Professional paper
ANCIENT INSCRIPTIONS IN SOME CROATIAN CAVES
Vlado Božić
Abstract
One proof of ancient visitors to and research of caves, especially those which are easy to approach and therefore very often visited, are the inscriptions left there. Those new inscriptions, it is believed, ruin the caves, while those ancient, especially if the years are inscribed, today represent an important document and speleologists record them and try to protect them. The oldest such inscriptions were found in the area of Senj, in Vlaška Peć cave, written in Bosančica (a type of cyrillic alphabet), originally from 1600 and 1650. After this, there is an inscription in Druška Peć cave on Mount Učka from 1637 written in Glagolitic; more inscriptions in Latin alphabet from the Kraljičina Špilja (the Queen’s Cave) on the island of Vis written in 1643, 1641, 1665 and later in 1815 and later; from Gospodska Špilja (the Lord’s Cave) on the source of the Cetina from 1775 and 1776 and many others from the 19th and 20th centuries. The inscriptions from the 19th centuries are numerous and the most important are: from the cave Samograd near Perušić from 1835 and 1888, from the Rače cave on the island of Lastovo from 1848, from Donja Baraćeva cave near Rakovica written in 1892 and more inscriptions from the end of the 19th century near the cave Biserujka on the island of Krk. Amongst the inscriptions from the 20th century, other valuable inscriptions are those in Špiljareva or Dezerterska cave on Crnopuc from 1915, the inscription from 1917 from the Metešićeva cave near Slunj and inscription from 1934 from the cave Veternica near Zagreb.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
17705
URI
Publication date:
29.12.2006.
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