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Inscription in Middle Iranian/Avestan/Pahlavi?

Posted: Sun Aug 06, 2023 5:08 pm
by yegr
Image
It is claimed that the inscription is in the language of Zend and one of the words means light, the other - the path / leading on the path. So far, the closest thing found was a variant of the Avestan alphabet. I do not exclude that for a correct reading the inscription must be reflected horizontally. Can anyone shed some light on what the writing is?

Re: Inscription in Middle Iranian/Avestan/Pahlavi?

Posted: Sun Aug 06, 2023 5:50 pm
by zompist
Avestan seems possible. If you do flip it horizontally, there are matches for 𐬒 (x́), 𐬍 (ī), 𐬗 (c). But I can't find the others.

The obvious Avestan word for light and path are raocah and patha/pañtãm, and I don't see anything resembling an R (𐬭) or P (𐬞). FWIW I saw a paper arguing that Avestan čiθra means 'light', but then we should get an R.

Do you have more information on the picture, or the claimed transcription?

Re: Inscription in Middle Iranian/Avestan/Pahlavi?

Posted: Sun Aug 06, 2023 7:13 pm
by yegr
Thank you for the guess, but unfortunately this came from a cryptic source not saying anything else about the writing.
But a seemingly same source has left another inscription, much longer:
Image
This one seems to be rather different from the one in the primary post. But I would love to have a clue to this second one as well.

Re: Inscription in Middle Iranian/Avestan/Pahlavi?

Posted: Sun Aug 06, 2023 9:48 pm
by bradrn
yegr wrote: Sun Aug 06, 2023 7:13 pm Thank you for the guess, but unfortunately this came from a cryptic source not saying anything else about the writing.
But a seemingly same source has left another inscription, much longer:
[image]
This one seems to be rather different from the one in the primary post. But I would love to have a clue to this second one as well.
This doesn’t look anything like an inscription to me. Neither does the first one, for that matter — the doubled-up lines strike me as weird. Have you considered that these might be made-up?