The Pliska Rosette is a seven-pointed

bronze Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc) and sometimes non-metals (such as phosphorus) or metalloid ...

rosette found in 1961 in

Pliska Pliska ( , ) was the first capital of the First Bulgarian Empire during the Middle Ages and is now List of cities and towns in Bulgaria, a small town in Shumen Province, on the Ludogorie plateau of the Danubian Plain (Bulgaria), Danubian Plain, 20 ...

, the medieval capital of

Bulgaria Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern portion of the Balkans directly south of the Danube river and west of the Black Sea. Bulgaria is bordered by Greece and Turkey t ...

. It is dated by archeologists to the 7th-9th century. It is in the shape of a seven-pointed

star A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by Self-gravitation, self-gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night sk ...

and 38 mm in diameter. It is inscribed with Proto-Bulgar signs''Bulgar runic-like signs have also been found in clearly Christian contexts, such as the monasteries of Murfatlar (Constanţa district, Romania) and Ravna (Varna district, Bulgaria), as well as on the above-mentioned bronze rosette from Pliska. Some believe the script to be genuinely Bulgar one, although it is rather heterogeneous and about a third of the signs can be recognized in runic-like inscriptions of the so-called Orkhon-Yenisei type.'' For more see: “The” Other Europe in the Middle Ages: Avars, Bulgars, Khazars and Cumans; Volume 2, with editors Florin Curta and Roman Kovalev; BRILL, 2008, {{ISBN, 9004163891, p. 191. of the Murfatlar type. Each ray is inscribed with two signs and an IYI symbol can be seen on the back.

Modern use

Representations of the medallion's design are often used (along with the symbol IYI and first letter from the

glagolitic alphabet The Glagolitic script ( , , ''glagolitsa'') is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed that it was created in the 9th century for the purpose of translating liturgical texts into Old Church Slavonic by Saints Cyril and Methodi ...

- ) by patriotic movements in Bulgaria. It is also used as the logo of bTV's documentary series '' Bulgarite (Българите)''.

In Popular Culture

The Rosette features in the film In the Name of the King 3: The Last Mission by director

Uwe Boll Uwe Boll (; born 22 June 1965) is a German filmmaker. He came to prominence during the 2000s for his adaptations of video game franchises. Released theatrically, the films were critical and commercial failures; his Alone in the Dark (2005 film), ...

. It's tattooed on the arm of Hazen Kaine played by

Dominic Purcell Dominic Haakon Myrtvedt PurcellO'Connor, B,Break Out". '' Men's Fitness''. December/January 2007 Issue; retrieved 18 December 2006. (born 17 February 1970) is an Australian actor. He is best known as Lincoln Burrows in ''Prison Break'' (2005� ...

and has an important role in the plot of the film.

References

* “The Bronze Rosette from Pliska: On Decoding the Runic Inscriptions in Bulgaria.” in Byzantino-Slavica. LVI (1995): 547-555 by Pavel Georgiev *Juha Janhunen, Volker Rybatzki, "Writing in the Altaic world", in: ''Proceedings of the 41st Annual Meeting of the Permanent International Altaistic Conference'', p. 270.

External links

Ст. Ваклинов. – Формиране на старобългарската култура VI-XI век, София, 1977 г., стр. 154. (in Bulgarian)

M. Sidorov, E. Kelevedzhiev. An approach to dating the Pliska rozette.
Medieval history of Bulgaria Proto-Bulgar inscriptions Pliska