Aboba 1899 - the Beginning (Part 2)

 

However, some of the graphic materials found in 1899 at Pliska give reason to think that the system of “signs” is more than masonry marks. For example, some characters are incised in groups of two or three and sometimes form a ligature. However, the researchers of the time were digging into ruins filled with hundreds of pieces of Greek, Roman and Cyrillic inscriptions. The dilemma of the character of the newly discovered system of signs could be only: masonry marks or letters of an alphabet. Even if some of those signs were letters of an unknown alphabet, a string of three letters can barely make a word, and of course, it is hard to be assumed as an inscription.

Ruins of Pliska

This is probably why they didn’t notice that the same system of "signs" was used in drawings they discovered on the walls and bricks of Pliska. It is true that those signs are incorporated into the pictures and usually look like random scratches, and when Skorpil noticed that there were signs in the drawing, it was when they were similar to Cyrillic or Greek letters. Even today, after 123 years, it is hard to understand that archaic and relatively primitive art can thrive on the ruins of the Greco-Roman world.

Almost every drawing discovered in Pliska during the Russo-Bulgarian expedition contains Runiform characters. They cannot be taken for masonry or property marks. However, those characters are not arranged in rows like in Greek inscriptions. They have different sizes and are added here and there without order. Sometimes they are embedded into the structure of the drawing, sometimes even organic parts of the bodies of people and animals. Also, the world of those drawings has nothing to do with everyday life. They describe the fantastic world of myth and legend. Their plots can be understood only with knowledge of Bulgarian folklore and myths and legends of people of Central Asia and Siberia, where Shamanistic practises were still alive in historical times.

The drawings collected at the first excavation of the Early Bulgarian capital are impressive. Published are mostly sketches but executed with utmost attention to detail. Our mission will be to understand their plots and inscriptions, extract individual characters and make a list of the characters used in this sample. Almost all the drawings come from the ruins of Pliska; only two of them were found in a church near the medieval castle of Shumen:

1.  Drawing incised on a brick fragment with a width of 7 sm. and thickness 4.4 sm., made of yellow clay. It was found at the East gates. The drawing was made before firing with a sharp metal object. Two intertwined characters  and  can are incised under the drawing of a symbolic representation of a vagina. 

        2. Drawing on a brick with dimensions 36x26x6 sm. Found at the East gates. It was made with a finger before firing. Here can be recognised two animals and a mosquito. The sound of mosquito is being used in shamanic performances to imply silence. The lines around the animals cannot be identified but represent Runiform characters or monsters such as snakes, dragons, or both. Here only character   can be recognised with certainty. 

        3. Drawing on a brick 6 sm. thick. Found at the Great palace. The battle between an unknown animal and a dragon. The lines around the animal's body might suggest that it emits fire. Only three intertwined characters can be recognised:  ,  and .

        4. Drawing on a brick with a width of 29 sm. and thickness of 5.5 sm. Found in the narthex of the Great basilica. The drawing was incised with a sharp object after firing. Here are depicted four animals, perhaps horses. The characters , are intertwined in front of the head of the upper one. The single character  and ligature  are incised in front of the head of the next horse. The next one has  and .

        5. Drawing on a fragment of brick found in the Great palace. Here are depicted several snakes and the character . A strange ligature, which might also represent a snake with an open mouth () appears next to it.

        an 6. Drawing on a stone block. Here is depicted a human head, perhaps male, representing the sky god Tengri. On the right is shown an animal head and under it a stag. In the lower-left corner has incised another animal with an unfinished body. Several single Runiform characters and ligatures complete the composition. The ligature  (or single character) is incised under the male head.   appear under it and to the left of it . The ligature    is intertwined with the body of the stag and the character  to the body of the other animal. stays between both animals. The group  is incised close to where they are supposed to be the head of the other animal.

        7. Drawing on the inner side of the wall of the pentagonal tower. Here is depicted a hunt of a stag. The scene illustrates a myth usually termed a “Wonderful hunt”. Hunter, his horse and the stag are marked with Runiform characters.  is incised on the body of the hunter. The group   appears in front of the mouth of the horse.  is intertwined with the stag's body and  appears in front of it.

