Valun tablet
Encyclopedia
Valun
Valun is a village in Croatia....
on the island of Cres
Cres
Cres is an Adriatic island in Croatia. It is one of the northern island in the Kvarner Gulf and can be reached via ferry from the island Krk or from the Istrian peninsula ....
. 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 karstKARST
Kilometer-square Area Radio Synthesis Telescope is a Chinese telescope project to which FAST is a forerunner. KARST is a set of large spherical reflectors on karst landforms, which are bowlshaped limestone sinkholes named after the Kras region in Slovenia and Northern Italy. It will consist of...
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
Valun
Valun is a village in Croatia....
on the island of Cres
Cres
Cres is an Adriatic island in Croatia. It is one of the northern island in the Kvarner Gulf and can be reached via ferry from the island Krk or from the Istrian peninsula ....
.
The text
Carolingian minuscule
Carolingian or Caroline minuscule is a script developed as a writing standard in Europe so that the Roman alphabet could be easily recognized by the literate class from one region to another. It was used in Charlemagne's empire between approximately 800 and 1200...
.
The Latin text can be easily read:
- TECHNA ET FILIUS EIUS BRATOHNA
- ET IUNNA NEPUS EIUS
It 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 BRATHONA is missing. In the middle of the inscription 8 letters are found, two of which look unknown to Fučuć, so he read the sequence as:
| S | ? | ? | Ъ | V | Ъ | K | Ъ |
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
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. 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 VЪNЪKU "grandson", in order to match the word from Latin text.
The Glagolitic inscription of the Valun tablet is thus:
| T | Ě | H | A | S | I | N | Ъ | V | Ъ | (NU) | K | Ъ | JU | N | A | |||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
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 pointing to the 11th century.