OGAM SCRIPT 1 *
Linguistic
Archaeology of Ireland
THE
OGAM ALPHABET
Beginning in
the last half of the 20th Century, archeological discoveries have revealed
the existence of Pre-Columbian contacts that were made in America by explorers
from Europe, Asia and Africa. Many of
these explorers left written pectographic inscriptions of their experiences
in America using a phonetic “Stick Writing” that is often called Ogam. These writings, developed in Europe, are
found all over North America.
However, there are few who have the linguistic skills to translate
them. New discoveries of such
inscriptions are being made regularly but the academic community has been
negligent in giving them the attention they deserve. This is of course history of importance to
all of us. It was only recently that
anyone merely suggesting that any form of written language existed in America
was labeled a heretic, fool or worse.
However, today we are reading detailed accounts of the Maya and their
civilization from numerous inscriptions that were found at archeological
sites in Mexico and south.
Fell in 1982 submitted detailed
translations of Ogam inscriptions in America (see
Report). He compared American
inscriptions with those that had been found in Northern Europe dating back to
the Bronze Age. The
Horse Creek Petroglyph of West Virginia is the most recent translation of
the largest Petroglyph known to exist in North America. The author, Edo Nyland, suggested that
Ogam came to Ireland from North Africa with the first Gnostic missionaries
who preached the early Irish Christianity. However, very recent linguistic
studies have pointed to the possibility that a phonetic alphabet reached
North Africa from visitors from North Sea and Baltic Sea civilizations much
earlier. Indeed Nyland mentions inscriptions found in Ireland on a Bronze Bowl.
Nevertheless, the Gnostic missionaries believed in magic, just like
the pre-Christian Irish inhabitants did. As Anthony Jackson (1993) discovered, this magic took the shape
of numerical wizardry with letters (see the Saharan
Language). It is not known if the original Ogam had an organized alphabet
but it is likely. The Gnostic missionaries used the script to spread
the Gospel by marking their Biblical phrases on Neolithic standing stones to
convert the people to Christianity. Around 650 A.D. Benedictine monks and
their grammarians came to Ireland with instructions to create a distinct
language to replace the "iron" language of the Irish, which they
called Cruithin.
They found it necessary to augment the early alphabetic script with five
diphthong characters, called Forfeda and
further develop it to accommodate their linguistic and literary activities.
There is no doubt that these people were linguistic professionals.
To explain how Ogam inscriptions
are translated, Nyland has provided a detailed process with examples (see Translate).
Nevertheless, for most persons not trained in linguistics it is difficult
to fully understand. Nyland’s
explanation is as follows:
“The Ogam alphabet is … composed
of 15 consonants followed by five vowels. This is the only alphabet known
which organizes consonants and vowels in this manner. The Benedictines'
operation manual, the "Auraicept", parts of which appear to have been written
as early as 700 A.D., in the very early years of Irish Judeo-Christianity,
described the Ogam alphabet as follows:
Translation by Calder:
“ This is their number: five Ogmic
groups, i.e., five men for each group, and one up to five for each of them,
that their signs may be distinguished. These are their signs: right of stem, left
of stem, athwart of stem, through stem, about stem. Thus is a tree climbed,
to wit, treading on the root of the tree first with thy right hand first and
thy left hand after. Then with the stem, and against it and through it and
about it. (Lines 947-951).”
McManus clarified this:
"This is their number: there
are five groups of Ogam and each group has five letters and each of them has
from one to five scores and their orientations distinguish them. Their
orientations are: right of the stemline, left of the stemline, across the
stemline, through the stemline, around the stemline. Ogam is climbed as a
tree is climbed..." (McManus 1.5).”
“
By the time the fifth column of Forfeda symbols had been added, the
script was written horizontally, from left to right but the above quote still
appears to record the original way of vertical writing, read from the bottom
up. The original 20 symbols are shown
in both the original vertical as well as the later horizontal way of writing.
