Early Cyrillic alphabet Bulgarian Empire in order to write the Old Church Slavonic language. The modern Cyrillic script is still used primarily for some Slavic languages and for East European and Asian languages that were under Russian cultural influence during the 20th century. Among some of the traditionally culturally influential countries using it are Bulgaria, Serbia, Russia, Ukraine. The earliest form of manuscript Cyrillic, known as "ustav," was based on Greek uncial script, augmented by ligatures and by letters from the Glagolitic alphabet for consonants not found in Greek. The Glagolitic alphabet was created by the monk Saint Cyril, possibly with the aid
Alphabet a syllabary, but unneeded symbols were discarded. An alphabetic cuneiform script with 30 signs including three that indicate the following vowel was invented in Ugarit before the 15th century BC. This script was not used after the destruction of Ugarit. The Proto-Sinaitic script eventually developed into the Phoenician alphabet, which is conventionally called "Proto-Canaanite" before ca. 1050 BC. The oldest text in Phoenician script is an inscription on the sarcophagus of King Ahiram. This script is the parent script of all western alphabets. By the tenth century, two other forms can be distinguished, namely Canaanite and Aramaic. The Aramaic gave