Valun Tablet - The Text

The Text

The tablet is equipped with a bilingual inscription: one in the Croatian language, 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:

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

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