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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.</div>
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Best,</div>
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Paul Sutherland</div>
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<div id="divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" color="#000000" style="font-size:11pt"><b>From:</b> Piers Kelly <kelly@shh.mpg.de><br>
<b>Sent:</b> 06 May 2016 13:25<br>
<b>To:</b> r-n-l-d<br>
<b>Cc:</b> sven.van.haelst@hotmail.com<br>
<b>Subject:</b> [RNLD] Mystery ring</font>
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<div dir="ltr"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0); font-size:12.8px">Dear RNLD,</span>
<div style="color:rgb(0,0,0); font-size:12.8px">Another mystery in the spirit of Bruce Birch's message in a bottle of last year.</div>
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<div style="color:rgb(0,0,0); font-size:12.8px">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. </div>
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<div style="color:rgb(0,0,0); font-size:12.8px"><img width="472" height="334" class="" tabindex="0" style="-webkit-user-select: none;" src="cid:ii_invo6f6a0_15485f06c5c2ce3b"><br>
[A pdf of this image is attached so you can zoom in and take a better look]<br>
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<div style="color:rgb(0,0,0); font-size:12.8px">From corridor discussions we have arrived at the following:</div>
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<li style="margin-left:15px">It may be a kind of decorative script since there seems to be quite a lot of repetition, but <span style="font-size:12.8px">if the signs are purely decorative, why are they on the inside of the ring?</span><br>
</li><li style="margin-left:15px">3, 5 and 7 are possibly the same character, and this might be modified with a diacritic in 9<br>
</li><li style="margin-left:15px">4 might be a diacritic modification of 1, by the same mechanism<br>
</li><li style="margin-left:15px">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<br>
</li><li style="margin-left:15px"><span style="font-size:12.8px">Not sure 1 is a character at all, people often use this sign as decorations/fillers inside rings.</span><br>
</li><li style="margin-left:15px"><span style="font-size:12.8px">This might be some alphabetic rendition of a name, or perhaps a private cipher (possibly recent)</span></li></ul>
<div><span style="font-size:12.8px">Thanks! </span></div>
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