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Irish genealogy search: research family history at The Irish Times
Posted on 11/17/2008 7:17:29 AM PST by SunkenCiv
One of the quirkier discoveries at the megalithic site in Knowth is a series of inscriptions on stones that line the underground passages and chambers. A curious mixture of ogham scratchings and more modern "alphabetic" script, they seem to have been doodled around the eight century... "They are in fact vandalism or graffiti," says Francis J Byrne, professor emeritus of early Irish history at University College Dublin, who has studied the inscriptions in depth. "They date from a period when Knowth was in occupation as a royal site by early Irish kings of the Brega kingdom from around AD700 onwards." Much of the writing details around 20 names, some rare and some common, of the writer's contemporaries, and forms one of the largest known hoards of historical graffiti, says Byrne. The ogham inscriptions are "scholastic", the type that might be used on manuscripts or scratched into the hilt of a knife, while the more alphabetic script is well formed, a hallmark of a trained writer. "They are rather artistic. They are well written by someone who was obviously a literate scribe," says Byrne, noting that the vandal or vandals were Irish, and not Viking invaders. "In fact one or two of the inscriptions are written in a larger rounder form of the script, the type in the Book of Kells, it's very legible. And most of the others are in a longer, more angular type you find in the Book of Armagh."
(Excerpt) Read more at irishtimes.com ...
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Love notes from the gargoyles?
If so, who’d date ‘em?
Ummm...other gargoyles?
What it says, we knowth not.
I thought only the elite or clerics of the time knew how to read and write.
Don’t believe everything you have read to ya. ;’) ;’) ;’)
Ogham is much older than this, and its use may have been quite widespread, as it is relatively easy to learn.
Mebbe it’s Gibberish in its purest form?
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