Linear A script from the Eastern Rhodopes?

(May 2005)
Review of the articles from:
www.novinite.com  (in English),
and
www.journey.bg-1, journey.bg-2,
news.bg, segabg.com (in Bulgarian)
 
The English-language novinite.com and other Bulgarian newspapers in their editions from May 18-20th 2005 report that "German scholars from the University of Heidelberg" have confirmed that the two fragments discovered by the archaeologist N. Ovcharov in the Eastern Rhodopes mountains, southern Bulgaria, are written in the Linear A script. (The news was initially broken by Ovcharov to the Bulgarian media in August 2004.)

The first is a stone tablet from Perperek - a rock sanctuary which had functioned since the late Bronze Age. The marks on the tablet, found in 1982 during the first excavations at Perperek, were recognised as (probably) important only in 2003, during a drawing up an inventory of the archaeological collection of the Kurdzhali's Museum of history.


 

Perperek:
 

Web-sites on Perperek: perperikon.bg
More pictures from Perperek: ndt.netplusdb.bg, segabg.com, oshte.info

The second is a clay fragment from a late Bronze age (XV-XIV cc. BC) found by tourists in the cave Utroba ('womb') near the village of Nenkovo. The two symbols were drawn on a clay medallion which was stuck to the wall of a hand-made clay vessel before it was fired up.


A piece of ceramics from the same period (XV c BC) with a five-point star
(V.K. It is unclear whether this pottery piece is from Perperek or from the cave Utroba).

The cave Utroba is 25 km NW of the town of Kurdzhali, in a region rich with remains of Thracian sanctuaries and rock niches:
 

Web-sites: journey.bg  (in Bulgarian)


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