizontal or vertical and meet at right angles, making the script feel orderly and architectural.

This uniformity began to relax from the 7th century, when some letter shapes started to change. The equal height of the letters was gradually abandoned as ascenders and descenders4 appeared. This change broke the rigid uniform manner of the script and made writing faster and more efficient, making way for later Georgian scripts.

Asomtavruli was used to inscribe monuments and manuscripts from the 5th to the 10th centuries. From the 9th century onward, the angular Nuskhuri (lowercase) script developed alongside it and increasingly became the dominant writing form for manuscripts [3]. As this happened, Asomtavruli took on a more specialized role. In texts written in Nuskhuri, it was reserved for titles, headings, and initial letters, where its large, formal shapes served a decorative and emphatic function (often being illuminated or highlighted with red ink).

Although its everyday use declined, Asomtavruli didn’t disappear. Monuments continued to be written in this script up until the 18th century, at which point it became even more ornamental. By then, Asomtavruli took on the role of signaling tradition and authority within Georgian written culture. All three of the country’s scripts are now enshrined as UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, and the Georgian Orthodox Church uses all of them, with its spiritual leader calling on people to use them all, too. In this way, Asomtavruli reminds Georgians that their written language is alive and connects them through culture and faith.

Additional information

1 - The Creation of the Caucasian Alphabets as Phenomenon of Cultural History

Sources

1 - V–XIX საუკუნეების ქართული ხელნაწერი მემკვიდრეობა (plus a truncated English version)

2 - Georgian Unique Alphabet

3 - The three lives of the Georgian alphabet

After the annexation of Georgia in the early 1800s, Russian became the language of administration, education, and the elite, while Georgian remained the everyday language of most people. By the mid-century, Georgian faced heavy Russification pressure and was pushed out of many schools. Publishing in Georgian was also tightly restricted, though censors allowed certain non-political texts. Among its roughly one million native speakers, the language survived on the streets, in markets, in the home, in rural communities, and through an enduring children’s primer.

The Deda Ena, created in 1876 by Iakob Gogebashvili, is one of the first and most popular Georgian-language textbooks for children. In one form or another, it has survived into modern times as the main way that Georgians learned to read and write in their own language using meaningful words and phrases. Before it, he had published a more straightforward book called The Georgian Alphabet and First Reader for Students in 1865, as well as The Gate of Nature in 1868, an encyclopedia of natural sciences for upper-level primary school students.

Iakob sequestered himself for six months in a remote village, on the banks of the Liakhvi, and carefully compiled the Deda Ena. In his own words, he “focused solely on one task: to gather as many examples of folk speech as possible, those that carried educational and pedagogical value…”. His dedication was driven by an idea that he couldn’t shake: that kartuli ena, the Georgian language, was so depreciated that it was akin to a “wretched foundling, deprived of all care and protection” [1]. And he worked relentlessly to change it.

Several years before his death, in 1912, the Deda Ena was split into two books: one for learning to read & write and the other focusing on teaching a variety of subjects in the humanities and sciences. Since 1925, the original version hadn’t been published, and any later primers only adapted the original without crediting Gogebashvili.

Recent Revival

A group known as the Iakob Gogebashvili Society pushed for years to restore the original Deda Ena to schools and, while it was approved in 2009, it was ultimately deemed outdated. In 2019, Georgia’s Parliament reinstated the 1912 version of the book into the official educational curriculum, with the goal of creating special conditions for its “vitality, documentation, research, identification, and popularization” as an item of intangible cultural heritage [2].

Today, Iakob’s name can be found across several educational institutions in the country’s capital, on a monument1, in a street name (in the Vera district), an educational medal and a public holiday. But his influence goes beyond his own publications.

Gogebashvili’s teaching method, built on repetition, progression, and intuitive associations created the kind of mental “readiness” later formalized by the father of Georgian psychology, Dimitri Uznadze, as the “theory of attitude” [4]. In short, the theory is based on the idea that people develop a subconscious mental set that shapes how they perceive and respond to the world. In that sense, the primer laid the groundwork for one of Georgia’s most influential and global contributions to modern psychology. Deda Ena’s influence didn’t stop at language, it helped lay the mindset that later scholars, like Uznadze, would build on. Over 150 years later, its pages still shape how Georgians think and learn.

Additional Information

1 - Video lessons for children on reading & writing in Georgian (based on Deda Ena)

Sources

1 - „დედა ენამ“ რა ჰქმნა?!“ - ლეგენდა „აი ია“-ზე - ეტალონი

2 - “დედა ენის” დაბრუნება - სახელმძღვანელო თუ კლასგარეშე საკითხავი?

3 - Gogebashvili Iakob - Georgian Encyclopedia

4 - Father of Georgian psychology Dimitri Uznadze and his “Theory of Attitude and Set”