5000 Dram Armenian Alphabet - Կ

Part of a 38-coin series issued by the Central Bank of Armenia to commemorate each letter of the Armenian alphabet, itself one of the oldest alphabets still in active use. The script was created by the scholar Mesrop Mashtots around 405 AD, commissioned by the Catholicos Sahak Partev and backed by the Arsacid king Vramshapuh — a deliberate act of cultural consolidation at a moment when Armenian ecclesiastical independence from Byzantium and Persia was under pressure. Կ, or "Ken," is the sixteenth letter of the Mashtots alphabet, with a phonetic value equivalent to the unaspirated /k/.