Aboba 1899 - the Beginning (part 1)

 

In the spring of 1899, an expedition of the Russian archaeological institute at Constantinople started the first archaeological excavations near the village of Aboba (later renamed Pliska). Russian and Bulgarian scientists supposed that the place of incredible ancient ruins near the village was the first  Bulgarian Pagan capital, Pliska. The remains are impressive. The ancient town covers an area of 24 square km. enclosed with a rectangular earthen rampart and moat. At its centre was erected a stone castle built with large rectangular blocks of white limestone, the joints filled with red mortar made of crushed bricks. During this first excavation, the stone castle's walls, towers and gates, as some of the administrative buildings and churches of a palace complex, were surveyed. Also, north-eastwards of the castle were discovered an enormous basilica. The expedition found that some stones, bricks, roof tiles and ceramic pieces are engraved characters of the unknown writing system. As the discovered characters were usually incised separately or in small groups of 2 or 3, they have been termed “signs”.

The map of the site and its surroundings.

Karel Skorpil categorises the "signs" according to the material on which they are incised. Distinguished are two large groups: characters incised on stone and characters incised on ceramic. The former category was also divided: signs marked on the inner surface of the rock and signs inscribed on its face. Masonry signs were everywhere: on city walls, towers and gates, on stones of administrative buildings and churches and on the paving of the floors. Skorpil suggests that signs incised on the inner surface of the stone blocks must be made by the mason (or at least before they are installed into the wall). They must have been used either as a numerical mark to determine the position of the stone in the construction or as signs marking the individual batches of stone blocks. The second large subcategory, signs incised on the surface of the stone blocks are found chiefly on city walls, towers, gates, columns and floor slabs. They rarely appear on the walls of residential buildings. According to Skorpil, some of them are made by the masons, but the rest must be incised on the surface of the stones after building the walls. He notices that several signs inscribed on columns are inserted between the letters of Greek inscriptions by the engraver. A small distinct group of characters are inscribed on the surface of standing stones called by the people of surrounding villages “devtashlar” (dev-demon, tash-stone).

"Signs", incised on stone blocks.

Signs are also found in ceramic production. They were incised with a sharp tool before the firing of the production. Signed are bricks and tiles but not ceramic pipes (which later will be proved wrong). Skorpil noticed that some ceramic signs are identical to masonry signs, but some are found only in ceramics. He suggests that signs incised on ceramic are potters’ trademarks. Also, signed ceramic floor tiles were found only in residential buildings. 

Signs, incised on bricks and roof tiles.

Skorpil also makes categorisation the signs by their appearance. He distinguishes 11 groups of characters made out of straight lines. Here belong category 1, a simple straight line; category 3- a cross-like sign; category 5- an arrow-like sign and category 8 – a triangle.  Another two groups are made of characters composed of oval lines- a sign similar to the letter Е and a bow and arrow sign.

The categorisation of signs (later termed as Proto-Bulgarian signs) made by Karel Skorpil will prove its endurance and will be used by Bulgarian archaeologists until nowadays.

Analise of the meaning of the signs was made by F. Uspenskiy. He compared the signs from Pliska with signs made by builders of Knossos and other cities of Crete, and Troy. He concludes that although the large time gap of 2500-3000 years, the signs are strikingly similar: “Isn’t it worthy of special attention the fact that most of the signs on the stones that were included in the construction of the palace of the semi-mythical Minos we find in Bulgaria on hewn stones that were included in the construction of the palace in which Krum and Omurtag lived”? Uspenski believes that the characters found in Pliska are not part of the writing system but masonry signs. They were used as trademarks or installation marks. However, Uspenski assumed that some of them might have had ritual characteristics.

Additional characters.

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 signs 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 characters can barely make a word, and of course, it is hard to be assumed as an inscription.