Ennis pearl

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Ennis pearl

The Ennis bead (CIIC 53) is a 2.1 cm wide oval-shaped bead of Bernstein , into which a Ogham inscription is incised. The pearl comes from Ennis in County Clare , Ireland . It is dated to the 5th to 7th centuries AD.

origin

For generations, the Ennis pearl was owned by the O'Connor family from Ennis, who used the amber pearl as an amulet . The supposed magical properties of amber and the egg shape of the pearl, in conjunction with the incised Ogham symbols, were supposed to help births and heal eye infections in the 19th century. The last owner from the O'Connor family gave the amulet to his superior Finertey, who eventually sold it to James H. Greaves, a jeweler from Cork . Then the Ennis pearl came into the possession of Lord Londesborough (1834–1900). In 1888 it was bought by the British Museum in London and is on display there.

inscription

Ennis pearl - illustration from 1856

As early as 1840, the Irish scholar John Windele (1801–1865) made a drawing of the pearl and a copy of the inscription. The inscription is about three-quarters of the circumference of the pearl. The Irish archaeologist Robert Alexander Stewart Macalister (1870–1950) reads LMCBTM from right to left in 1898 (see drawing). Two signs are in his view non-oghamic; however, he also sees the possibility of U-forms. It seems more likely to Macalister, however, that one character is a B with an accidental scratch resulting from it and that the other character is just an ornament. Almost 50 years later, Macalister reads, again with reservations, the Ogham inscription ATUCMLU (now reading from left to right). The letters do not make up a word from earlier Irish. In this respect he suspects a secret magical formula.

Specialty

The Ennis pearl is one of the only eleven rare small finds mentioned in the Ogham specialist literature to date, i.e. finds in which the Ogham characters are not carved into stone slabs and stone pillars (around 400), but into small objects (mainly everyday objects). Six of these, including the Ennis pearl, were discovered in Ireland, namely the Ballyspellan brooch , the Ballinderry cube , the Dublin Castle comb , the Kilgulbin hanging bowl and the Tullycommon bone .

literature

Web links

References and comments

  1. Designation generally used in specialist literature according to R. A. S. Macalister's numbering in his standard work "Corpus Inscriptionum Insularum Celticarum" from 1945, which is still cited today (reprint 1996)
  2. ^ Dating of the Ennis pearl on the website of the British Museum
  3. ^ Proceedings and Papers, p. 49; Macalister 1996, p. 57; Merlini, p. 98
  4. Macalister 1996, p. 57; Merlini, p. 98
  5. ^ Proceedings and Papers, pp. 49 - 50
  6. ^ Website of the British Museum
  7. Illustration of the signature by John Windele
  8. Macalister 1898, p. 319
  9. Macalister 1996, p. 57
  10. Mentions and descriptions e.g. B. by Donal B. Buchanan , Katherine Stuart Forsyth , Robert Alexander Stewart Macalister , Barry Raftery