Celt (tool)

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Prehistoric tool

title: "Celt (tool)" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["lithics", "types-of-archaeological-artefact"] description: "Prehistoric tool" topic_path: "philosophy" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celt_(tool)" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Prehistoric tool ::

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/Olmec_celts_from_Met.jpg" caption="Celts from Transylvania"] ::

In archaeology, a celt is a long, thin, prehistoric, stone or bronze tool similar to an adze, hoe, or axe.

A shoe-last celt was a polished stone tool used during the early European Neolithic for felling trees and woodworking.

Etymology

The term "celt" seems to have come about from a copyist's error in many medieval manuscript copies of Job 19:24 in the Latin Vulgate Bible, which became enshrined in the authoritative Sixto-Clementine printed edition of 1592. Where all earlier versions (the Codex Amiatinus, for example) have vel certe (the Latin for 'but surely'), the Sixto-Clementine has vel celte. The Hebrew has לעד (lā‘aḏ) at this point, which means 'forever'. The editors of the Oxford English Dictionary "[incline] to the belief that celtis was a phantom word", simply a misspelling of certe. However, some scholars over the years have treated celtis as a real Latin word.

From the context of Job 19:24 ("Oh, that my words were inscribed with an iron tool on lead, or engraved in rock forever!"), the Latin word celte was assumed to be some kind of ancient chisel. Eighteenth-century antiquarians, such as , adopted the word for the stone and bronze tools they were finding at prehistoric sites; the OED suggests that a "fancied etymological connexion" with the prehistoric Celts assisted its passage into common use.

References

References

  1. Martin Burns. "Re: the word Celt.".
  2. Edgar C. S. Gibson. (1899). "The Book of Job (Westminster Commentaries)". Methuen & Co..
  3. M. L. W. Laistner. (1925-01-01). "Floscvli Philoxenei [Flosculi Philoxenei]". The Classical Quarterly.

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lithicstypes-of-archaeological-artefact