Kilgulbin hanging bowl

Lateral view with edge (upper picture) and view from above with Ogham inscription on the upper edge (lower picture)

Side view with Ogham inscription on plate on the bowl wall

The Kilgulbin suspended bowl (CIIC 1086) is an archaeological find that 1927 in a bog in Town In Kilgulbin East ( Irish Cill Ghuilbin Thoir ) near Ardfert, County Kerry , Ireland , in about 90 cm depth in peat was discovered. It is a three-edged bronze hanging bowl with an Ogham inscription. The hanging bowl itself is dated to around 400 AD because of its special shape. Linguistic reasons suggest that the Ogham inscription was probably not carved until much later, between AD 650 and 800. The find is kept in the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin .

description

The Kilgulbin hanging bowl was made from a single piece of thin bronze. It has the shape of an upside down triangular truncated pyramid with curved edges. The three side lengths at the bowl opening are 24.5 cm, 24.7 cm and 24.8 cm. On the underside of the bowl with the shorter sides, the average side length is 14 cm. The edge of the opening is turned inside out for reinforcement and is 7 mm wide. The height of the bowl is 8 cm. Approximately in the middle of each of the three sides of the bowl opening is a hanging hook that is connected to a plate attached to the bowl wall. On one of these hooks there is still a ring for the suspension; the other two were lost in the aftermath of the discovery. The individual plates are 6.2 cm long on average without hooks.

inscription

A two-part Ogham inscription can be seen on the hanging bowl. With one line, Macalister on the one hand and Raftery with McManus on the other hand come to different readings with two Ogham characters. The inscription BLADNACH CUILEN is on the outside of a plate that is connected to the hanging hook and attached to the outside of the bowl. The Ogham characters are read from top to bottom from the hook. The second inscription BLADNACH COGRADEDENA (or COGRACETENA) is considerably worn, but still legible. It is located on the turned-up edge on one side of the bowl opening. A forfid was used as a character with the sound value E.

BLADNACH and CUILEN are probably proper names, the rest cannot be translated with certainty.

Macalister reading:

᚛ᚁᚂᚐᚇᚅᚐᚉᚆᚉᚑᚌᚏᚐᚉᚕᚈᚕᚅᚐ᚜

᚛ᚁᚂᚐᚇᚅᚐᚉᚆᚉᚒᚔᚂᚕᚅ᚜

Transmission:

BLADNACH COGRACETENA

BLADNACH CUILEN

Reading according to McManus and Raftery:

᚛ᚁᚂᚐᚇᚅᚐᚉᚆᚉᚑᚌᚏᚐᚇᚕᚇᚕᚅᚐ᚜

᚛ᚁᚂᚐᚇᚅᚐᚉᚆᚉᚒᚔᚂᚕᚅ᚜

Transmission:

BLADNACH COGRADEDENA

BLADNACH CUILEN

use

In technical science, the Kilgulbin hanging bowl is considered a hanging lamp in the shape of a bowl.

Specialty

The Kilgulbin hanging bowl is one of the only eleven rare small finds mentioned in the Ogham specialist literature to this day, 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 Kilgulbin hanging bowl, were discovered in Ireland, namely the Ballinderry cube , the Ballyspellan fibula , the Dublin Castle comb , the Ennis pearl and the Tullycommon bone .

literature

• Buchanan, Donal B .: The Decipherment of Scholastic Ogham. Introduction - Abbreviations - Inscriptions, o. O. o. J.
• Bruce-Mitford, Rupert Leo Scott / Raven, Sheila: The Corpus of Late Celtic Hanging-Bowls, Oxford 2005
• Macalister, RAS (Robert Alexander Stuart) : Corpus Inscripionum Insularum Celticarum 1I, Dublin 1949
• McManus, Damian: A Guide to Ogam, Maynooth Monographs 4, Maynooth 1991
• Raftery, Joseph: The Cuillard and Other Unpublished Hanging Bowls , in: JRSAI (Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland) 96/1 (1966), pp. 29 - 38

Web links

• Photo of the Kilgulbin hanging bowl on panel 1 (before p. 29), top left (landscape format, see image descriptions)
• Photos of similar hanging bowls without Ogham inscription and description of the Kilgulbin hanging bowl p. 331 - p. 333
• Shanahan, Tom: The Hanging Bowl
• Ireland's Ogham Inscriptions. Kilgulbin East

References and comments

1. ↑ Designation generally used in specialist literature according to RAS Macalister's standard work "Corpus Inscriptionum Insularum Celticarum 2" from 1949, which is still cited today
2. ↑ Raftery, p. 30
3. ↑ McManus, p. 132; Raftery, p. 30 and comments by Shanahan
4. ↑ McManus, p. 132 and Raftery, p. 30
5. ↑ Raftery, p. 31, p. 37 and P. 38
6. ↑ McManus, p. 132
7. ↑ Raftery, p. 33
8. ↑ Raftery, p. 31 and P. 33
9. ↑ Raftery, p. 31
10. ↑ Use of this symbol also for the sound sequence EA; one of the additional characters created after the 20 original Ogham characters ( singular "Forfid", plural "Forfeda")
11. ↑ MacManus, p. 132; linguistic interpretations and attempts at translation in Buchanan, p. 45 u. P. 46 and on the website of Erich Fred Legner
12. ^ Macalister, CIIC 1086
13. ↑ Raftery, p. 33; MacManus, p. 132
14. ↑ Macalister, CIIV 1086 and Bruce-Mitford, p 333
15. ↑ Mentions and descriptions e.g. B. by Donal B. Buchanan , Katherine Stuart Forsyth , Robert Alexander Stewart Macalister , Barry Raftery