[RNLD] Mystery ring

[Paul Sutherland]

Interesting. This isn't my field at all but I just wanted to point out that if you turn it 90 degrees clockwise, 2 and 6 look like the Rune 'ash'. However the curves aren't consistent with this, nor do any of the others look familiar.

Best,
Paul Sutherland



________________________________
From: Piers Kelly <kelly at shh.mpg.de>
Sent: 06 May 2016 13:25
To: r-n-l-d
Cc: sven.van.haelst at hotmail.com
Subject: [RNLD] Mystery ring

Dear RNLD,
Another mystery in the spirit of Bruce Birch's message in a bottle of last year.

Sven Van Haelst of Maaseik in Belgium is an archeologist by training who discovered this ring in his backyard. He would like help identifying the script used in the inscription.

[cid:ii_invo6f6a0_15485f06c5c2ce3b]
[A pdf of this image is attached so you can zoom in and take a better look]

>From corridor discussions we have arrived at the following:

  *   It may be a kind of decorative script since there seems to be quite a lot of repetition, but if the signs are purely decorative, why are they on the inside of the ring?
  *   3, 5 and 7 are possibly the same character, and this might be modified with a diacritic in 9
  *   4 might be a diacritic modification of 1, by the same mechanism
  *   If it's not decorative and is representing language, there are higher odds that it is an alphabet or alphasyllabary, given the rate of repetition (albeit in a tiny sample) as opposed to a syllabary
  *   Not sure 1 is a character at all, people often use this sign as decorations/fillers inside rings.
  *   This might be some alphabetic rendition of a name, or perhaps a private cipher (possibly recent)

Thanks!
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