Most of the early inscriptions on stone in Scotland and Ireland are written
in the vertical form. The Ogam texts in books such as the Auraicept and on the petroglyphs in
West Virginia are written in the horizontal literary tradition. At first
sight, the peculiar arrangement of the letters in the Ogam alphabet appears
to be completely unrelated to the pre-existing Greek and Latin alphabets.
McManus searched elsewhere for the origin and found that "there is a
clear connection with the North Etruscan alphabets". However,
anthropologist Anthony Jackson from Edinburgh University discovered that the
arrangement was directly related to the ordinal numbers of the letters in the
Latin alphabet. “
1 2 3
4 5 6 7
8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
19 20
A B C D E V G H I
Z L M N O
NG Q R S T
U
“ The total of the ordinal numbers
in the Latin alphabet is 210. The 20 original Ogam characters were divided
into four columns, which, arranged according to a cabalistic system of
calculation, totaled 50, 50, 61 and 49 respectively:
N 13 + Q 16 = (1x29) R 17 + I 9 = (2x13) 5x11 S 18 + C 3 = (3x7) Z 10 + E 5 = (3x5) 3x3x4 V 6 + T 19 = (5x5) NG 15 + U 20 = (5x7) 3x4x5 L 11 + D 4 = (3x5) G 7 + O 14 = (3x7) 3x3x4 B 2 + H 8 = (2x5) M 12 + A 1 = (1x13) 1x23 ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ 50 + 50 = 100 61 + 49 = 110 210 10x5 10x5 (10x10) 1x61 7x7 (10x11) 2x3x5x7 B L V S N / H D T C Q / M G NG Z R / A O U E I.
“The sequence of the letters
within each column appears to be in relation to the primary numbers, but the
calculations go further than is presented here. (Please see Jackson's monograph, chapter 7.)
“ It may be seen that there are
several letters missing from the Latin alphabet shown above: F, J, K, P,
V, X and Y. The same letters are missing from the newly
re-arranged Ogam alphabet. This probably means that the linguist who designed
the Ogam alphabet was selective in choosing only those Latin letters that
made the cabalistic calculations and arrangement possible. The V had
replaced the B and the F; the I replaced the J and Y; the C and Q
replaced the K; the B, a labial, took the pace of P
(also a labial), the character X was used for the later Ogam diphthong
EA, but in the Ogam script sometimes is written as KS. It is
interesting to note that Q-Celtic has no F, J or P.
Neither is there a P in Arabic. Only a few words in Basque start with F,
which letter may be a quite recent addition to this language; the V, C, Y
and Q still do not exist in Basque, and the Basque X represents
"sh".
Written horizontally:
Note that the
"f" in the horizontal script should be a "v" as it is in
the vertical script.
“The reason why all 15 consonants
are listed first in the alphabet and the 5 vowels following, has to do with
the special arrangement of the words in the monk's dictionary. The primary
organization of their dictionary is according to the consonants. Half of the
Basque language is made up of words starting with vowel-consonant-vowel (VCV, sometimes VCCV). It is mainly this
half of the language that the monks used in the construction of the Romance
languages and English. These words were then arranged according to the first
consonants in the words, each consonant was then subdivided again into 25 VCV
combinations such as under D: ada, ade, adi, ado, adu; eda, ede, edi, edo,
edu; ida, ide ..... etc. Under each such VCV
were then listed all those words with their translations which started with
these three letters. This arrangement is still the best way for us to decode
Ogam writing.”
“From this it must be apparent
that such a special arrangement applies only to a language that is organized
in the VCV style and Basque is the only
language that fits the type. The syntax of modern Irish (i.e. Gaelic or
Celtic) is very unsuited to this VCV system and
consequently this language cannot be written in traditional Irish Ogam. Therefore,
all Ogam writing anywhere must have been in the Basque language, which means
that the "iron" language of pre-Roman-Catholic Ireland was the
universal language we call Saharan or Basque today. This explains why
"Celtic" scholars have been unable to translate even one single
Ogam inscription correctly.”
