Manichaean Alphabet Table
| Sign | Unicode name | Kind |
|---|---|---|
| 𐫀 | Letter Aleph | letter |
| 𐫁 | Letter Beth | letter |
| 𐫂 | Letter Bheth | letter |
| 𐫃 | Letter Gimel | letter |
| 𐫄 | Letter Ghimel | letter |
| 𐫅 | Letter Daleth | letter |
| 𐫆 | Letter He | letter |
| 𐫇 | Letter Waw | letter |
| 𐫈 | Sign Ud | sign |
| 𐫉 | Letter Zayin | letter |
| 𐫊 | Letter Zhayin | letter |
| 𐫋 | Letter Jayin | letter |
| 𐫌 | Letter Jhayin | letter |
| 𐫍 | Letter Heth | letter |
| 𐫎 | Letter Teth | letter |
| 𐫏 | Letter Yodh | letter |
| 𐫐 | Letter Kaph | letter |
| 𐫑 | Letter Xaph | letter |
| 𐫒 | Letter Khaph | letter |
| 𐫓 | Letter Lamedh | letter |
| 𐫔 | Letter Dhamedh | letter |
| 𐫕 | Letter Thamedh | letter |
| 𐫖 | Letter Mem | letter |
| 𐫗 | Letter Nun | letter |
| 𐫘 | Letter Samekh | letter |
| 𐫙 | Letter Ayin | letter |
| 𐫚 | Letter Aayin | letter |
| 𐫛 | Letter Pe | letter |
| 𐫜 | Letter Fe | letter |
| 𐫝 | Letter Sadhe | letter |
| 𐫞 | Letter Qoph | letter |
| 𐫟 | Letter Xoph | letter |
| 𐫠 | Letter Qhoph | letter |
| 𐫡 | Letter Resh | letter |
| 𐫢 | Letter Shin | letter |
| 𐫣 | Letter Sshin | letter |
| 𐫤 | Letter Taw | letter |
| 𐫥 | Abbreviation Mark Above | sign |
| 𐫦 | Abbreviation Mark Below | sign |
| 𐫫 | Number One | number |
| 𐫬 | Number Five | number |
| 𐫭 | Number Ten | number |
| 𐫮 | Number Twenty | number |
| 𐫯 | Number One Hundred | number |
| 𐫰 | Punctuation Star | punctuation |
| 𐫱 | Punctuation Fleuron | punctuation |
| 𐫲 | Punctuation Double Dot Within Dot | punctuation |
| 𐫳 | Punctuation Dot Within Dot | punctuation |
| 𐫴 | Punctuation Dot | punctuation |
| 𐫵 | Punctuation Two Dots | punctuation |
| 𐫶 | Punctuation Line Filler | punctuation |
The Manichaean script is what a religion builds when it plans to cross the world: the abjad that carried Manichaeism from its 3rd-century Mesopotamian birthplace across Iran and Central Asia to the silk road. It descends from the Palmyrene alphabet (see this site’s Palmyrene chart) and is closely related to Syriac’s Estrangelo; modern scholarship named it after the religious texts it mostly wrote - the German scholar Friedrich W. K. Müller, the first to read the script in modern times (1903/04), coined the designation. Its main working languages were the Middle Iranian ones - Manichaean Middle Persian, Parthian, Sogdian, Early New Persian, Bactrian - plus Old Uyghur, and its chart reveals the engineering: a systematic set of doubled letters (bheth, ghimel, zhayin, xaph, khaph, dhamedh, thamedh, sshin and more) spelling the hard/soft consonant pairs that conservative scripts like Pahlavi left ambiguous.
That phonetic ambition was the point: unlike Pahlavi with its inherited Aramaic ideograms and historical spelling, Manichaean orthography stayed close to contemporary pronunciation - the same word azad “free” that Pahlavi writes with a fossilized spelling, Manichaean Middle Persian spells almost as it sounds. The religion’s fortunes carried the script: persecuted in the Sasanian world, Manichaeism became the official state religion of the Uyghur empire for five centuries (8th-12th), and the script’s manuscripts cluster in the Turpan region - many found by German expeditions at Bulayiq near Turpan and preserved in Berlin. Unicode encodes all 51 codepoints (35 letters, numbers, punctuation) in block U+10AC0, this chart’s verified source.
