Zur ostgermanischen Inschrift der Lanzenspitze von Kowel (Ukraine)

Abstract The East Germanic inscription on the spearhead of Kowel is proposed to read tilaries , with early forms of the runes t and e . Then this is the earliest attestation of the loan of the Latin suffix -ārius by a Germanic language and an attestation of an East Germanic form older than the Biblical Gothic -areis . As a designation for a spear this is more plausible than a second part -rids or -riþs ‘rider’. The closed e of Kowel looks like an archaic Greek eta and may be indeed derived from it.