“The Forfeda revision made by the
Benedictines, the addition of the five extra diphthong characters, was almost
certainly accomplished in Ireland. Ogam was originally designed for record
keeping and the sending of short messages, not for literary expression.
However, this is what the Benedictine monks of Ireland used it for. One of
the primary purposes of the Benedictine Order was the replacement of the
ancient pre-Christian, gylanic oriented, language with a church-approved one.
The syntax of the Basque language was ideally suited for the agglutination of
new words, which then appeared to have no relationship to the original
language. The VCV formula made this
possible. However, traditions governing this ancient formula did not allow
two vowels to be written side-by side without a space separation, which
demanded separate words. This rule created problems and restrictions for
those writing in the script. The monks wished to simplify the rules of
writing. They created words and names
with diphthongs in them, the invention of five new "Forfeda"
characters permitting the combination of: ea, oi, ui, io and ae, the use of
which then also allowed these to be part of the creation of new words
starting with eha, ohi, uhi, iho and ahe. The design of the characters
they created was totally out of style with the original script. McManus
observed that they "missed the opportunity of completing the symmetry of
the system by having the fifth series mirror the third in the way that the
second mirrors the first" (McManus 1.2).
“To consider what
"forfeda" really means, the monks obviously were not very happy to
be forced to use the "heathen" Ogam script, but found nothing quite
as clever, brief and useful to replace it with, until they had invented their
new Celtic language. In the following analysis of "Forfeda", the
first "f" has to be a "b", a common letter
shift; (the second "f" is correct).”
FORFEDA,
.bo-or.-.fe-eda;
.bo ebo eboluzionatu to develop
or. ori ori
that
.fe
ife ifernuko
infernal
eda eda edabe
potion, fabrication
Develop that infernal fabrication!
“The word "forfeda"
breaks up into four three-letter VCV roots, ebo-ori-ife-eda, each
composed of vowel-consonant-vowel (VCV), with the vowels interlocking
to form a chain of interdependent roots. This joining is the main
characteristic of Ogam writing, is basic to all Ogam inscriptions and is
indispensable in deciphering. Any missing (purposely removed) vowels in the
words analyzed, are represented by a dot until identified. Forfeda symbols
are never eliminated. The monks later overstated this word to "Foirfeadha",
to make it look as if the word had originated with the "Celtic"
language, which is characterized by an excess of unnecessary vowels and h's.
Some remarks in the Auraicept
pertain to the creation of Forfeda characters such as:
IN LEBOR OGAIM. in.-.le-ebo-oro-oga-ahi-im.;
(5465 etc)
in.
ina inauguratu
to innovate
.le
ale alegiñez
carefully
ebo
ebo eboluzionatu to
develop
oro
oro orobateko
similar
oga oga ogasun wealth
a.i
ahi ahituezin
timeless
im.
imi imitazio
character
Innovate by carefully developing a similar wealth of timeless characters.
(Note: there is no break in the
interconnected vowels, even though the text is broken into three
"words".
Translation
Route
Ogam
translation requires the following steps:
Step 1. Transliterate the Ogam characters into our Latin letters,
Step 2. Replace the letters c, q, v, w, y with equivalent Basque
letters, c and q become k, v becomes b, the y becomes
i.
Step 3. Arrange these corrected letters into the VCVCV format,
placing dots where vowels are missing,
Step 4. Fit these letters into the VCV
formula,
Step 5. List the various meanings underneath each VCV,
Step 6. Arrange the hidden sentence.
“One way to
explain the process is with a few examples of real Ogam inscriptions, take
for instance:
"Cunovato".(Macalister #11.)
