The Silchester Ogham stone is a pillar stone discovered at the Roman town on

Calleva Atrebatum Calleva Atrebatum ("Calleva of the Atrebates") was an Iron Age oppidum, the capital of the Atrebates tribe. It then became a walled town in the Roman province of Britannia, at a major crossroads of the roads of southern Britain. The modern vi ...

Silchester Silchester is a village and civil parish about north of Basingstoke in Hampshire. It is adjacent to the county boundary with Berkshire and about south-west of Reading. Silchester is most notable for the archaeological site and Roman town of ...

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Berkshire to the north, Surrey and West Sussex to the east, the Isle of Wight across the Solent to the south, ...

during excavations in 1893. Thus far it remains the only one of its kind found in England, and the only

ogham Ogham (also ogam and ogom, , Modern Irish: ; , later ) is an Early Medieval alphabet used primarily to write the early Irish language (in the "orthodox" inscriptions, 4th to 6th centuries AD), and later the Old Irish language ( scholastic ...

inscription in England east of

Cornwall Cornwall (; or ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is also one of the Celtic nations and the homeland of the Cornish people. The county is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, ...

and

Devon Devon ( ; historically also known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel to the north, Somerset and Dorset to the east, the English Channel to the south, and Cornwall to the west ...

. The stone is held in a storage facility of

Reading Museum Reading Museum (run by the Reading Museum Service) is a museum of the history of the town of Reading, in the English county of Berkshire, and the surrounding area. It is accommodated within Reading Town Hall, and contains galleries describing ...

Reading, Berkshire Reading ( ) is a town and borough in Berkshire, England, and the county town of Berkshire. It is the United Kingdom's largest town, with a combined population of 355,596. Most of Reading built-up area, its built-up area lies within the Borough ...

Background

The pillar stone was found upside down some five to six feet beneath the surface, apparently at the bottom of a former well. A white metal or pewter vessel "of peculiar form" lay underneath, crushed by it. Further investigation revealed an

inscription upon the pillar. According to Amanda Clarke and

Michael Fulford Michael Gordon Fulford, (born October 1948) is a British archaeologist and academic, specialising in the British Iron Age, Roman Britain and landscape archaeology. He has been Professor of Archaeology at the University of Reading since 1993. Ea ...

of the

University of Reading The University of Reading is a public research university in Reading, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1892 as the University Extension College, Reading, an extension college of Christchurch College, Oxford, and became University College, ...

, Rhys noted that the sandstone marker was "rudely carved into what seems to me to be a phallic form", though the upper part was broken off and missing. What was left "may be described as the frustum of a cone, below which the stone narrows greatly, then widens into a moulded base." The inscription is in two lines beginning at the widest part of the frustum at its base."Excavations on the site of the Roman city of Silchester, Hants in 1893", ''Archaeologia'' 54, January 1894, 199 - 238

Dating

The pewter vessel, when reconstructed, turned out to be "a simple, biconical flagon similar to a few other examples found in southern Britain which can be dated broadly to the fourth and no earlier than the late third century." The most recent version of the translation on the stone is " he somethingof Tebicatus, son of the tribe of N”. The missing word may be "memorial" or, less probably, "land", if the stone were a territorial marker rather than a grave marker. J. A. Baird argues that both archaeological and linguistic evidence suggest that the stone belongs to "the earliest phases of the ogham script", which emerges with contact between late Roman Latin and Old Irish.Baird, J. A., "Dura Dererta: The Death and Afterlife of Dura Europos", in ''Vrbes Extinctae: Archaeologies of Abandoned Classical Towns'', Ashgate, 2012, p.340. On the basis of existing evidence, Reading University says that the "inscription has been interpreted as an epitaph and it has been variously dated to the fifth and sixth centuries". Baird says that it "could well date to the late fourth or fifth century". This would make it "one of the earliest ogham stones anywhere."

Significance

The inscription was created during

Sub-Roman Britain Sub-Roman Britain, also called post-Roman Britain or Dark Age Britain, is the period of late antiquity in Great Britain between the end of Roman rule and the founding of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. The term was originally used to describe archae ...

, a period of intense cross-cultural contact between Britain and Ireland at the time of the Anglo-Saxon invasions. Most ogham inscriptions are present in the British strongholds of Cornwall, Devon and Wales. The Silchester inscription is in Hampshire — east of Devon — and is presumed to be the work of Irish settlers occupying land further east than other known Irish migrants. The tradition of the expulsion of the

Déisi The ''Déisi'' were a social class in Ireland between the ancient and early medieval period. The various peoples listed under the heading ''déis'' shared a similar status in Gaelic Ireland, and had little or no actual kinship, though they were ...

and their migration from Ireland may be related to this pattern of settlement and British-Irish cultural integration.

3D scan

The ogham stone was 3D scanned in 2022. It is accessible on

Sketchfab Sketchfab is a 3D asset website used to publish, share, discover, buy and sell 3D model, 3D, Virtual reality, VR and Augmented reality, AR content. It provides a viewer based on the WebGL and WebXR technologies that allows users to display 3D m ...

References

External links

*
The Silchester ogham stone: a reconsideration
' (subscription required) by Michael Fulford and Bruce Sellwood
The enigma of Silchester’s Ogham stone
by Gerry Palmer
Reading Museum Collection Highlights

* Michael Fulford, Mark Handley and Amanda Clarke
"An Early Date For Ogham: The Silchester Ogham Stone Rehabilitated"
''Medieval Archaeology'', 44 (2000), 1-23 (Online copy at Archeology Data Service; Last accessed 26 March 2021) {{DEFAULTSORT:Silchester Ogham stone 4th-century inscriptions 5th-century inscriptions 6th-century inscriptions Ogham inscriptions Stones Alphabets Roman Britain Sub-Roman Britain