OGAM WRITING SYSTEM 1 *
Various authors
investigating different ancient writings have referred to them as "Ogam Script," which has led to
some confusion. Probably the most
ancient and first true Ogam is the "Stick Writings" of the West
African Igbo culture studied by Catherine
Acholonu. These are a sequence of dots, dashes and symbols carved onto bamboo and
stone. More recent forms of Ogam were
found on petroglyphs, animal bone and other substrates.
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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, with its origin in West Africa. These writings are found all over North
America. However, there are few who
have the linguistic skills to translate them, prominent among which is
Professor Catherine Acholonu [see Explanation]. 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 or
West African 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 stem line, left of the
stem line, across the stem line, through the stem line, around the stem line.
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 Ogam
(= West African) 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".
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.
EXAMPLE
TRANSLATIONS
“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 the given VCV's
are placed 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 as many vowels 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.”
“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 he 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.”
= = = = = = = =
= = = = = = = = = =
IGBO / OGAM VCV DICTIONARY
Catherine
Acholonu's Explanation of The Ogam Language
"All the
words that Nyland and Fell
transcribed were Igbo words, which Dr. Catherine
Acholonu could easily read and translate. She told Edo Nyland that she
had translated the words he transcribed from Ogam stones, but he didn't
believe her at first. When Hugo Kennes found Dr. Acholonu's work on the
Internet and started telling all the Ogam researchers he knew including
Nyland, Nyland then asked him to get an Igbo dictionary from her. It was only after her meeting with Pellech
in Belgium when she "read "all Acholonu's books and convinced her
to write for her site, that it was decided to do the "Igbo Ogam VCV Dictionary." PDF File
Nyland's use of the word
Saharan might not be too far off the mark. He just didn't bother to check
West Africa, which has language links with North Africa because the direction
of migrations from the Niger has been North-South as well as South-North
through the Ages. For example the Berber
etymology of 'Barbarian'
is related to Igbo in the sense that (according to Herodotus) the word means
'stranger'.
(The Igbo word for "stranger" is Obiarabia)
"Catherine
Acholonu's thesis is that Egypt was the main outpost from where West African
Kwa (Kwush/Kush) culture was exported to the rest of the world. Igbo is the
Mega-Kwa language - the Kushite mother-language. Kush is the major bearer of
this civilization. Ethiopia was not just an East Africa location, but lay
West too. According to Homer, it was in Sunset Ethiopia that the Gods
congregated, and the people were called "the Blameless Ethiopians in
whose land the gods held banquets". Dr. Acholonu's group discovered the
lost city of this Pre-historic Civilization, with its array of beautiful
bronze and pottery works lost to living memory and posing an enigma to
African and world History."
"Catherine
Acholonu's analyses of the early archaeology of Sumer and of the
Akkadian/Sumerian/Canaanite (Semitic) languages shows that all of them
without exception were children of the Igbo language and that the earliest
inhabitants of Sumer had Igbo lifestyles in religion, architecture, clothing,
etc., even in the recipe for soap-making (wood-ash/potash boiled in oil).
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