Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind

Author(s): David Diringer
Publisher: Hutchinsons Scientific and Technical Publications

Page 512

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER IX
311 the herdsman poet. The inscription found at Collingham (Yorkshire) commemorates the death of King Oswiu, murdered in A.D. 650. Among the portable objects is the scramasax, or sword-knife (Fig. 230, 1), found in the Thames in 1857, and now in the British Museum; it is attributed by some scholars to the fifth-sixth century A.D., by others, with more probability, to about A.D. Soo. The most remarkable object, however, and the best preserved, is the "Franks Casket" (Fig. 230, 2); it is so named after Sir Wollaston Franks, who purchased it in 1857 and presented it to the British Museum, where it is now deposited, except for the right side, which is in the Bargello Museum at Florence. The inscriptions and illustrations of the casket, carved in whale's bone, are full of interest from palæographic, literary and artistic points of view. The casket is considered by some scholars as not later than about A.D. 650, by others as belonging to about A.D. 700. Other interesting objects with runic inscriptions are a gold finger-ring from Greymoor Hill, Kingmoor, near Carlisle, a bone comb-case from Lincoln, etc.
An important group of stone-inscriptions of Norse origin was discovered at Mishowe (Orkney) and published by J. Farrer (Notice of Runic Inscriptions, etc., Edinburgh, 1862); there are about thirty stones, dated probably 1152-1153Of the runic inscriptions found in the Isle of Man and in Ireland, particular mention should be made of the stone from Kirk Michael, ca. A.D. 1100 (Fig. 235. see below), and that from Greenmount Louth, twelfth century A.D.
Other Countries
Curiously enough, Iceland, which has preserved such a rich old Germanic literature, is very poor in runic inscriptions; the earliest of them ca. A.D. 1300. The runic inscription found farthest to the north-west is a stone from the island of Kingigtorssuak, Baffin's Bay, west of Greenland, in 72 55' north.
Only a few runic inscriptions came to light in western and southern Germany and in Austria, while single objects containing runic inscriptions have been found even in (1) the modern eastern French Department of Saône et Loire, that is the old Burgundian kingdom (the Charnay brooch, fifth century A.D., Fig. 229, 7); (2) in Volhynia (the spearhead from Kovel, Fig. 229, 1, attributed to the fourth century A.D.): (3) on the Russian Black Sea coast (the stone from Berezan', attributed to the eleventh century A.D.); (4) in Greece (the marble lion, dated ca. 1170, found in the Piraeus, Athens, and taken to Venice in 1687); and (5) in Roumania. In the last country a big golden ring was found in 1837 in the great fourth-century treasure discovered at Petrossa de jos, prov. Buzau, about 60 miles from Bucarest; the ring contains the following Gothic inscription in runic characters: gutaniowihailag, which has been explained as Gutan(e) Iowi hailag, "sacred to Jove of the Goths" (that is, to Donar), or Gutani owi (awi) hailag ("Gutorum possessio sacra"), or else Gutani ingwa hailag ("Gutorum Ingu sacrum").
Earliest Inscriptions
The earliest inscriptions extant (Fig. 229) belong, as already mentioned, to the third-fifth centuries A.D. Some scholars, however, attribute to the first century A.D. a short inscription, discovered at Trondhjem, Norway, which seems to belong to a much later period. Two short inscriptions, one from Negau, being written on a bronze helmet attributed to the second century B.C., and the other from Maria Saalerberg (Carinthia), on a horn stiletto, dated perhaps in the first century B.C., are considered by some scholars as Raetic (see above), and by