A mysterious tablet with an unknown 13th-14th-century script is on display at the Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania Museum. No one knows what it means or where it came from. LRT TV journalist Virginijus Savukynas reports.
The plaque was found twenty years ago while exploring Vilnius castles. Archaeologists were using a metal detector to scout the location where some of the earliest wooden structures were located.
Expecting to find no more than a simple axe, instead, they discovered something else entirely – a rectangular strip of metal with strange engravings. Such scripts have surfaced in Lithuania for the first time.
Nineteen centimetres long, four centimetres wide and almost half a centimetre thick, the metal tablet was nailed to a wooden base.
“We tried to find a logical explanation for the markings: on the sides of the tablet, the beginning and the end were marked with crosses, as if they were marking the beginning and the end of the text,” said Gintautas Striška, head of the Archaeology and Architecture Department at the Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania Museum in Vilnius.
“The text is clearly composed of several lines. The top line seems to be written in two ways – signs and letters, and the bottom line has several more lines with various inscriptions,” he added.
“At the time, we thought that part of the text may have been written in ancient Greek. With the help of linguists, we saw that part of it could be translated as 'Algirdas Basileus' – that is, 'King Algirdas',” said Striška.
After a while, however, the archaeologists abandoned their fruitless search.
“The letters only resemble Greek letters, and a person who carved them may have missed something or combined several letters into one, making deciphering the record difficult,” he added.
The lead tablet may refer to Grand Duke Algirdas, who ruled Lithuania from 1345 to 1377. Basileus, according to Striška, is a Byzantine designation for the emperor, but Algirdas did not have such a title.
In a letter written to the Patriarch of Constantinople in 1370, however, he titled himself Basileus. It was an attempt to show that he was a sovereign ruler on par with the Byzantine Emperor.
“Therefore, such an inscription on the tablet is entirely plausible,” said Striška.“But the small plaque hides more secrets: when the restoration of the find began, it turned out that the reverse side of the plaque also had a writing.”
According to the archaeologist, several words resemble a name. There is a better preserved two-line inscription, where the incised letters can be read as Marem Byoyb. Next to it, several other entries may also mean names.
The mysterious inscription was probably written by several people. On the top are carefully engraved symbols and capital letters, and on the bottom are smaller and slightly different-looking letters hand-carved in soft metal.
It is also possible that the inscriptions on the plate are engraved in several languages, making it difficult to read.
Now, the researchers have turned to visitors and researchers to present their ideas on how to read this 13th-14th-century text.
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