Runica Bulgarica

  In recent descriptions of Danube-Bulgar language was pointed out that what survived  from it was a "lexicon", a merely list of words(1). In fact, two major monuments of this language, Nominalia of Bulgarian princes and Preslav inscription does not possess any grammatical futures(2). What does this mean? Language have two main properties, vocabulary and grammar. Without grammar a language must be considered dead. When did this happened? Preslav inscription cannot be dated precisely, but Nominalia of Bulgarian princes might have been created shortly after 766 when was 40 days rule of Khan Umor. Did then Slavic(3) completely replaced Danube-Bulgar by that time?  In this article will be presented and analysed four inscriptions from Early Medieval Bulgaria that give answer to this question. All of them come from same area: three of them was found in Silistra and the fourth in vicinity of nearby village Garvan.      First three inscriptions, foun...

      The reason for this article to come to existence is a monogram written with "runiform" signs that might belonged to a medieval Bulgarian ruler. During search of other names written in Bulgarian Sacred script, it appeared that  it was a rule to spell names with 2 or 3 signs.       In 2006 a large set of table pottery was found at a pit in the latest known underground passage in the Bulgarian medieval capital Pliska. From the pieces archaeologists recovered 33 vessels completely and 20 partially, or total of 53 vessels ( Grigorov, V. 2013) . On some of the vessels are incised "runiform" signs: Set of pottery found in Pliska,  (Grigorov, V. 2013, p. 124)        The most frequent of the them is IYI, a logogram bearing meaning of "holly, good"(Ovcharov, N. 2014). Perhaps those pitchers and amphorae were used in drinking at ruler's palace, part of a religious ritual. In fact in Old-Bulgarian literature surviv...

      The ultimate goal of this study should be a deciphering of Raven inscriptions. Unfortunately at this stage such an aim is unrealistic. At the moment it is not even possible to determine nature of signs: holographs, alphabetic, or mixture of both. The fact that the script was found at Raven gives an opportunity to date it between establishing of city of Raven before 852 AD and beginning of spread of Glagolitic alphabet in Bulgaria around 886. There is largely undated corpus of purely logographic inscriptions as Horn inscription, Byala inscription, Shudikovo inscriptions, and so on (1). They have to be more archaic, as, at least theoretically, alphabetic signs must have been created out of logographic characters. The inscription of the Rosette of Pliska and most of Murfatlar inscriptions are alphabetic (2). Cyrillic inscriptions date Murfatlar monastic complex to first half of 10th century (Popkonstantinov, K. 1986, p. 102) when Dobruja's stone wall war erected, so th...