Tullycommon bones

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Marking of both sides of the Tullycommon bone

The Tullycommon Bone (CIIC 52) is an archaeological find discovered in 1934 during excavations at Cahercommaun Fortress , Tullycommon Townland ( Tulach Chumann in Irish ), County Clare , Ireland . It is a complete metacarpal bone of a sheep with an Ogham inscription on each side . The find is dated to the 7th to 10th centuries.

inscription

The Tullycommon bone has a short Ogham inscription on each side in addition to various ornaments such as zigzag lines .

The characters are clearly Ogham characters. This is also proven by the stem lines typical of Ogham inscriptions with the start and end arrows used, the tips of which go through the stem line. To mark the beginning of one of the two inscriptions, an X is used next to the trunk line instead of the arrow running to the right, as is the case with the Buckquoy spindle whorl .

Outline of the characters

As the Ogham sign, the signs for C and S are clearly recognizable on one side of the bone. On the other side, the sign for the phonetic sequence EA (was also used for K; looks like X) and the sign for M (sign in front of the end arrow).

It is not possible to decipher the inscription. "It is pointless to decipher a short inscription of this kind ..." If it is not scribble, the characters may actually have been used for magical purposes. Possibly the bone was one of a whole series of bones used for divination .

Specialty

The Tullycommon bone is one of the only eleven 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 Tullycommon bone, were discovered in Ireland, namely the Ballinderry cube , the Ballyspellan fibula , the Dublin Castle comb , the Ennis pearl and the Kilgulbin hanging bowl .

literature

  • 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
  • Macalister, RAS (Robert Alexander Stuart) : Corpus Inscriptionum Insularum Celticarum 1, Dublin 1996 (reprinted 1945)

References and comments

  1. ↑ Designation generally used in specialist literature according to RAS Macalister's standard work "Corpus Inscriptionum Insularum Celticarum" from 1945 (reprint 1996)
  2. ^ Forsyth, p. 473
  3. ^ Macalister, p. 56
  4. ↑ one of the additional characters created after the 20 original Ogham characters ( singular "Forfid", plural "Forfeda")
  5. ^ Macalister, p. 57
  6. ^ Forsyth, p. 473
  7. ^ Macalister, p. 57
  8. ↑ Mentions and descriptions e.g. B. by Donal B. Buchanan , Katherine Stuart Forsyth , Robert Alexander Stewart Macalister , Barry Raftery