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Description: | By Elisabeth Okasha, University College CorkDescriptionThe object is complete. It is a circular silver disc of diameter 27-30 mm and thickness < 1 mm. Although described as a 'brooch' there is now no sign of any fitting or fastening. The disc is complete and largely undamaged although there is some discolouring on both face and back. The back of the disc is plain but contains some scratches.The face of the disc contains a central, equal-armed cross; it has a circle in the middle containing a pellet and each arm meets the circular margin on a tri-partite base. The margin is formed by two concentric circles, inside which is incised the text. In design, the face of the disc resembles quite closely some of the coins issued by Edward the Confessor (ruled 1042 to 1066), those containing a so-called voided cross with terminal lunettes. However some coins issued by other eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon rulers, such as Aethelraed (ruled 978-1016) and Cnut (ruled 1016 to 1035), are also similar.The textThe text is primary, that is, the disc was clearly intended from inception to contain a text. The text is incised right around the disc, inside the margins, with the letters facing inwards. The letters are c. 5 mm in height and are entirely legible. Most of the letters touch one or other margin and some touch both. The script used is that known as Anglo-Saxon Capitals, with the common use of the Old English letter wynn for W.Both instances of the letter G are unusual in shape and both lack a top cross-bar. It might be that the top cross-bar is subsumed into the upper margin, although this is clearly not the case with the three forms of E and the two forms of F. Some near parallels to the unusual shape can be found. For example, the sun-dial stone from Kirkdale in Yorkshire (Okasha 1971, 87-8 and fig.) has some instances of a similar shaped G, as does the Paris portable altar (Okasha 1983, 95-6 and figs). However a form of G without a distinct top cross-bar is interesting in that it is entirely unparalleled amongst Anglo-Saxon inscriptions.The text reads:+ W V L F G Y F E M E A H A G H I R EDivided into words, the text reads: + wulfgyfe me ah ag hire.The language is Old English and the text is probably to be translated as '+ Wulfgyfu owns me; owns (me) for her'.The first part of this is a standard owner formula, preceded by a cross. Initial crosses are very common in all Anglo-Saxon inscriptions (Okasha 2011b, 1-22). Maker and owner formulae are also well-attested, both in Old English and in Latin, especially on small portable objects. There are more than twelve other inscribed texts, many on finger-rings, that contain the Old English phrase me ah or mec ah. (See Okasha 1994, 76-7 for nine of these).The name Wulfgyfu is a recorded Old English female name (Okasha 2011a, 53, 70), where the second element can be spelt with either y or i, as -gyfu or -gifu. However the spelling -e of the ending in the nominative case is unusual in an Old English (as opposed to a Latin) text. In fact, some of the Domesday Book examples suggest that names in -gifu, -gyfu may not be exclusively female (see for example Feilitzen 1937, 264, liber homo). Certainly the uncompounded name Gife, from the same root, Old English gifu, occurs as the name of a (presumably male) moneyer (Redin 1919, 122).The Old English word ag or ah (both spellings are well recorded) means 'owns' in the 1st and 3rd person singular (that is, 'I own' or 'he/she owns'). The word hire is the dative or genitive singular of the word for 'she', hence 'for/to her' or 'of her; hers'. The verb agan 'to own, to possess' is recorded elsewhere with a dative pronoun following, hence the translation here 'owns (me) for her', although the syntax is unusual. A less likely alternative is that the second instance of ag is for age, a rare word for 'property', hence 'her property'. In either case, he last two words of the text are apparently repeating the meaning of the first part in a different form of words.These last two words are presumably to be understood as being suitable to fill the rest of the space on the disc. A somewhat similar situation occurs on a ninth-century gold ring from Bodsham, Kent. Its text reads: + Garmund mec ah im, where the first part means 'Garmund owns me', followed by two extraneous letters which are probably either decorative or to fill up space or both (Okasha 1971, no 13, p. 55 and fig).It is clear that the spelling, the morphology and the syntax of the text on the Hinckley disc differ from the standard Old English of many manuscript texts, but such differences are not unusual in inscribed texts. There is no linguistic evidence for dating the text, beyond the fact that it is likely to be pre-Conquest or from very shortly afterwards. Similarly, there is no epigraphic evidence for more closely dating the Anglo-Saxon capitals. The disc can be tentatively dated to the eleventh-century on account of the similarities to some eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon coins.ReferencesFeilitzen 1937: O. von Feilitzen, The Pre-Conquest Personal Names of Domesday Book (Uppsala)Okasha 1971: E. Okasha, Hand-list of Anglo-Saxon Non-runic Inscriptions (CUP)Okasha 1983: E. Okasha, 'A supplement to Hand-List of Anglo-Saxon Non-Runic Inscriptions', Anglo-Saxon England 11, 83-118Okasha 1994: E. Okasha, 'The Commissioners, Makers and Owners of Anglo-Saxon Inscriptions', AS Studies Arch. Hist. 7, 71-7Okasha 2011a: E. Okasha, Women's Names in Old English (Ashgate)Okasha 2011b: E. Okasha, 'Crosses in Inscriptions', Nottingham Medieval Studies 55, 1-22Redin 1919: M. Redin, Studies on Uncompounded Personal Names in Old English (Uppsala)It measures 27.09mm in diameter, 0.78mm thick and weighs 2.1 grams.
Original Image | Publisher: | http://finds.org.uk | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Identifier: | http://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/r... | Go to resource |
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