SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The British Museum [has asked] for help deciphering a medieval sword A sword on display at the British Library has an 800-year-old mystery engraved on its blade.
Dating back to between 1250 and 1330 AD, the sword was discovered in the east of England, in the River Witham near Lincoln, in the 19th century. The sword is a particularly fine double-edged steel weapon of English design. It was most likely forged in Germany and belonged to a wealthy man or a knight. The hilt is cross-shaped, which is normal for swords from this period of the Middle Ages, and is heavy enough to have cloven a man's head in twain if swung with sufficient strength.
But the sword, on loan to the library from the British Museum, does have a couple of highly unusual features. Down the centre of the blade, it has two grooves known as fullers, where most blades only have one. On one side, it also bears an inscription:
It's not the presence of the inscription that has researchers nonplussed, but its content: Experts don't know what the inscription means.
"An intriguing feature of this sword is an as yet indecipherable inscription, found along one of its edges and inlaid in gold wire," wrote curator Julian Harrison on the library's blog. "It has been speculated that this is a religious invocation, since the language is unknown."
The River Witham sword is not unique in this. According to archaeologist Marc van Hasselt of Utrecht University and Hastatus Heritage Consultancy in the Netherlands, inscribed swords were "all the rage" in Europe at the turn of the 13th century, and religious invocations would have made sense. He has studied around a dozen such swords. Most notable was a sword found in Alphen aan den Rijn in the Netherlands, likewise bearing an indecipherable inscription, this time on both sides of the blade:
"There is some debate on the language used in the inscriptions. But looking at the other European finds, it seems most likely that this language is Latin. This makes sense in the context of 13th-century Europe, as Latin was the international language of choice (like English is today)," van Hasselt wrote.
"To elaborate, let's compare the River Witham sword to the sword from Alphen: Both start with some sort of invocation. On the River Witham sword, it is NDXOX, possibly standing for Nostrum Dominus (our Lord) or Nomine Domini (name of the Lord) followed by XOX. On the sword from Alphen, the starting letters read BENEDOXO. Quite likely, this reads as Benedicat (A blessing), followed by OXO. Perhaps these letter combinations -- XOX and OXO -- refer to the Holy Trinity. On the sword from Alphen, one letter combination is then repeated three times: MTINIUSCS, which I interpret as Martinius Sanctus -- Saint Martin. Perhaps a saint is being invoked on the River Witham sword as well?"
Most guesses put forth on the blog post also agree with the idea that it could be Latin, with some readers suggesting the letters, or some of the letters, could be acronyms.
If you want to give it a shot, head on over to the British Library's blog post and post your hypothesis in the comments.
If you want to see the sword itself, it's on display as part of the exhibition Magna Carta: Law, Liberty, Legacy at the British Library in London until September 1.
(Score: 4, Informative) by AnonymousCowardNoMore on Tuesday August 11 2015, @07:28PM
X is used as the letter Thorn (pronounced as Kr) and represents Christ (as in XMas).
I think you are confused. Þe letter "x" is not a þorn. Þorn is a letter which is used to denote a (sometimes strictly voiceless) dental fricative in Scandinavian languages and English. It was used in England until þey started importing printing presses from Germany, which lacks þis sound. Latin never used it and it was never pronounced "kr". People reading old texts, unaware of yis, have been known to confuse a handwritten yorn with a "y", leading to such expressions as "ye olde". After xorn fell into disuse, xe use of "th" won out over the alternatives that still show up from time to time. At the time that the sword was made, the Gutenberg press had not been invented yet and the letter thorn had not yet been displaced in English by any of these conventions. Thorn is still used in Iceland.
Similarly, "x" is not pronounced "kr". It is a straightforward transliteration of the Greek letter "χ" ("chi") into the Latin alphabet and as you pointed out, a common abbreviation to this day for "Christ" ("Χριστός" in Greek) although "ch" is the more common transliteration. By coincidence Jesus is also associated with the cross, which is of course what the letters "χ" and "x" literally are. "χ" would have been pronounced a little differently depending on the regional dialect and time period. The voiceless velar fricative which is probably the best choice for it does not exist in English (or Latin, where "x" was pronounced "ks"). The Latin word for cross, "crux", would have been an acceptable pronunciation of "x" in many cases which is as close as I can get to "kr".
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday August 11 2015, @10:52PM
Þorn is a letter which is used to denote a (sometimes strictly voiceless) dental fricative in Scandinavian languages and English.
There is always some AC who has to bring up porn and dental fricatives, isn't there? Wait, what? "Þorn", not "porn"? And an AC no more? Wow, the mystery thickens!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2015, @03:47AM
Original ac here.
Yes you are quite correct. I don't know where I got the bit about thorn. I did mean chi. So that part was incorrect.
Either way X has come to mean Christ and is a common abbreviation for the word, the name and also the pledge. I remember once reading the the reason a signature could be x was that you were making an attestation before christ.
I still think the rest of the translation was accurate.