In the 1960s, blog reader Werner Frank acquired a number of lamps bearing strange inscriptions. Can a reader make sense of them?

The mystery am going to introduce today is about a number of lamp elements. Blog reader Werner Frank aquired them in the 1960s at a household clearance. Not much is known about their provenance, but it is clear that they were produced before the Second World War.

Each of these elements bears an inscription. As a crypto enthusiast, my first thought was that I was dealing with a collection of encrypted messages. While this is, of course, a possibility, the writing doesn’t look much like encrypted text.

Perhaps, these inscriptions are written in a script I don’t know. To my regret, I am not a script expert.

If it is an exotic script, there might be an Arabic influence.

Of course, it is also possible that these inscriptions have no meaning at all. Perhaps, the glyphs are not letters but meaningless ornaments.

Can a reader find out what these inscriptions mean and where they are from? If so, please leave a comment.


Further reading: Who can decipher these inscriptions on a Freemason medal?

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Kommentare (5)

  1. #1 Gert Brantner
    Berlin - Neukölln
    23. August 2019

    This looks like plain Arabic calligraphy. I will ask a friend to take a look at it.

  2. #2 Gert Brantner
    Berlin - Neukölln
    23. August 2019

    while (sorry for that) Arabic calligraphy is never “plain” at all.

  3. #3 Bill Briere
    Wyoming, USA
    23. August 2019

    Yes, these are in Arabic.

    Each image contains one short phrase of 4 to 5 Arabic words. Several of the words are plainly visible, but the rest are too ambiguous for me to transcribe with confidence.

    Someone who’s fluent should be able to make quick work of these blurbs.

    [Klaus, note that your second-to-last and third-to-last images are duplicates.]

  4. #4 Jerry McCarthy
    England, Europa...
    23. August 2019

    If certain words can be reliably read as Arabic, then, fine.

    However, other languages also use the Arabic script; Persian, Urdu, even Turkish up till 1928.

  5. #5 Klaus Schmeh
    23. August 2019

    >Klaus, note that your second-to-last and
    >third-to-last images are duplicates.
    @Bill: Thanks for letting me know. I corrected it.