Secret of Kells – OG(H)AM

Ogham characters in Amhrán na Mara ‘Song of the Sea’; Guest blog by Dr Sabine Ziegler

We are grateful to Dr Sabine Ziegler for contributing a guest blog this month. She is the author of an indispensable introduction to and dictionary of the Irish ogham inscriptions (Ziegler 1994). She is now working at the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften in München, Germany. Sabine writes: Song of the Sea is a 2014… Continue reading Ogham characters in Amhrán na Mara ‘Song of the Sea’; Guest blog by Dr Sabine Ziegler

This stone originally stood as part of the Bryn y Beddau monumental landscape, populated with up to six barrows and two stone circles. In the late fifth or early sixth century, the stone was reused to display a name in two scripts, Roman and Ogham.
Roman-letter: SIMILINI / TOVISACI
‘Similin(i)us Tovisacos’
Ogham: S[I]B[I]L[I]N[I] / [TO]VISACI
‘Sibilin(i)us Tovisacos’
Both inscriptions are simply a name, Si(m/b)ilin(i)us, followed by the title or patronymic Tovisacos, meaning ‘leader’ representing an early form of later Welsh tywysog and Old Irish toísech, Modern Irish Taoiseach. This could reflect a method of communicating identity and authority, a way of legitimising land claims, or perhaps an attempt to relate to myths and leaders important in the land.