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Pre-Christian Slavic writing
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Pre-Christian Slavic writing
Pre-Christian Slavic writing is a hypothesized writing system that may have been used by the Slavs prior to Christianization and the introduction of the Glagolitic and Cyrillic alphabets. No extant evidence of pre-Christian Slavic writing exists, but early Slavic forms of writing or proto-writing may have been mentioned in several early medieval sources.
Before, the Slavs did not have their own books, but counted and divined by means of strokes and incisions, being pagan. Having become Christian, they had to make do with the use of Roman and Greek letters without order [unsystematically], but how can one write [Slavic] well with Greek letters... and thus it was for many years.
—
Hereby the Philosopher [Cyril] found Gospel and Prayer Book written in Rus characters, and found a man who spoke that language. And he talked to the man and understood the meaning of that language by matching the differences in the vowels and consonant with those in his own tongue. And by praying to God, he could soon read in and speak that language. And many were amazed by that, glorifying God.
— Vita Cyrilli, Chapter III
In 1897, Russian archeologist Vasily Gorodtsov unearthed a small clay pot 15 cm high located in a Slavic burial site in the village of Alekanovo, Ryazan Oblast, Russia. The pot had a group of undeciphered characters that were dated by Gorodtsov to 10th–11th century AD, called the Alekanovo inscription. A year later Gorodtsov discovered similar characters on sherds, also in Alekanovo.
In 1949, a Kerch amphora was found in Gnezdovo in Smolensk Oblast, Russia, containing what may be the earliest inscription in Old East Slavic. The amphora was found in the grave of a Scandinavian merchant who traded with the Orient. The excavator read the one-word inscription as Cyrillic "гороухща" (goruhšča), inferring that it designated mustard that was kept there. This explanation has not been universally accepted and the inscription seems to be open to different interpretations. Other scholars have read the apparent "хщ" letter combination as an "N", resulting in a transcription as "гороуна" which could be either Cyrillic or Greek and which might represent an Arabic name Hārūn with possessive suffix (Härün's amphora). The inscription is dated to the early 10th century, which suggests a hitherto unsuspected popularity of the Cyrillic script in pre-Christian Rus'. Different sources prove that the Slavic and Norse population of Rus' had trade connections to the Muslim and Asian worlds.
In 2021 new archaeological evidence of an early instance of writing among a Slavic population was published. In 2017 a cattle bone, dated 585–640 AD, with runes of the Germanic Elder Futhark was discovered in a Prague culture settlement near Břeclav in the Czech Republic.
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Pre-Christian Slavic writing
Pre-Christian Slavic writing is a hypothesized writing system that may have been used by the Slavs prior to Christianization and the introduction of the Glagolitic and Cyrillic alphabets. No extant evidence of pre-Christian Slavic writing exists, but early Slavic forms of writing or proto-writing may have been mentioned in several early medieval sources.
Before, the Slavs did not have their own books, but counted and divined by means of strokes and incisions, being pagan. Having become Christian, they had to make do with the use of Roman and Greek letters without order [unsystematically], but how can one write [Slavic] well with Greek letters... and thus it was for many years.
—
Hereby the Philosopher [Cyril] found Gospel and Prayer Book written in Rus characters, and found a man who spoke that language. And he talked to the man and understood the meaning of that language by matching the differences in the vowels and consonant with those in his own tongue. And by praying to God, he could soon read in and speak that language. And many were amazed by that, glorifying God.
— Vita Cyrilli, Chapter III
In 1897, Russian archeologist Vasily Gorodtsov unearthed a small clay pot 15 cm high located in a Slavic burial site in the village of Alekanovo, Ryazan Oblast, Russia. The pot had a group of undeciphered characters that were dated by Gorodtsov to 10th–11th century AD, called the Alekanovo inscription. A year later Gorodtsov discovered similar characters on sherds, also in Alekanovo.
In 1949, a Kerch amphora was found in Gnezdovo in Smolensk Oblast, Russia, containing what may be the earliest inscription in Old East Slavic. The amphora was found in the grave of a Scandinavian merchant who traded with the Orient. The excavator read the one-word inscription as Cyrillic "гороухща" (goruhšča), inferring that it designated mustard that was kept there. This explanation has not been universally accepted and the inscription seems to be open to different interpretations. Other scholars have read the apparent "хщ" letter combination as an "N", resulting in a transcription as "гороуна" which could be either Cyrillic or Greek and which might represent an Arabic name Hārūn with possessive suffix (Härün's amphora). The inscription is dated to the early 10th century, which suggests a hitherto unsuspected popularity of the Cyrillic script in pre-Christian Rus'. Different sources prove that the Slavic and Norse population of Rus' had trade connections to the Muslim and Asian worlds.
In 2021 new archaeological evidence of an early instance of writing among a Slavic population was published. In 2017 a cattle bone, dated 585–640 AD, with runes of the Germanic Elder Futhark was discovered in a Prague culture settlement near Břeclav in the Czech Republic.