Buckquoy spindle-whorl

Drawing of the Ogham inscription

The Buckquoy spindle-whorl is an Ogham-inscribed spindle-whorl dating from the Early Middle Ages, probably the 8th century, which was found in 1970 in Buckquoy, Birsay, Orkney, Scotland.^[1] Made of sandy limestone, it is about 36 mm in diameter and 10 mm thick.^[2] It is the only known spindle-whorl with an Ogham inscription.

The inscription was once used as proof that the Pictish language was not Indo-European, being variously read as:

E(s/n)DDACTA(n/lv)IM(v/lb)
(e/)(s/n/)DDACTANIMV
(e/)TMIQAVSALL(e/q)^[3]

However, in 1995 historian Katherine Forsyth reading

ENDDACTANIM(f/lb)

proposed that the inscription was a standard Old Irish ogham benedictory message, Benddact anim L. meaning "a blessing on the soul of L.".^[4] The stone from which the whorl was made, and on which the inscription was written, is likely to have originated in Orkney.^[5]

Notes[]

^ Ritchie (1970)
^ Forsyth (1995)
^ Jackson (1977) Jackson states that "[a]ll of the readings are wholly unintelligible and cannot be Celtic," and that "[w]e must be content to write off this inscription as unintelligible, like all the other 'Pictish' inscriptions."
^ Forsyth (1995), p. 49.
^ Collins (1977)

References[]

Collins, G.H. (1995), "Chalk spindle-whorls from Buckquoy, Orkney", Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 125: 222–223
Jackson, Kenneth (1977), "The ogam inscription on the spindle whorl from Buckquoy, Orkney", Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 108: 221–222