The Ratu Kidul of the southern sea — and Croatia’s Baska tablet

On the island of Krk in Croatia sits the Baska tablet, an eleventh-century slab carved in Glagolitic, the oldest alphabet of the Slavs, and one of the first documents to name a Croatian king in the Croatian language. The Glagolitic script itself was invented in the 860s by Saints Cyril and Methodius, and this stone is a birth certificate for a written culture. PUBLIC (a copy stands in the church at Jurandvor; the original is in Zagreb).