The Sitovo inscription is an inscription in

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 ...

that has yet to be satisfactorily translated.

Discovery

The inscription was discovered in 1928, on the wall of a

rock shelter A rock shelter (also rockhouse, crepuscular cave, bluff shelter, or abri) is a shallow cave-like opening at the base of a bluff or cliff. In contrast to solutional caves (karst), which are often many miles long or wide, rock shelters are alm ...

near the village of Sitovo, close to

Plovdiv Plovdiv (, ) is the List of cities and towns in Bulgaria, second-largest city in Bulgaria, 144 km (93 miles) southeast of the capital Sofia. It had a population of 490,983 and 675,000 in the greater metropolitan area. Plovdiv is a cultural hub ...

. It was first documented by amateur archaeologist Alexander Peev. The inscription is in two lines which are long. The written signs are tall. The inscription has been tentatively dated to between 300 and 100 BCE.Vassileva, Maya (1999) A Few Phrygian Onomastic Notes. Epigraphica Anatolica : Zeitschrift für Epigraphik und historische Geographie Anatoliens (31). pp. 175-180. ISSN 0174-6545 In 1943, Peev was executed by firing squad on suspicion of sending a coded message to the Soviet Union. He had sent an example of the text to Soviet archaeologists, in the hope that they could decipher its meaning. The inscription was published in 1950 by Z. R. Morfova. Peev was posthumously awarded the

Order of Lenin The Order of Lenin (, ) was an award named after Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the October Revolution. It was established by the Central Executive Committee on 6 April 1930. The order was the highest civilian decoration bestowed by the Soviet ...

for his resistance efforts against the Bulgarian government.

Possible translations

Amateurs and professionals have attempted to translate the inscription. It has been variously identified as local ancient language,

Celtic Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to: Language and ethnicity *pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia **Celts (modern) *Celtic languages **Proto-Celtic language *Celtic music *Celtic nations Sports Foot ...

Slavic Slavic, Slav or Slavonic may refer to: Peoples * Slavic peoples, an ethno-linguistic group living in Europe and Asia ** East Slavic peoples, eastern group of Slavic peoples ** South Slavic peoples, southern group of Slavic peoples ** West Slav ...

, and Phrygian. ic/ref>

References

{{Reflist

Discovery

Possible translations

See also

References

Further reading