Talk:Artognou stone

2007

This stone was only named the Arthur stone due to media hype. The archaeologists involved dismissed any connection to Arthur saying "Although Tintagel is often associated with the mysterious and mythical past, we must dismiss any idea that the name on this stone is in any way to be associated with the legendary and literary figure Arthur. Arthur was only associated with Tintagel through the work of Geoffrey of Monmouth in the twelfth century, six hundred years later. As Professor Thomas states, "All this stone shows in the name ARTOGNOU, is the use of this (Celtic) element". Academic works and English heritage now call it the “Tintagel Castle "Artognou" inscription stone.” ENlish Heritage: Photograph of the Tintagel Castle "Artognou" inscription stone To have this article named the Arthur Stone violates NPOV. Furthermore this name causes confusion with various megaliths round the UK have been known as Arthur’s stone for hundreds of years far longer than the inscription. I am going to rename this article Artognou stone and rewrite it unless someone provides an academic reference proving that Arthur = Artognou. --Machenphile 20:52, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

I'd support a rewrite, but it should only be renamed if "Artognou stone" is a more common name than "Arthur stone". The reason this stone is notable is because of its connections, tenuous as they may be, to the Arthur legend.--Cúchullain ^t/c 22:48, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

"Arthur stone" is how most readers will look for it; as long as it's a redirect no one will be left behind. The article makes clear that the connection with Arthur is tenuous and hopeful. Will Tintagel Castle "Artognou" inscription stone as a title make us all look frightfully knowledgable? --Wetman 11:37, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

If you type in Arthur Stone in google you get 2 refs to this stone and six refs to various megaliths in the first ten hits. To find proper hits on this subject you need to mention Artognou one of the main academic pages on the subject doesn't even mention Arthur at all. What I suggest is we have an Arthur Stone disambugation page here otherwise we have to decide which of the ten odd megaliths called Arthur's Stone is the main one. I would call a new title for this subject Artognou Stone or "Arthur" Stone, Tintagel which indicates it may have nothing to do with a historical Arthur. It appears there is some argument about what part of the inscription reads now as well. Anyway I have started drafting a rewrite and obviously there is a section on the Arthurian connection. --Machenphile 20:01, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good to me, but I think Arthur Stone should be left as a redirect whatever it's titled.--Cúchullain ^t/c 20:17, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Cuchullain. However weak the link between this stone and the legend, surely the link between the megaliths (which would typically date to 4000 years ago or so) and the legend (2500 years later) is even weaker! The typical reader should be able to get to the article through "Arthur stone".

But as long as the subject is open: Unless is it a forgery, Thomas has understated the connection. IMO, it is weak, but it is clearly stronger than Thomas' assertion. Or rather, he has drawn a conclusion (of non-relationship) that is too strong for the data we have been given -- sort of like what agnostics decry about atheists. ;-) For instance, the stone also shows the "right" geographical location. Jmacwiki (talk) 06:09, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

There is no detectable connection between the men mentioned in this inscription and Arthur - it's ludicrous to suggest otherwise. In regards to the location - what evidence do we have that the Arthurian association with Tintagel is anything other than one of Geoffrey of Monmouth's many fanciful inventions? Cagwinn (talk) 16:37, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

What evidence do we have that there was anyone named "Art-" doing anything militarily significant in Britain, in 500, besides Geoffrey? None that I know of. He is completely untrustworthy.

But that only means that you cannot trust anything he says to be accurate. Sorry, but the fact that he said it cannot count as evidence against the hypothesis. And if he makes a specific connection between someone of prominence named "Art-", living about 500 CE, connected with Tintagel, you don't get to claim that GofM's unreliability is evidence against the legend.

It merely means that the legend moves from 1.6% likely to 1.9% [divide by 100 if you like, or make up your own favorite numbers]. But it doesn't move the other way, and you don't get to claim that it doesn't move at all.

If you're really going to claim that the connection of the legend to the stone is (almost) as weak as, say, the connection of the legend to a random piece of iron in a Balkan castle from 900 CE -- i.e., that it doesn't change our information about this legend AT ALL -- then you need to go systematically through GofM's writings to enumerate (a) some huge number of other prominent people's names (non-prominent people don't get inscriptions on stones, and this inscription wasn't discovered on something irrelevant like the face of a sandwich); (b) a large number of relevant decades for all of them; AND (c) a large number of castles they are all connected to, with all of those combinations contributing to this legend.

