1,600-Year-Old Inscribed Stone Uncovered by English Gardener
A man from the English city of Coventry has uncovered a 1,600-year-old inscribed stone while weeding his garden. It bears a rare form of early Irish writing.
Investigations have revealed that the stone bears an inscription in ogham, an alphabet used to write early Irish from the 4th century AD, and early Irish from the 6th to 9th centuries. The discovery has baffled archaeologists, who cannot explain how the stone came to be in the central English city.
It is thought it could have been brought as a memento by Irish Christian monks traveling to convert the pagan Mercians inhabiting the area or introduced by Irish traders.
"There are lots of possible explanations for how it ended up there. It is an absolutely amazing find," said Teresa Gilmore, archaeologist at the Birmingham Museums Trust in England.
Gilmore is the finds liaison officer for the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS), a UK organization that was given the stone in 2020 after it was found.
Geography Teacher's Surprising Discovery
Geography teacher Graham Senior made the discovery when he was clearing weeds in his Coventry garden during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown.
"I came across it when I was clearing an overgrown part of the garden," he said. "At first, I thought it was some kind of calendar. Then I realized it was an ogham stone, which was incredible, and they tell me it is well over 1,600 years old."
Senior contacted the PAS, which records and documents archaeological objects found in England and Wales.
Irish Script
Gilmore's research efforts were aided by University of Glasgow historian Katherine Forsyth, who identified the marks on the stone as early-style ogham script after seeing photographs of it.
Gilmore explains that the first part of the inscription relates to a personal name – 'Mael Dumcail' – but the meaning of the rest is still unknown.
The object is made from sandstone and the incisions are cut into the three-cornered space between the faces of the slab. This was a common style for ogham writing before the introduction of vellum and paper.
Ogham and Runic Scripts
Ogham has some similarities to the Nordic runic script, which also features straight lines. However, ogham uses only straight lines grouped together, and it seems to have developed independently for the writing of Irish. Ogham was superseded by Insular, a medieval script used throughout Britain, primarily for writing Latin.
The stone is a rare find. Only around 400 ogham inscriptions are known, compared to thousands of runic inscriptions, and only 10 have ever been found in England.