Bac-Mhic-Connain knife

The Bac Mhic Connain knife is an archaeological find discovered in 1919 during excavations of the basement and wheelhouse of Bac Mhic Connain on the tidal island of Vallay, Outer Hebrides , Scotland , connected to North Uist . It's a knife handle with the rest of a blade. The handle was made from the bone of a whale . Ogham marks are carved into the handle . The Bac Mhic Connain knife, which is kept in the Scottish National Museum in Edinburgh , dates from the 6th to 8th centuries AD.

description

The obtained part of the Bac-Mhic-Connain knife is 11.5 cm long, 1.6 cm wide and 2 cm thick. The whale bone handle tapers slightly towards the end of the handle. There is a conical recess in the end of the handle. All that's left of the knife's iron blade is a small rusty residue stuck in the handle. Part of the whale bone in the remnant of the blade has broken off. Otherwise the knife handle is in good condition.

inscription

The knife has a full inscription. There is no evidence that the Ogham mark or parts of it have broken off. The only slightly incised characters are on the inside of the handle. The inscription does not have a carved trunk line. However, the bone has been machined to have a slightly raised edge as a trunk line. The vowels consist of short dashes.

Because of the weakly incised characters, the scientific community comes to extremely different results of the transmission of the Ogham characters. Erskine Beveridge (1851–1920), the head of the 1919 excavation, read MACUNM? DENCO (or U) T. In contrast, Robert Alexander Stewart Macalister (1870–1950) saw the inscription BELANCEN UCOTA, which he translated as "Belanc's knife". Researchers at the Scottish National Museum believed they recognized MEQUNTENUCOT and Katherine Forsyth reads M (a / o) QUNTEN (/ a) CoT (lowercase letters are additions made by Forsyth), whereby if the reading direction is reversed, she also reads VoS (/ a) QEVQUN (a / o) M thinks possible. A clear transmission of the Ogham characters and their translation is therefore not possible due to the different attempts at reading. However, in research it is often assumed that the name of the knife owner contained in the inscription.

Specialty

The Bac-Mhic-Connain knife is one of the only eleven small finds mentioned in the Ogham specialist literature, i.e. finds in which the Ogham characters are not carved into stone slabs and stone pillars (around 400), but rather into small movable objects (mainly everyday objects) are. Four of these were discovered in Scotland , namely the Bac-Mhic-Connain knife and the Bornais bone plate in the Outer Hebrides and the Gurness knife and Buckquoy spindle whorl in the Orkney Islands .

literature

Beveridge, Erskine, among others: Earth-houses at Garry Iochdrach and Bac Mhic Connain, in North Uist. With Notes on the Structures and the Relics found therein, in: Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 66 (December 14, 1931), pp. 32-66
Buchanan, Donal B .: The Decipherment of Scholastic Ogham. Introduction - Abbreviations - Inscriptions, o. O. o. J.
Connelly, Clare: A Partial Reading of the Stones. A Comparative Analysis of Irish and Scottish Ogham Pillar Stones. A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Anthropology at The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee 2015
Forsyth, Katherine : An Ogham-inscribed plaque from Bornais, South Uist, in: Smith, Beverley Ballin et al. (Eds.): West over Sea. Studies in Scandinavian Sea-Borne Expansion and Settlement Before 1300. A Festschrift in Honor of Dr Barbara E. Crawford, The Northern World 31, Leiden 2007, pp. 461 - 478
Ywonne Hallen, ME O'neill: The use of bone and antler at Foshigarry and Bac Mhic Connain, two Iron Age sites on North Uist, Western Isles, In: Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 124 (1994), p. 189 - p. 239
Padel, Oliver J. (James): Inscriptions of Pictland, Edinburgh 1972, pp. 133 - 137

Web links

References and comments

↑ Map with drawing of the basement and wheelhouse by Bac Mhic Connain
↑ Buchanan, p. 30; Connelly, pp. 65-66
↑ Forsyth, p. 471
↑ Connelly, p. 54 and P.56
↑ Dimensions according to Connelly, p. 54; In 1931, on p. 56, Beveridge gives the equivalent of 10.95 cm for the length, as does the webpage of the Scottish National Museum
^ Beveridge, p. 56
↑ Connelly, S. 56
^ Website of the Scottish National Museum
↑ Buchanan, p. 30
↑ Connelly, p. 56 and Buchanan, p. 18
↑ Mentions and descriptions e.g. B. by Donal B. Buchanan , Katherine Stuart Forsyth , Robert Alexander Stewart Macalister , Barry Raftery
↑ Connelly, pp. 65-67

[1] Map with drawing of the basement and wheelhouse by Bac Mhic Connain

[2] Buchanan, p. 30; Connelly, pp. 65-66

[3] Forsyth, p. 471

[4] Connelly, p. 54 and P.56

[5] Dimensions according to Connelly, p. 54; In 1931, on p. 56, Beveridge gives the equivalent of 10.95 cm for the length, as does the webpage of the Scottish National Museum

[6] Beveridge, p. 56

[7] Connelly, S. 56

[8] Website of the Scottish National Museum

[9] Buchanan, p. 30

[10] Connelly, p. 56 and Buchanan, p. 18

[11] Mentions and descriptions e.g. B. by Donal B. Buchanan , Katherine Stuart Forsyth , Robert Alexander Stewart Macalister , Barry Raftery

[12] Connelly, pp. 65-67