That would allow you to show that there were a gigantic number of possible combinations, all contributing to the myth, and all equally likely to be discovered on inscriptions.

Only he didn't.

And the legend has filtered the list down to a few names, a few castles, and a few decades. This stone happens to give us the rare combination of a central, prominent name in the story, a central castle to the story, and the right time period.

Lest there be any misunderstanding: I believe the odds are against ANY prominent "Art-" person, military leader or otherwise, who was connected to Tintagel in ANY way, ANY of whose deeds survive to the present day, dating from this time period. (And I'm still surprised that there was apparently ANY prominent "Art-" person connected to Tintagel from this time period. But the stone suggests there was, even though his deeds are almost certainly forgotten and not part of the legend.)

But rules of evidence are rules of evidence. You don't get to be as skeptical after a find like this as you were before. More precisely, the posterior probability is distinctly higher than the prior. So you can't be intellectually honest, if your skepticism is unchanged. Jmacwiki (talk) 21:47, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Going a bit overboard, don't you think? Cagwinn (talk) 23:07, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Not to worry, I generally wear a life jacket. (A Mae West, actually.) Jmacwiki (talk) 05:50, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

All academic sources on the stone reject the supposed Arthur connection. But the fact that such a connection was made is clearly notable, and should be mentioned here, even if it's just mentioned to reject it. Bottom line.--Cúchullain ^t/c 19:44, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

It would help a lot to read their reasoning, not just their conclusions. Jmacwiki (talk) 05:50, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Avus

Why does Thomas translate it as saying "father of a descendant of Coll"? "Avus" in Latin means "grandfather" or "ancestor" (Lewis and Short), which ought to make it "great-grandfather of Coll" or "ancestor of Coll". It is true that there may not have been a lot of people around in the sixth century at the time when their great-grandsons were named, but it could have been a commemorative inscription not implying that the person responsible for whatever building was being recorded was actually still alive at the time. Deipnosophista (talk) 13:50, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

There is another explanation of the "Artognou Stone" - that is a forgery dating from the early 1950s for which I confess I was jointly responsible.

I had spent the Second World War years living in in Tintagel and used to return for the summer holidays every year until I left school. There was a fashion at that time for children to write "Kilroy was here" in all sorts of unlikely places and having been told that there was in fact no evidence at all to link Tintagel Castle with Arthur, a friend and I decided to create some "evidence" ourselves. We carved on a piece of local slate, in schoolboy latin, "Rex Arturus erat hic".

My friend's father, curious to know what mischief we might be up to, came to inspect our handiwork and told us that in fact Arthur would not have put it quite like that. Some time later he came back with a piece of paper on which was written, he told us, in more authentic Dark Age latin. This more convincing statement we proceeded to carve on to a fresh piece of slate. (Incidentally my friend's father, a former RAF Wing Commander, was the curator of King Arthur's Hall at Tintagel, a local tourist attraction devoted to the Arthurian legend which had an extensive library.)

We smuggled our stone past the gatekeeper of the castle in a rucksack and then cast about for somewhere to bury it for later rediscovery. I kept watch whilst my friend used a trowel to bury it and later told me that he had in fact disturbed several pottery shards which would add to its authenticity. Archaeologists had been active on the site at that time so we had high hopes that it would soon be discovered later that summer. However years passed and we both forgot all about it.

When a stone was discovered by Professor Charles Thomas in 1998 and announced to the world I tried for several months to contact my childhood accomplice so that we could break our vow of silence on the issue and confess. My attempts were all in vain - he could either be living abroad or even deceased - so after a year had passed I decided to go public myself and wrote to the Times copied to Professor Thomas only to discover that someone else had already claimed that they had planted the stone. Well maybe there were a number of such stones but I think it highly unlikely that the wording would be similar. My letter was never published and I received no acknowledgement from Prof Thomas. I did however receive a phone call from a BBC researcher but this was never followed up so I assume my story is either not believed or no longer considered to be newsworthy. It is however completely true. I cannot prove that the stone discovered by Professor Thomas is ours but I do wonder if his stone were to be examined for microscopic metallic traces whether it could be shown that the stone was carved with a modern steel scout knife and not an iron age sword.

