Conquer Online

yaa1y7b5

The Rodney Stone has a cross carved on one sandstone face and a series of Druidic symbols on the other, typical of Class II Pictish stones. Just visible, badly eroded Ogham letters have been incised along the vertical edges. The Christian message we understand but, as with other such stones, scholars have for centuries struggled to interpret the non or pre-Christian messages.
Above the discs is an ornate animal. It could be a totemic horse, with the long curve from his head representing a flowing mane. There was a horse cult hereabouts, but other carved horses from nearby have always been ridden; also this beast seems too solid to be a kelpie, the Caledonian equine personification of water. The defining tear duct of a deer appears to be present even if the eye is round rather than its usual almond-shaped. To judge from a tiny circle behind his back knees the animal is male, and the stag is also a known totem of the more ancient Picts, particularly appropriate in an area originally forested.
At the top is a pair of fish monsters, face to face with filed teeth gnashing. These are accepted as mythical representations but guesses about their message vary wildly, from approaching war or climatic disaster (floods are common in the plain of Moray), to pestilence or social upheaval. The beautiful ringed cross on the other side might support that. It takes courage and sometimes conflict to desert the beliefs of ancestors for a new faith. Meticulously carved itself,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], the cross’s surrounding quarters are badly eroded,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], or perhaps deliberately defaced, who knows when, and bear two inappropriate upside-down pairs of post mediaeval initials, possibly stonemasons’ marks.
Read on
Brodie Castle, NTS, Three Stages of Architecture
The Maiden Stone, Aberdeenshire, Scotland
Edderton Pictish Stone i
Double discs, for example, are thought to relate to Druid sun worship. They represent sun and moon, light and dark, the turn of seasons and tides. Male and female come into to it, also life and death and, scholars suggest, the demise of someone eminent. Certainly a pair of linked circles cutting across an ornate V-rod, or broken Z-rod as here, indicates chariot wheels slicing through a royal or priestly lifeline. Magicians, it should be remembered, were even more powerful than monarchs in Druidic times. A careful look reveals that this stone may have been two feet longer, because the Z-rod pattern at the bottom has been truncated.
The second level of information is much less certain. Exquisitely incised swirls suggest Celtic Pictish sculpting. Similar designs are found on stone and metalwork from the Iron Age onwards which originate from all over north and west Europe,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], occasionally beyond. The patterning is known to be full of layered meanings, all of these probably familiar to the people of their day. As with mediaeval stained glass windows, the pictograms were used to impart information, to educate and explain, and to dominate the populace by a ruling class or tribe.
This beautiful example, barely six feet tall, stands just inside the entrance to the National Trust for Scotland’s Brodie Castle in northeast Scotland. Almost nothing is known about it except that it was found in 1781 in nearby Dyke graveyard. Since it was propping something else up it was protected from the worst of the weather, which explains its good condition. Re-erected in its present position in memory of Admiral Rodney – or perhaps of Rotteny,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], reputedly the sexton then – it was moved for at least the second time in its existence, for it certainly did not originate in a post mediaeval Protestant place of worship. The carvings confirm that, if little else.
Reasonable Speculation on the Meanings of Symbols
Known Historical Facts
相关的主题文章：

[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]

[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]

[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]