Exhibit of the month – November 2024

Brick with an Old Bulgarian inscription

Veliki Preslav, Selishte locality, the so-called Mostich Monastery (2007)

L. 33,5 cm; W. 18,5 cm; thickness 4,8 cm, 10th c.

NAIM-BAS

Rectangular brick with incised Cyriliic inscription of three lines:

СЕ ЕСТЬ СVNКЕЛ / МАТЕР Н СРДОБОЛѪ / ПОГРЕБЛЪ

“The synkellos buried his mother and his kin”.

In 1952, S. Stanchev (Vaklinov) and V. Ivanova Mavrodinova discovered the funerary inscription of Ichirgu-Boil Mostich in a church, known in the scientific literature as an ossuary, part of the monastery of Ichirgu-Boil Mostich (second half of the 10th century), in the eastern end of the Selishte locality. Mostich’s mortal remains were reburied in a secondary grave, placed in a small chapel next to the northern wall of the church and marked with a tombstone with an extraordinary inscription.

In 2007, a reburial chamber next to the northern wall of the church portico was discovered. A man and a woman aged 25-30 years were reburied in the western compartment, and there are bone remains of 5 children, while the eastern compartment contains a secondarily buried bone remains of a woman aged about 25 years. A vertically placed brick with incised Cyrillic inscription indicating that the synkel had buried his mother and his relatives there was found near the northern wall of this compartment.

The discovered epigraphic and sphragistic material (lead stamp of Tsar Simeon and 8 stamps of Georgi Synkel) narrates the story of an aristocratic family whose representative synkel Georgi, personal secretary of the Bulgarian patriarch, reconstructed his hereditary estate in Veliki Preslav as a family monastery in the 10th century. This holy cloister held the buried mortal remains of his mother and his relatives.

photo K. Popkonstantinov

Bibliography:

Попконстантинов, Костова 2013: К. Попконстантинов, Р. Костова. Манастирът на Георги, синкел български в Преслав: Историята на една аристократична фамилия от Х в. – Преслав, т. 7. Велико Търново, 2013, 44-63.

Попконстантинов 2019: К. Попоконстантинов. Епиграфски паметници от Велики Преслав (893–971 г.). В: С. Горянова, Г. Грозданова, А. Аладжов, К. Бояджиев (ред.), До портите на княжеския двор. Съкровища от Велики Преслав. Национален археологически институт с музей – София Каталози, том XV, 122-123.