Can anybody decipher the inscriptions below? The image was sent in by a visitor to Omniglot and comes from an old Turkish book. More images can be seen here.
The script on the book is definitely some kind of Greek, but the language (if any) isn’t. Might it be Coptic perhaps? Some of the letters, such as the mirrored ‘S’ shape, lead me to that suggestion. Coptic would fit with the decoration, which seems to be Christian in nature.
The script in the pottery inscriptions is of another kind altogether. It looks a bit like palaeo-Hebrew / Phoenician to me; I can distinguish what looks like shin, lamed, mem etc.
bronzMarch 3rd, 2010 at 4:49 pm
The script in the second set of photos (pottery, or wood?) looks almost completely Armenian to me, but I may be wrong.
Wow! I think it Bezant text. A smiling man face in arc. Its sidebar looks like arch Haghia Sophia, and Man like an “avatar” of Constantine *? if mirror text, that squint of eyes of the face indicates and read from below, like go on stairway, that two bottom lines I have not analyzed, but further – ПАНДора, ЗоКоН МаГ ( Pandora Law Magi)
The writing on the round thing (bracelet?) in the gallery looks a lot like Tocharian.
Too hard to see the pictures. The least I can say, it might have a Greek connection, relating to the Phi letter that I see here and there.
Looks Greek to me.
The script on the book is definitely some kind of Greek, but the language (if any) isn’t. Might it be Coptic perhaps? Some of the letters, such as the mirrored ‘S’ shape, lead me to that suggestion. Coptic would fit with the decoration, which seems to be Christian in nature.
The script in the pottery inscriptions is of another kind altogether. It looks a bit like palaeo-Hebrew / Phoenician to me; I can distinguish what looks like shin, lamed, mem etc.
The script in the second set of photos (pottery, or wood?) looks almost completely Armenian to me, but I may be wrong.
@ bronz:
Armenian! Yes, now that you mention it: it does look very much like that.
It is most likely Greek. I can see the following:
ΓΑΛΑΗΟΚΟ…
…ΟΑΝΑ…
ΤΡΗΛΦΚΤ…
ΑΟΑΦΑΝΤ…
I’m pretty sure that’s Coptic. The “mirrored s” is the letter hori, which doesn’t appear in Greek.
Wow! I think it Bezant text. A smiling man face in arc. Its sidebar looks like arch Haghia Sophia, and Man like an “avatar” of Constantine *? if mirror text, that squint of eyes of the face indicates and read from below, like go on stairway, that two bottom lines I have not analyzed, but further – ПАНДора, ЗоКоН МаГ ( Pandora Law Magi)