I also wonder if there any other examples of graffiti dating from this period in England. Although the Romans may have done so I don't believe it was a common practice in the Dark Ages. Gjwilliams (talk) 12:30, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

You have a very active imagination.Cagwinn (talk) 16:46, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Why no picture?

File:Artognou.jpg

Sketch of the Artognou inscription by Cagwinn.

Is this stone's appearance REALLY subject to copyright? There is a purported image on the web, which casts doubt on that. (The copyright on its content obviously expired some centuries ago. ;-) It would be helpful to see highlighting for the important graphical elements, such as Arthnou's and Paterni's names. Jmacwiki (talk) 06:25, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

The stone's appearance (and inscription) are not in themselves copyrightable, but any photograph will be the copyright either of the photographer (or whoever he/she might assign the copyright to), or of the organisation employing the photographer if that situation pertained. Moreover, whoever has custody of the stone may have the right to prevent "unauthorised" photographs being taken of it. Thus there may be no pictures available for use by Wikipedia on the necessary terms. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 07:49, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Good points. Thanks for the explanation. Jmacwiki (talk) 21:38, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Anyone who takes their own picture of the stone has the option of releasing it under a liscence; if anyone did that we could use it. Such an image may exist. I'll add a photo request tag here.--Cúchullain ^t/c 00:05, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

I have just done a sketch of the inscription (see above right) - I traced over a high-res image of the slate using Photoshop. If others think it's OK to use this re-purposed image, I will move this to the article's main page. Cagwinn (talk) 00:33, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Nice, Cagwinn. The issue, I believe, is whether anyone (esp. the stone's custodian) must authorize all such images, and might therefore control the copyright to the underlying picture, even if the photographer has put the photo in the public domain. (See 87.81.230.195's points, above.) Jmacwiki (talk) 20:49, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Cagwinn, I think that unless you yourself took the particular photo that you traced over, or know that the photo is in the public domain, then your image is technically a copyright violation. We can't dance around copyrights by merely fiddling with colours/gradients/textures in photoshop. Does anyone know it's located today? Is it on exhibit where people can take photos of it? If we could pin down if it is in a certain museum, then maybe a Wikipedian might be able to snap a pic of it sometime in the future.--Brianann MacAmhlaidh (talk) 11:52, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, some a**hole busybodies with nothing better to do have flagged and deleted the sketch of the inscription that I created, even though it was totally legal and license-free. Yet another reason why I hate Wikipedia. Cagwinn (talk) 23:44, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm not up on the technicalities of your creation, but why not just revert the deletion? Jmacwiki (talk) 00:58, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Article mis-titled

How does one re-title this article? It is totally improper to call this inscription the "Arthur stone" (this name was only bandied about in the popular press for a short while after the inscriptions discovery was announced). It is now commonly called the "Artognou stone". Cagwinn (talk) 16:55, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

You can move the article with the "move" button, to the right of the "history" and "Watchlist" tabs.--Cúchullain ^t/c 17:03, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

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"Arthur stone"

Per MOS:LEAD, "... significant information should not appear in the lead if it is not covered in the remainder of the article." There is no mention of the name "Arthur stone" in the article text. If reliable sources can be found giving "Arthur stone" as an alternative term, they should be added to the text. We can then consider whether those mentions are notable enough to be also reported in the lead. Ghmyrtle (talk) 10:33, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

Direct sources are now in the article, but it still leaves the issue of the lead covering material not in the article body (which extends beyond the "Arthur Stone" bit). I'll do a little work today.--Cúchullain ^t/c 14:18, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

I've repeated "Arthur stone" in the relevant section and moved the refs for that name to there, but one is dubious and overall, the article seems under-referenced. Maybe all that's missing in that respect is a representative media article from what was reportedly quite a lot of coverage, and then the Blogspot-derived page can go. Yngvadottir (talk) 16:50, 29 November 2016 (UTC)