Pre-Christian Slavic writing

Pre-Christian Slavic writing is a hypothesized writing system that may have been used by the Slavs prior to Christianization and the introduction of the Glagolitic and Cyrillic alphabets. No extant evidence of pre-Christian Slavic writing exists, but early Slavic forms of writing or proto-writing may have been mentioned in several early medieval sources.

Evidence from early historiography[]

The 9th-century Bulgarian^[1] writer Chernorizets Hrabar, in his work An Account of Letters (Church Slavonic: О писмєньхъ, O pismenĭhŭ), briefly mentions that, before Christianization, Slavs used a system he had dubbed "strokes and incisions" or "tallies and sketches" in some translations (Old Church Slavonic: чръты и рѣзы, črŭty i rězy). He also provided information critical to Slavonic palaeography with his book.

Before, the Slavs did not have their own books, but count and divined by means of strokes and incisions, being pagan. Having become Christian, they had to make do with the use of Roman and Greek letters without order [unsystematically], but how can one write [Slavic] well with Greek letters...^{[note 1]} and thus it was for many years.

— ^[2]

Another contemporaneous source, Thietmar of Merseburg, describing a temple on the island of Rügen, a Slavic pagan stronghold, remarked that the idols there had their names carved out on them ("singulis nominibus insculptis," Chronicon 6:23).^[3]

Ahmad ibn Fadlan describes the manners and customs of the Rus, who arrived on a business trip in Volga Bulgaria. After a ritual ship burial of their dead tribesmen, Rus left an inscription on the tomb:

Then they constructed in the place where had been the ship which they had drawn up out of the river something like a small round hill, in the middle of which they erected a great post of birch wood, on which they wrote the name of the man and the name of the Rus king and they departed.

— ^[4]

However, Ibn Fadlan doesn't leave many clues about the ethnic origin of the people he described (see Rus).

Evidence from archaeology[]

Inscription on Kerch amphora with word гороухща (goruhšča).

• In 1949, a Kerch amphora was found from Gnezdovo in Smolensk Oblast with the earliest inscription in Old East Slavic.^[5] The amphora was found in grave of scandinavian merchant trading with Orient.^[6] The excavator has inferred that the word гороухща (goruhšča), inscribed on the pot in Cyrillic letters, designates mustard that was kept there.^[7] This explanation has not been universally accepted and the inscription seems to be open to different interpretations.^[8] One of the interpretations says, that the inscription could be an Arabic name Hārūn with possessive suffix (Härün's amphora).^[6] The dating of the inscription to the early-10th century^[9] suggests a hitherto unsuspected popularity of the Cyrillic script in pre-Christian Rus. Different sources prove that the area of Russia in ancient times, its Slavic and Norse population was connected to the Muslim and Asian worlds.^[10]
• Of the three Runic inscriptions found in ancient Rus, only one, from Ladoga, predates the Gnezdovo inscription.^{[citation needed]}
• 

  The bone with elder futhark inscription found in the early slavic settlement in Lány (near Břeclav) in the Czech Republic.
  In 2021 new archaeologic evidence of early Slav use of writing was published. In 2017 a cattle bone, dated 585–640 AD, with runes of older futhark was discovered in a Prague culture settlement at area of Lány (near Břeclav) in the Czech Republic. This find attest to a direct interaction between the Slavic and Germanic ethnolinguistic groups, may have been incised by people of Germanic origin that remained in the region after the departure of the Lombards or the runes may have been engraved by a Slav. If runic knowledge was transferred from Germanic peoples to Slavs, it must have happened in Central Europe as judged by the rune shapes or it may have persisted in the region as a result of population continuity between Lombards and Slavs.^[11]

Evidence against[]

In the Vita Cyrilli, Rastislav, the duke of Moravia, sent an embassy to Constantinople asking Emperor Michael III to send learned men to the Slavs of Great Moravia, who being already baptised, wished to have the liturgy in their own language, and not Latin and Greek. Emperor called for Constantine and asked him if he would do this task, even though being in poor health. Constantine replied that he would gladly travel to Great Moravia and teach them, as long as the Slavs had their own alphabet to write their own language in, to which the Emperor replied that not even his grandfather and father and let alone he could find any evidence of such an alphabet. Constantine was distraught, and was worried that if he invents an alphabet for them he'll be labelled a heretic.

Събравъ же съборъ Цѣсар̑ь призъва Кѡнстантїна Фїлософа, и сътвори и слꙑшати рѣчь сьѭ. И рече: Вѣмь тѧ трѹдьна сѫшта, Фїлософе, нъ потрѣба ѥстъ тебѣ тамо ити; сеѩ бо рѣчи не можетъ инъ никътоже исправити ꙗкоже тꙑ. Отъвѣшта же Фїлософъ: И трѹдьнъ сꙑ и больн̑ь тѣломь, съ радостьѭ идѫ тамо, аште имѣѭтъ бѹкъви въ ѩзꙑкъ свой. И рече Цѣсар̑ь къ нѥмѹ: Дѣдъ мой и отьць и ини мъноѕи искавъше того, не сѫтъ того обрѣли, то како азъ могѫ то обрѣсти? Фїлософъ же рече: То къто можетъ на водѫ бесѣдѫ напьсати и ѥретїчьско имѧ обрѣсти?

— Vita Cyrilli, Chapter XIV

According to Alexey Karpov, this text is a later insertion in the chronicle, and its authenticity is questioned.^[12]

Footnotes[]

See also[]

• Proto-writing
• Christianization of the Slavs

References[]