The commemorative coin issued by the Central Bank of Armenia is dedicated to the 1600-th anniversary of creation of Armenian Alphabet. Armenian letters were created at the beginning of the 5-th century by Mesrop Mashtots. The letters have kept their initial appearance to date.

The Armenian alphabet is an alphabet that has been used to write the Armenian language since the year 405 or 406. It was devised by Saint Mesrop Mashtots, an Armenian monk. Until the 19th century, Classical Armenian was the literary language; since then, the Armenian alphabet has been used to write the two modern dialects of Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian. The Armenian word for "alphabet" is այբուբեն aybuben, named after the first two letters of the Armenian alphabet Ա այբ ayb and Բ բեն ben.

The Armenian alphabet was created by Saint Mesrop Mashtots and Isaac of Armenia (Sahak Partev) in AD 405 primarily for a Bible translation in the Armenian language. Medieval Armenian sources also claim that Mashtots invented the Georgian and Caucasian Albanian alphabets around the same time.

Various scripts have been credited with being the prototype for the Armenian alphabet. Pahlavi was the priestly script in Armenia before the introduction of Christianity, and Syriac, along with Greek, was one of the alphabets of Christian scripture. It has also been suggested that Ge'ez script had an influence on certain letters of the alphabet. Armenian shows some similarities to all of these. However, the general consensus is that Armenian is modeled after the Greek alphabet, supplemented with letters from a different source or sources for Armenian sounds not found in Greek. The evidence for this is the Greek order of the Armenian alphabet; the ow ligature for the vowel /u/, as in Greek; and the shapes of some letters which "seem derived from a variety of cursive Greek.

There are four forms of the script. The erkatagir "ironclad letters", seen as Mesrop's original, were used in manuscripts from the 5th to 13th century and are still preferred for epigraphic inscriptions. Bolorgir "cursive" was invented in the 10th century and became popular in the 13th. It has been the standard printed form since the 16th. Notrgir "minuscule" was invented for speed, was extensively used in the Armenian diaspora in the 16th to 18th centuries, and later became popular in printing. Sheghagir "slanted writing" is now the most common form.