Step 1. The middle part of the inscription was badly damaged, but
after much study Dr. Jost Gippert at Frankfurt
University decided that it
should read:
"Cunavato"
Step 2. All Ogams in Ireland
are based on the Basque language, however, Basque does not have a "C"
or a "V",
so the
inscription will now read
"Kunabato"
Step 3. When fitting
the letters in the VCVCVCVCV format, it appears that only one, the first
vowel, is missing,
which must
therefore be represented by a dot. The inscription to be translated now
reads:
".kunabato".
Step 4. There are four
consonants so this VCVCVCVCV line is then broken up by hyphens into
four three-letter
VCV's in which the V's on either side of the hyphens are the
same (called interlocking): VCV1-V1CV2-
V2CV3-V3CV, which
therefore represents four words:
.ku-una-aba-ato
Step 5. With the preliminaries
out of the way, the next step in decoding an Ogam inscription is to list the
possible
meanings
underneath each VCV. In the case of the one
missing vowel, all five possibilities must be tried
(aku, eku, iku, oku, uku) as follows:
(aku)
una
aba ato
to
incite boredom
priest
tow
to stimulate annoyance
occasion
tug boat
to rent, lease cowherd
slingshot
to arrange
acoustics fatigue
advantage to seize
(eku)
dull
rower embellish
equator, worried
almost
to solve
peace of mind
shade come!
(iku)
branches
shirt
to touch, to visit
flag, motto, watchful
(oku)
fertile field
(uku)
stable, falsify
go bad, smelly
Step 6.
To
discover the hidden sentence we must match up the words that obviously belong
together, starting with
the complete VCV's. For instance take the pair aba and ato
and immediately out pops priest and come!,
"the priest says:
Come!". Why would he say come!? "To stimulate" (aku)
your "boredom" (una). The
translation of CUNAVATO is
therefore
"The
priest will stimulate your boredom; come!"
“The completed words are: akuilatu (to stimulate)
unadora (boredom) abade (priest) ator! (Come!). That
is exactly what one would expect a missionary to say, it's his job.”
“Infrequently more than one
reasonable meaning appears in which case there is a problem. Postpone this
and return to it later as often new insight will be obtained and the proper
translation might be obtained.
From the following it will be
apparent that this is not an exact science. Guessing the mood of the monk who
made up the word can be entertaining.”
Example #2
Following is
the decoding of an Ogam inscription that has two vowels missing (MacAlister # 364):
Step 1. barcuni
Step 2. barkuni
Step 3. .bar.kuni
Step 4. .ba-ar.-.ku-uni
Step 5. Three VCV's have a vowel
missing. Each of those represents five VCV's e.g. .ba
can be aba, eba, iba, oba or uba.
”Go
to the VCV dictionary and list the possible
meanings under each of these five VCV's. Do the same with .ar
and .ku
The last one,
uni, is complete and only has a few possible meanings.”
Step 6. When
assembling the sentence built into the inscription, keep in mind who the
people were that carved it. The words that pop out immediately are
"evangelist" and "priest" under eba, which goes
together with "prayer" under are: "the evangelist's
prayers" . What do they do? They give peace of mind, under eku.
The sentence therefore reads: "The evangelist's prayers (give you) general
peace of mind". The four words completed are then: ebanjelari (evangelist) arren (prayer) ekurutasun (peace of mind)
unibertsal (general).
Example #3
“The decoding of the more
complicated Ogam inscriptions is difficult to fit into the internet
restrictions. However, the reader now has the idea how decoding is
accomplished. A third example is considerably larger and will therefore be
presented in a different manner, which has the disadvantage of not being able
to show how the missing vowel is recovered.”
Step 1.
Bladnach
cogradedena
and
Bladnach cuilen
“McManus
(page 132) and Maclister (#1086, 1949) show the second word as
Cogracetena, which is incorrect. Both inscriptions are found on a bronze-hanging bowl, likely an incense burner, dug
up from a swamp in County Kerry. "They are inscribed along the upper
surface of the rim and on one of the escutcheons" (McManus7.6)”
Step
2. Bladnak kogradedena and Bladnak kuilen.
Step 3. .B.lad.nak.
