Artificial Uncial: Abbreviations

ARTIFICIAL UNCIAL: ABBREVIATIONS.

These are mostly nomina sacra.
DNS stands for dominus, ‘Lord’. The Anglo-Saxon gloss translates this as dryhten. There is almost a full range of grammatical cases:
	dns (lines 4 & 7) for dominus in the Nominative;
	dni (line 18) for domini in the Genitive, ‘of the Lord’;
	dno (line 3) for domino in the Dative, ‘to the Lord’;
DS stands for Deus, 'God'.
	DO (line13) stands for deo, Deus, ‘God’, in the Dative, so ‘to God’: as it says in the Anglo-Saxon gloss, Gode.
	You may not have seen DI (line12) lurking in the right-hand margin of line 12. This stands for dei, ‘of God’, in the Genitive. Here it is combined with NI, for nostri, meaning ‘our’. This also runs through all the grammatical cases: NR for noster, masculine singular nominative; NM for nostrum, masculine singular accusative, and so on. More usually the abbreviation has an R in it: so NRM for nostrum, NRI for nostri, and so on.
Another very common abbreviation is SCS, for sanctus, ‘holy’. This abbreviation also runs through all the grammatical cases:
	SCM, for sanctum, ‘holy’. The Anglo-Saxon gloss says haligae. SCS, for sanctus, SCI, for sancti, SCO, for sancto, and so on.

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