Phrygian is connected to a regional dialect called Indo-European Languages; this language is cognate to Hellenic, Armenian, and Albanian. The emergence of the Phrygian script coincides, relatively, with the same period as the birth of the Hellenic alphabet; however, the oldest known Phrygian documents are dated earlier than the first Hellenic ones. The Phrygians used an alphabetic language of Old and New Phrygian. There are 250 documents in old Phrygian dated from 8th to 3rd century BC. New Phrygian, on the other hand, is used in the inscriptions dated from 1st to 3rd century AD and comprised predominantly of malediction formulae against invaders.
Often written from left to right, Phrygian can also be written from right to left and the writing direction may be alternate or boustrophedon, though rare. The Old Phrygian alphabet contains 17 core letters, 5 short consonants /i, u, e, o, a/, four long consonants /ī, ū, ō, ā/, and additional signs of no specific value.
