Megalithic shipping and trade routes

[Boreades]

By chance, just stumbled on this in the Vatican. (Dan Brown and I do get around you know)



A 3rd Century Sarcophagus depicting two magi bearing gifts. Vatican Museums, Rome, Italy.

More pointy-hats?

[Boreades]

An interesting debate is on this site regarding the origin of the ogham script. From the middle east apparently and admitted so by early irish scholars.
...
Unpalatable as it may be for some, the evidence seems to show that Ogam was not invented in Ireland in the 4th century, but came originally from the Middle East, along with its distinctive name.

Did the Scotti emigrate from Ireland towing Ogham stones everywhere they went? This map is supposed to show the routes used to establish Irish Settlements in Western Britain.



We're told that Ogham is Irish, and this site shows plenty of Ogham stones in Ireland...

https://ogham.celt.dias.ie/menu.php?lang=en&menuitem=30

... but then this map shows plenty in South Wales as well...



.. and then ones in Devon and Cornwall.



Finally, the ones in Scotland.



It is me, or does that have a bit of a deja-vu feeling. See the distribution of Broch Towers.

Maps from here: http://babelstone.blogspot.co.uk/2009/1 ... devon.html

[Mick Harper]

Hot news from the Ogham Front. It's an artificial script developed in the eleventh/twelfth centuries by the Norman scriptorium forgers to solve a peculiar problem. There was a requirement to 'salt' various places with bogus tombstones that looked extremely old in order to establish that such-and-such saint/abbot/whatever lived (and died) there.

So why not just age the tombstone, write on the details in 'ancient' lettering and bob's your uncle? Or Abbot Robert of Llandaff was your great-great-twelve times predecessor and therefore had solid title to all the lands around Llandaff? Well, if you put in the inscription using Welsh, or English or Latin on the bogus tombstones, any local literate would notice and say, "Oi, you just put that there... ". But if it's in Ogham nobody knows what the hell it is until a court case fifty years later, disputing ownership of the land, hears "An Ogham inscription, we think of the eighth century, clearly shows Abbot Robert ... "

Of course it may be that Normans just pinched the Ogham script and transcribed local names (Irish, Welsh etc) using it but I think this unlikely since who would ever use such a clumsy system rather than alphabets which had been knocking around for at least the previous thousand years? However contrary evidence is requested.

[Mick Harper]

The 12th century Irish ‘Auraicept na n-éces’ (the Scholars’ Primer), which is the work of several different hands, states in one section that Ogam was invented in Ireland. Yet it also states in another section, (Lines 1105 to 1106), that Gaelic and the Ogam script was invented in “the plain of Shinar” i.e. Sumer or Mesopotamia, and in another yet again, (line 251), in “Achaidh”, i.e. ‘Accad’, or ‘Akkad’, also in Sumer (Genesis ch.10 v.10.). It is widely acknowledged by scholars that this magnificent work is the principal authority on Ogam script, so why its conflicting claim for a Middle Eastern origin for Ogam should be generally ignored by so many academics is quite beyond this author.

Tis quoted this previously with semi-approval but you can all see now that these are the forgers explaining why, all of a sudden, it is necessary to establish the ancientness (not to say authenticity) of Ogham. The puzzlement of the scholars (then and now) is explained. Though not excused.

[TisILeclerc]

If the Irish or Normans were producing the ogham script they were not alone. The Norse cousins were also at it with an encryption of the runic alphabet.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cipher_runes

If alphabets were created to keep secrets why the need to encode them further? Were too many people becoming literate?

The Irish ogham in spite of its apparent simplicity was very complicated and required years of study.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Lebor_Ogaim

The Irish outdid the Normans and Norsemen in inventiveness regarding their ogham script. It involves Fenius Farsaid (also known as Phoeniusa) who became king of Scythia after the Tower of Babel collapsed.

Or, he went there to study the confused languages and invented Gaelic out of what he found. Why he did that I'm not sure but he also invented the ogham script. His son Neil went one better and married the famous Scota daughter of the Pharaoh before setting sail for Ireland and lasting fame and fortune.

It would appear then that Gaelic was an artificial language made up of a combination of others and the ogham script an artificial writing system better than the Greek, Hebrew and Latin writing systems that Fenius studied.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A9nius_Farsaid

On the other hand it all could be made up.

[Mick Harper]

Since 'scholars' of the twelfth (or whatever) century could not possibly know about events so far back in time or so far away in place, you have to ask yourself why they made all this up. If it's just a writing system one would simply write in it. There is no need to give it authority. If one made it up in order to write in it, well ...

[TisILeclerc]

I'm not giving it any authority

They are.

And as you point out so did the Normans.

In fact everyone was at it and they still are. The beginning justifies the means.

[Mick Harper]

You're not reading your own quotes. It is only the Normans who are seeking to give it authority. Unless you can point to anybody else (not mediated via the Normans of course).

[Mick Harper]

Let me give an example.

In Lebor Ogaim ("The Book of Ogams"), also known as the Ogam Tract, is an Old Irish treatise on the ogham alphabet. It is preserved in R.I.A. MS 23 P 12 308–314 (AD 1390), T.C.D. H.3.18, 26.1–35.28 (AD 1511) and National Library of Ireland MS G53 1–22 (17th century), and fragments in British Library Add. 4783. It does not bear a title in the manuscripts, but it is mentioned in the Auraicept na n-Éces (2813f.) as amal isber in leapar ogaim, whence the commonly used title. The Ogham Tract is independent of the Auraicept, and is our main source for the Bríatharogaim.

OK, here we have an 'Old Irish' source for Ogham, "The Book of Ogams", clearly way before the Normans. Yet its actual existence is known only from documents dated 1390 and 1511. So, all the earlier sources have disappeared. Yet apparently they were around in Norman times to be oh so conveniently 'mentioned' in the Auraicept na n-Éces -- what we are claiming is the Norman-concocted Ogham Bible.

Our own dear modern desperate-to-believe Irish scholars says with great firmness that "The Book of Ogams" is independent of the Auraicept, even though they know it isn't! It is dependent on even later sources! Then they have the brass cheek to say "it is our main source for the Bríatharogaim". It isn't a source for anything, it's a late copy of something only attested to by something they say it is independent of.

[TisILeclerc]

That's what I'm trying to say.

The Normans made things up, the Tudors made things up etc etc.

What you are saying is not that the Irish made things up but that the Normans made them up for them.

Personally I don't think the Normans were that clever. I'm quite happy to believe that the Irish could make their own stuff up for themselves.