.kog.radedena and .B.lad.nak. .kuilen
Step 4. .B.-.la-ad.-.na-ak.
.ko-og.-.ra-ade-ede-ena, and .B.-.la-ad.-.na-ak. .ku-ile-en.
Step 5. This time I
place the given VCV's along the left border:
Bladnak: .B. abe abe cross .la ela ela story ad. ade adelatu to prepare .na ena ena that ak. aka akabu ultimate, superior kogradedena: .ko ako akorduan euki to remember og. ogi ogizatitze breaking of the bread .ra ira iragan to suffer ade ade adelatu to prepare ede ede edergi to confide in dena dena Deuna Lord
Step 6. The
story of the Cross prepares us for that ultimate remembrances while preparing
for the
breaking of the
bread (for His) suffering (while we) confide in the Lord.
kuilen: .ku eku ekurutasun peace of mind ile ile ilezin everlasting en. ene eneganatu to come over me
The story of
the cross prepares me for that ultimate everlasting peace of mind (which
will) come over me.
Discussion
“All words and
many names in any invented language have known meanings. This is not the case
with the words written in Ogam and this fact does not make the job of
decoding any easier. In addition, no effort was made to allow easy pronunciation.
On the contrary, all ingenuity was aimed at insuring that the writing looked
as awkward as possible so that only specialists would be able to interpret
it. This disguising was done mostly by applying the VCV
Code and the removal of vowels, as many as possible. This followed the example of Hebrew where
often no vowels are left at all; such as the name Talmud (Oral Law) being
written as "lmd", originally from tala-muda, tala (watch out) mudatu (to alter): "watch out for
alteration", or freely translated: "pass on unaltered", which
is what an oral law is all about. The meaning of the word Talmud today has
been accepted as something like "instruction".
“In Scotland, several of the
Christian Ogams were inscribed aggressively over pre-existing animal- and
geometrical symbols/totems which had been carved in the 7th century. These
symbols organized marriages and other co-operative arrangements between
groups of (usually) four tribes (Jackson) and ever since had been regarded
with great respect by the population. The over-writing was probably done to
destroy the "magical powers" of the "heathen" symbols.
Deciphering the Ogams usually poses no real problem as long as the
inscription is complete and legible.”
Consonant
Ratings
“In analyzing Ogam inscriptions
and names or words, especially those from which too many vowels have been
removed, it may be helpful to know which consonants are easier to decode than
others. Nyland devised a rating system that I
found helpful. It involves writing down all the possible VCV combinations and then counting only those
that are found in Aulestia's dictionary. For instance take "F":
AFA efa IFA ofa UFA afe efe IFE ofe ufe afi efi JFI OFI ufi afo efo ifo ofo ufo afu efu ifu ofu ufu
“Out of the 25 VCV
possibilities of "F", only the six capitalized VCV's
in red are the first letters of existing Basque words: afa (pleasing,
supper), ifa (north), ife (infernal, hell), ifi (from ibi, to be, to go), ofi
(craftsman, official), ufa (panting, blowing, scornful). The rating of the
consonant "F" is therefore 6, making it the second easiest
of all letters to find meanings for. The ratings of all the consonants are as
follows:
Ñ-5, F-6, J-7, NG-13, Z-17, B-18, M-18, D-20, G-20, S-21,
K-22, L-22, N-22, P-22, T-22, H-23, R+RR-46.
“The use of the letter "R"
in the inscriptions poses somewhat of a problem because no distinction is
made between "R" and "RR", each having its own
set of 23 VCV combinations. Also the large number of words associated with
each combination of this letter makes it sometimes difficult to select the
appropriate word. The analysis of the "R" or "RR"
is therefore usually kept to the last.”
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