Drawing on a stone block found in the Great palace. The composition contains drawings of a horse and several characters. The group  is incised over the body of the horse. The characters   and  appear one level lower. A comparatively large character is left almost at the centre of the stone  (). , ,, , are attached at different levels to it to form a ligature.  and  appear slightly to the right.   and  are incised one level lower. Then,   come in a straight roe. Under them:  and . The group incised under and left of    is tough to analyse at this point, but it might be a cluster of intertwined characters.

1.              9. Drawing of two Runiform characters found on a stone inside one of the towers of North gates.

10. A drawing of a bull’s head, found on a stone at North gates. The Runiform characters ,  and  are incised here.

1.              11. A drawing of a bull’s head found near the other bull’s head. The character  appears here. 

A drawing on a stone with dimensions 120x50 sm. from the Eastern gates. At the centre of the composition is incised a human body. The rest of the objects are not recognisable. It is tough to distinguish between Runiform characters and animals or other objects. Thus, the large sign drawn over the face of the man appears to be identical to the character with the meaning “moon” . Of course,  this might be a symbolic representation of the moon, a Runiform character or both? The other large sign  appears as a representation of a snake. Do we deal with a myth in which a snakelike dragon tries to swallow the moon, and a hero saves it? It is hard to say; the drawing is too symbolic. The first goop of characters appears in the upper left corner:  ,  ,  , and . The characters  , , ,  and  continue over the head of the man. Furthermore,  and  are intertwined with the large  .  and  occupy the lower left corner.

  o        13.  Several Runiform characters run vertically. They are incised on a stone at the Eastern gates.

        14. A drawing on a stone from the ruins of a church near Shumen castle. In the middle of the stone’s surface is depicted a church. On both sides are added two tall spears, which perhaps carry flags. Four characters are incised on the church roof (,,  and ). Right of them:   and . 

15. A drawing on a stone from the inner side of the pentagonal tower. Here is depicted the scene of the "Wonderful hunt". The hunter holds an arkan, a tool still used by nomads of Central Asia for catching animals. The group of characters  is incised behind the hunter. The order of characters is perhaps the following:     . Runiform characters  ,  and  are intertwined in a ligature over the head of the hunter. Characters   and  are incised behind the second horseman and   over the stag's body. The drawing is the first of three scenes incised on three consecutive stones. They could be part of a single storyline.

        16. This is the second drawing from the pentagonal tower. Here is depicted a scene of a fight between three horsemen. There are two additional horses without a rider. Perhaps, the protagonist of the story is the fighter incised in the middle. He holds a long spear, but in front of his horse are also drawn a battle axe, a spear and a bow. Those must be the weapons at his disposal. There are only a few Runiform characters added to this scene. Three of them are incised above the head of the central figure: , and . is engraved next to the horse that stood left of him and   under his horse.

 

    17. This is the last drawing of the series from the pentagonal tower. Here is depicted a warrior who triumphs near the body of his enemy. The soul of the dead warrior is shown above. Inscriptions here are centred around the image of the soul. The first group of three characters ,  and  is followed by a miniature version of .  comes next and then . Another slightly bigger   appears near the head of the spirit. The characters  ,  and are incised in front of one of the horses depicted on the right side of the spirit.   and  appear between the horse and the spirit.  , ,  and  are intertwined vertically inside the body of the spirit and then   and  next to them. 

Skorpil divided signs by the material on which they were incised. To this classification were added signs accompanying drawings and thus formed here presented comparative tables. Without going into detailed analyse is clear that the large number of signs accompanying drawings have no matches among the “single” signs. Perhaps one of the reasons for this is the difference in writing style. Single signs have strait geometric forms, while the characters within the drawings sometimes are cursive to follow the drawings' lines and be part of the whole graphic composition.

1. Characters incised on stone. 2. Characters incised on ceramics.
3. Extra characters. 4. Characters from drawings.

The number of signs published by the first archaeological excavations at Pliska is 170. This number is too large for an alphabet, in which letters typically range from 24 to 100. Syllabaries, however, use several hundred symbols and logographies thousands. Thus, the English alphabet has 26 letters, the Japanese syllabary hiragana 48 characters and the Chinese script over 3000 characters. Linear B has 87 syllabic signs and over 100 ideographic signs in its repertoire. But even an English text can contain more extensive graphic content than expected. Imagine that a 20th-century English text must be decoded by someone who doesn’t know it. There might be 26 lower and upper cases, numerals and symbols like ?, $, + and >. However, back at the end of the 19th century, the dilemma was: masonry and property signs versus letters of an alphabet.