Friday, July 12, 2013

Bulgar Calendar (revisited)

Always go back to the primary source.

I took a look at the Uvarov Transcript text of the Nominalia of the Bulgar Kings, and found a couple of interesting discrepancies between it and the translation I used in my last post.

To me, it looks like there is a king named Tvirem between Tervel and Sevar, who reigned for 28 years, and his year was dvanšehtem.  It's confusing, perhaps, because tvirem is a part of many of the year names, but it really does seem pretty clear.  Check it out:

Тервен. -к~а. лето. род ему Дуло. а лет ему текучитем.
твирем. ~(ки). лет. род ему Дуло. а род ему дваншехтем.
Севаръ. ~(еl). лет. род ему Дуло. а лет ему тохалтом.

I redid the list from the original:

Avitohol ruled 300 years from the year dilom tvirem
Irnik ruled 150 years from the year dilom tverim
Gostun ruled 2 years from the year dohs vtirem
Kurt ruled 60 years from the year šegor večem
Bezmer ruled 3 years from the year šegor vem
Asparuh ruled 61 years from the year vereni alem
Tervel ruled 21 years from the year tekučitem
Tvirem ruled 28 years from the year dvanšehtem
Sevar ruled 15 years from the year tohaltom
Kormisosh ruled 17 years from the year šegor tvirim
Vinekh ruled 7 years from the year imaše goralem
Telets ruled 3 years from the year somor altem
Umor ruled 40 days from the year dilom toutom

It seems like a huge coincidence that imaše goralem could also be parsed ima šegor alem.

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