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There are roughly 400 known ogham inscriptions on stone monuments scattered around the Irish Sea, the bulk of them dating to the 5th and 6th centuries. Their language is predominantly Primitive Irish, but a few examples record fragments of the Pictish language. Ogham itself is an Early Medieval form of alphabet or cypher, sometimes known as the "Celtic Tree Alphabet". There are a number of different numbering schemes. The most widespread is CIIC, after R. A. S. Macalister. This covers the inscriptions known by the 1940s. Another numbering scheme is that of the Celtic Inscribed Stones Project, CISP, based on the location of the stones; for example CIIC 1 = CISP INCHA/1. Macalister's (1945) numbers run from 1 to 507, including also Latin and Runic inscriptions, with three additional added in 1949. Ziegler lists 344 Gaelic ogham inscriptions known to Macalister (Ireland and Isle of Man), and seven additional inscriptions discovered later. The inscriptions may be divided into "orthodox" and "scholastic" specimens. "Orthodox" inscriptions date to the Primitive Irish period, and record a name of an individual, either as a cenotaph or tombstone, or documenting land ownership. "Scholastic" inscriptions date from the medieval Old Irish period up to Modern times. The vast bulk of the surviving ogham inscriptions stretch in arc from County Kerry (especially Corcu Duibne) in the south of Ireland across to Dyfed in south Wales. The remainder are mostly in south-eastern Ireland, eastern and northern Scotland, the Isle of Man, and England around the Devon/Cornwall border. The vast majority of the inscriptions consist of personal names, probably of the person commemorated by the monument. ==Orthodox inscriptions== In orthodox inscriptions the script was carved into the edge (''droim'' or ''faobhar'') of the stone, which formed the stemline against which individual characters are cut. The text of these "Orthodox Ogham" inscriptions is read beginning from the bottom left-hand side of a stone, continuing upward along the edge, across the top and down the right-hand side (in the case of long inscriptions). MacManus (1991) lists a total of 382 known Orthodox inscriptions. They are found in most counties of Ireland, concentrated in Southern Ireland: County Kerry (130), Cork (84), Waterford (48), Kilkenny (14), Mayo (9), Kildare (8), Wicklow and Meath (5 each), Carlow (4), Wexford, Limerick, Roscommon (3 each), Antrim, Cavan, Louth, Tipperary (2 each), Armagh, Dublin, Fermanagh, Leitrim, Derry and Tyrone (1 each). Other specimens are known from Wales (ca. 40: Pembrokeshire (16), Breconshire and Carmarthenshire (7 each), Glamorgan (4), Cardiganshire (3), Denbighshire (2), Powys (1), and Caernarvonshire (1)), from England (Cornwall (5) Devon (2), elsewhere (1?)); the Isle of Man (5), and with some doubtful examples from Scotland (2?) 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「ogham inscription」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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