How to use
- Read the table by kind: the 35 letter rows show the script’s signature - the base Semitic inventory (aleph, beth, gimel...) expanded with systematic doubled partners for the consonants that split hard/soft in Iranian languages (b/v, g/gh, z/zh, j/zh-j, k/kh, d/dh, t/th, s/ssh, and the ayin pair). If you know the Palmyrene or Syriac charts on this site, read this one as their phonetic upgrade: same skeleton, sharper teeth. The number and punctuation rows close the block, including a line filler for manuscript layout.
- Practice by transliterating a loanword: take a Middle Persian word quoted in scholarly editions of the Turpan manuscripts, spell it with the doubled-letter rows, and compare with its Pahlavi spelling when one exists - the contrast (Manichaean near-phonetic versus Pahlavi ideogram-heavy) is the script’s whole argument for itself. Note that Manichaean scribes were multiscriptural: the same Sogdian language could be written in this script or the Sogdian one, and Old Uyghur appears in both - so a manuscript’s script is evidence, not a given.
- Then follow the religion’s road. Born in Mesopotamia, persecuted by the Sasanian state, Manichaeism grew eastward along the trade routes until a Uyghur khan made it the state religion - and when that empire fell, its manuscript culture survived in the oases of the Turpan depression, where German expeditions found the great hoard at Bulayiq in the early 1900s. This chart plus the Palmyrene, Syriac, Sogdian and Old Uyghur charts on this site reconstructs the whole relay: one family of letters carrying one faith from the Euphrates to the Gobi.
Frequently asked questions
Who first read the Manichaean script in modern times?
Friedrich W. K. Müller, in 1903/04 - and he also coined the script’s name, designating it after the Manichaean religious texts in which it was chiefly used. The manuscripts he worked from had been found by German expeditions at Bulayiq on the silk road near Turpan (in today’s Xinjiang), and many are preserved in Berlin - Müller’s readings opened the Middle Iranian manuscript corpus to scholarship.
Why does the script have doubled letters like bheth and ghimel?
For phonetic precision. Iranian languages split several Semitic consonants into hard and soft pairs (b/v, g/gh, z/zh, k/kh, d/dh, t/th...), and the Manichaean script gives each member its own letter - the doubled names (bheth, ghimel, zhayin, xaph, khaph, dhamedh, thamedh, sshin, and more) are exactly those partners. This made Manichaean spelling far closer to contemporary pronunciation than the conservative, ideogram-laden Pahlavi system - the same word could be spelled almost as heard in one script and fossilized in the other.
What languages did Manichaean scribes write with it?
Mostly the Middle Iranian set: Manichaean Middle Persian, Parthian, Sogdian, Early New Persian and Bactrian, plus Old Uyghur, a Turkic language. The earliest Manichaean texts, though, still read as Syriac/Aramaic - the religion’s founding literature - and later texts in that older language are classified as Syriac. The script also worked alongside siblings: Sogdian texts appear in both Manichaean and Sogdian scripts, a useful reminder that script choice followed community, not language.
How is the script related to Palmyrene and Syriac?
It descends from the Palmyrene alphabet of Palmyra, and consequently is sometimes treated as a variant of the Syriac script (which also descends from Palmyrene) - its Estrangelo stage is especially close. So the lineage runs: Aramaic cursive to Palmyrene to Manichaean, with Syriac as the sibling branch. On this site you can walk the whole line: the Palmyrene chart, this chart, and the Syriac chart show one family adapting to three destinies.
Where were the Manichaean manuscripts found?
Along the eastern half of the religion’s journey. After persecution in its Sasanian birthplace, Manichaeism flourished in Central Asia and became the official religion of the Uyghur empire for five centuries (8th-12th); its surviving manuscripts cluster in the Turpan region, where German expeditions discovered the great hoard at Bulayiq in the early 20th century. The corpus spans the Middle Iranian languages, Old Uyghur and Tocharian - a missionary script’s paper trail from the Euphrates to the Gobi.