Runica Bulgarica

The letter  is the most common sign from Murfatlar. In the inscription, M35 is penultimate, and in M37, it is last. Inscription M35 Inscription M37 It is the only common letter in both inscriptions. I gradually concluded that if there is a word for a saint here, it starts with this letter. The meaning of this letter in Glagolitic is "i", which allows us to replace the whole word with "izge" - lights. This is the word's meaning in Tatar and Bashkir, where it is borrowed from Volga-Bulgarian. The word is also borrowed in Hungarian with the meaning of saint (Rona-Tas A. 2010).  In this situation, inscription M35 reads: (J)o(a)n iz(d)(e)= John the Baptist. Relying on this inscription, we get the meanings of several letters. Remarkably, three of them have parallels in Glagolitic, which makes me look around for more Glagolitic "coincidences" among the signs from Murfatlar. For M11 and M39, the first th...

      Despite comparisons with well-known scripts and relative success in determining the direction of writing, deciphering the Murfatlar inscriptions took a lot of work. Auspicious were inscriptions M35, M36, and M37, which accompany icons and are expected to have the names of the saints written on them and, above all, the word for saint, which should be the same in all three inscriptions. Also, inscription M35 was assumed to be of Saint John based on the features of the drawing. In addition, I came across an interesting drawing of a cross, for which it seemed to me that ΙС ЧС was written in runes. But nothing was happening. My attempts to use the same values for the Cyrillic-like runes also failed. I should add here that I had a theory that I categorically rejected.               It is about the flanked epsilon, the most common combination of signs in Early Medieval Bulgaria. One of V. Beshevliev's assumptions about this monog...

        After graphically comparing the runes from Murfatlar with letters from scripts that could be the prototype, genetically related, or donor of individual characters, I came to the following interesting conclusions: The following 23 Murfatlar signs are found among the signs of the runic alphabets of Europe and Asia: The following 21 Murfatlar characters are found among the characters of the Greek alphabet, Cyrillic and Glagolitic: 7 of the Murfatlar characters are found among the letters of the Greek alphabet, Cyrillic and Glagolitic, but not among the letters of the runic alphabet. It is very likely that both the graphic and sound values of those Murfatlar letters were borrowed from Glagolitic and Cyrillic alphabets. The following 11 characters do not occur in any of the alphabets analysed above. Two of the Murfatlar characters, which are among the most common, have counterparts in all runic alphab...

     According to the classification of some non-Bulgarian linguists, the runic inscriptions found on the territory of Early Medieval Bulgaria fall into three geographical groups: Carpathian - the inscriptions from Nagy Saint Miklos and Sarvash, Dobruja - the Murfatlar inscriptions and Eastern Bulgarian - the inscriptions found in the area of the old Bulgarian capitals Pliska and Preslav (Rona- Tas A. 1988, Tryjarski E. 1995). Bulgarian scholars tend to consider the inscriptions from the First Bulgarian Kingdom in one group, assuming that the runic alphabets are several variants (Popkonstantinov K. 1993) or belong to one script with local variants and significant changes over time (Granberg A. 2005 ).       The table below compares the 44 Murfatlar signs with the runic signs of Early Medieval Bulgaria. I have separated the columns as follows: in the second - the inscriptions from Ravna (Popkonstantinov K. 1993, Popkonstantinov K. 1997); in the third - the...

      For the first time, the Sekler script is mentioned in the chronicle of Simon de Queza from 1282-1285, but the earliest examples of the Sekler runes are from the 15th century. The inscription from Homorodkaraxonfalva (Crechunel in Romanian) dates from before 1495. The first Sekler alphabet was found on the cover of an incunabulum from the Nikolsburg library (Mikulov, Czech Republic) and dates back to 1483. About 15 Sekler inscriptions are known before 1598, when J. Telegi wrote a short monograph on the runic script (Rona-Tas A. 1999). The origin of the Sekler runes has yet to be established. Comparisons have been attempted with the Orkhon-Yenisei script (Nemeth J. 1971) or the Don-Kuban inscriptions (Hosszu G. 2013). It is assumed that the forms of the letters a, f, o, and f came from the Greek alphabet with the mediation of the Slavic alphabets (Rona-Tas A. 1999).        The table below compares the 44 Murfatlar signs with the Sekler runes. E...