Freitag, 13. April 2012

New runic inscription from Thüringen

A new runic inscription on a comb of deer antler from the 3rd century AD has been discovered in the Germanic village of Frienstedt. It bears the inscription kaba (with a Wenderune k), apparently 'comb'. Interesting is both the early date of the inscription and the ending -a. More information (with pictures) can be found here and here. A good picture is this one (source: http://images.derstandard.at/2012/04/13/1334143495098.jpg):

7 Kommentare:

  1. So do we now have an attestation of an early West Germanic nom. sg. in -a?

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    1. when the reading is correct (Jonas Nordby just suggested jara ...[Wolfang Beck was also sceptical about the b-rune and suggested kara]), this seems to be a possibility (though you know, I doubt this scenario [or is there a difference in the development between heavy and light stems?]) ...

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  2. The only possible difference between light and heavy stems would be earlier syncope in heavy stems. Now *kamba- is a heavy stem ...
    By the way, are there any early Runic inscriptions where someone simply wrote "blade" on a blade etc.?

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    1. "...any early Runic inscriptions where someone simply wrote "blade" on a blade etc.?" A a splendid common-sense question! Yes, mutatis mutandis, but pictorially-logographically not alphabetically, which is how the predecessors of rune-writers "wrote". The COMB -PECTEN - KTEIS is emblazoned pictorially all over the world on many symbolically loaded objects. "Keine Wortforschung ohne Sachforschung" - Schuchardt & Meringer. -- Why not KAMBA? The "Comb" = Woman, the Yoni. No Freud here, but sometimes a cigar IS more than a cigar. The comb story is the coastal scavenger's Adam & Eve version. The comb-motif is worked into northern cape-fasteners, whimsically named "Spectacle Fibulae", and feature prominently on blades, axes, as well as Bronze age women's pendant amulets in the shape of a dancing women with comb-like inguinal area. See Dechelette Manuel... Look in the lower right of the ships inscribed upon a rock at Lokeberg (Bohuslan, Sweden). See Malkiel 1968 "Essays on Linguistic Themes" re Latin pecten: comb, scallop, female pubes". And, re Greek Kteis (kten-) with the same semantic spectrun, see Henry C. Coote 1869 "The Scallop Shell, considered as a Symbol of Initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries". Take a good look at the underside of a cowrie or gaze into your your next scallop . Countless shellfish (living) are endlessly catalogued in conchology/malacology, molluscaologic catalogues as Venus, Cypraea and the like.

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  3. yes, of course ... my fault (thought: kaba).

    No, not that I know of; the comb-inscriptions are the only ones (cp. the Frisian kombu), I think (exception [perhaps]: the old english raihan-inscription, written on a deer-bone [but of course it doesn't read: bone]).

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  4. An n-stem *kamban- seems of course also possible in light of the other old one-word-inscriptions that contain personal names or nicknames (cp. harja, swarta etc.) - cp. oicl. Gullinkambi.

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