OGHAMIC SCRIPT - Stone with ogham script - Ardmore (Ireland), Cathedral.
OGHAMIC, SCRIPT. - From Ogma, Ogmu, Ogmios, the Celtic god of eloquence and writing, whom Lucian (Hercules, 1; ca. 175 A.D.) describes dressed in a lion's skin, with a club, whence his being linked to Hercules, carrying men hung by chains from his tongue, as though suspended by the charm of the word.
In the Irish mythological cycle Ogma is a hero who fights against the Fomorians, the first dark rulers of the island. To him is attributed the so-called ogamic writing, of which the Irish Book of Ballymote (15th century), a conglomeration of diverse materials, contains a series of notices that have facilitated the interpretation of the surviving examples of this writing (ca. 360 inscriptions). It consists of a series of lines (grouped from 1 to 5) and arranged straight or oblique, above, below or in the middle of the corner line of the stone. Shorter straight lines or dots indicate the vowels.
Most of the ogamic stones belong to the pagan times of the island and come especially from the southern counties, Kerry, Cork and Waterford, but some are later than the apostolate of St. Patrick. They are of funerary content and give in the possessive genitive the name of the deceased and the degree of kinship: son, grandfather, grandson of...; rarely names of clan or rank.
Bibliography7 worksH. D'Arbois de Jubainville, Le cycle mytholog. irlandais (Cours de littér. celtique, 2). Paris 1884, p. 306; D. Hyde, A literary history of
BIBL.: H. D'Arbois de Jubainville, Le cycle mytholog. irlandais (Cours de littér. celtique, 2). Paris 1884, p. 306; D. Hyde, A literary history of Ireland, London 1901; E. Hull, A Text Book of Irish Liter., I, Dublin 1906, p. 247; Th. J. Westropp, Irish ethnogr. collect. (Guide to the Collect. of Irish antiq., 5), Dublin 1911, p. 9; F. Koepp, Ogmios, Bemerkungen zur gallischen Kunst, in Bonner Jahrbücher, 125 (1919), p. 58 ff.; W. Krause, Religion der Kelten (Bilderatlas zur Religionsgesch., 17), Leipzig 1933, p. x1; J. G. Février, Hist. de l'Ecriture, Paris 1948, pp. 517-21.
Turchi, Nicola. “Ogamica, scrittura.” In Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. IX, coll. 81–82. Città del Vaticano: Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1952. https://azioneromana.com/article/ogamica-scrittura.
MLA
Turchi, Nicola. “Ogamica, scrittura.” Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. IX, Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1952, coll. 81–82. Azione Romana, https://azioneromana.com/article/ogamica-scrittura.
BibTeX
@incollection{ec9_ogamica_scrittura,
author = {Turchi, Nicola},
title = {Ogamica, scrittura},
booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica},
volume = {IX},
pages = {81--82},
note = {Cited by column},
publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico},
address = {Città del Vaticano},
year = {1952},
url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/ogamica-scrittura}
}
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