The Valun tablet () is an 11th-century bilingual (Old Croatian and

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

) and digraphic (

Glagolitic 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 ...

and

) tablet, originally serving the role of a gravestone, found at the graveyard in Valun on the island of

Cres Cres is an Adriatic island in Croatia. It is one of the northern islands in the Kvarner Gulf and can be reached via ferry from Rijeka, Krk island or from the Istrian peninsula (line Brestova-Porozina). With an area of , Cres has the same si ...

Croatia Croatia, officially the Republic of Croatia, is a country in Central Europe, Central and Southeast Europe, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. It borders Slovenia to the northwest, Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia and Herze ...

. It records that under the tablet three generations of one 11th-century Valun family rest in peace: the grandmother, her son and grandson (named ''Teha'', ''Bratohna'' and ''Juna''). Today, the Valun tablet is embedded in the wall of Saint Mary in Valun. Its bilinguality is important evidence of the coexistence of two ethnic and linguistic elements: old Romance and newly arrived Croatian.

The tablet

The Valun tablet is a natural tablet, unprocessed by a carver, of a type that can commonly be found on

karst Karst () is a topography formed from the dissolution of soluble carbonate rocks such as limestone and Dolomite (rock), dolomite. It is characterized by features like poljes above and drainage systems with sinkholes and caves underground. Ther ...

ic territory and employed by peasants for e.g. tiling the ground. According to Fučić it originally served as the marker of a shallowly dug grave at the church of Saint Mark in Bućevo above the present-day village of Valun on the island of

The text

The tablet is equipped with a bilingual inscription: one in Croatian, carved in an older, rounded Glagolitic, and a Latin inscription, carved with Caroline. The Latin text can be easily read: :TECHNA ET FILIUS EIUS BRATOHNA :ET IUNNA NEPUS EIUS It's evident that the grave of 3 generations is in question, carrying old Croatian baptismal names. These are the grandmother ''Těha'', her son ''Bratohna'' and her grandson ''Juna''. On the Glagolitic inscription, carrying the Old Croatian text, the names TĚHA and JUNA can easily be read, but BRATOHNA is missing. In the middle of the inscription 8 letters are found, two of which look unknown to Fučić, so he read the sequence as: The unknown letter (6) is according to Fučić old Glagolitic 'I', with a duplicated horizontal line separating the upper element from the lower. As for the unknown letter (7), the diagonal line in the eye of the letter N (14) in the word ''JUNA'' has led Fučić as a lead to the diagonal line in the letter (7), and notice that a carver has made an obvious mistake, carving at the wrong place a following

semivowel In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel, glide or semiconsonant is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary, rather than as the nucleus of a syllable. Examples of semivowels in English are ''y ...

. Now, after the word TĚHA word SINЪ "son" can be read, which matches to FILIUS "son" from the Latin text—and in the remaining group of letters VЪKЪ one should assume contracted NU in order to read VЪNUKЪ "grandson", in order to match the word from Latin text. The Glagolitic inscription of the Valun tablet is thus:

Dating

Latin inscription in Caroline can date to 9th, 10th and 11th century. Glagolitic inscription is of markedly rounded Glagolitic. The types of semivowels, triangular Ě, V with semicircular joint, K with long lateral line—all unambiguously point to the 11th century.

Notes

Bibliography

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External links

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Valun tablet
- an excerpt from Branko Fučić's book ''Terra incognita'', Kršćanska sadašnjost, Zagreb, 1997 *
Istra - Istria - Turistički vodič
{{Glagolitic topics Glagolitic inscriptions 11th century in Croatia Old Croatian inscriptions Medieval inscriptions in Latin 11th-century inscriptions Multilingual texts Tourist attractions in Primorje-Gorski Kotar County Croatian Glagolitic texts Archaeological discoveries in Croatia