Ogham, Orthostat 28, West Tomb, Knowth

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Both the eastern and western tomb at Knowth contain graffiti dating from the early medieval period: there are potentially sixteen legible names in insular Latin script and five examples of reformed oghams (previously known as ‘scholastic’, see four of which can plausibly be interpreted as proper names.

Orthostat 28 (Western tomb) has both an insular inscription:
BREC ois (majuscule BREC at top left and minuscule ois at bottom left)

and a seemingly equivalent ogham inscription (I-MEA-012), to the right on the orthostat, reading downwards on a stemline: ᚁᚏᚓᚊᚁᚑᚔᚄ (Transliteration: BREQBOIS)

The name appears to be a compound of brec ‘speckled’ and possibly bos ‘palm of hand’. Alternatively, if we read it as Brec Óis (without the second B), the second element could be the epithet úais ‘noble, exalted’ (Byrne et al., 2008).

Capture: Canon EOS 5D MkIV, 50mm lens Processing: Reality Capture v1.4 Modelling: 3DS Max 2024 Texture: Synthetic stone texture