KimG Diglot Groupie Norway Joined 4962 days ago 88 posts - 104 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Portuguese, Swahili
| Message 1 of 5 16 May 2014 at 12:05pm | IP Logged |
In Tune, Norway, archaeologist now tries to interpret a piece of Arabic writing on pottery they found, what makes this odd is it was found close to a famous Viking burial dug out by archaeologists, the famous "Tune Ship" Viking burial. The found was by metal detector.
http://www.nrk.no/ostfold/vet-du-hva-dette-er_-1.11721648
Anyone who can read this? And is it old, or modern?
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Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5305 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English
| Message 2 of 5 16 May 2014 at 1:40pm | IP Logged |
The picture quality is rather poor. My first thought was that this is most likely a Maghribi inscription, because one of the letters look like a Maghribi fāʾ (ڢ) with a dot below the letter. (The regular fāʾ (ف) has a dot above the letter.)
However, since there also appears to be remnants of a Tughra in the center, it looks more likely that the inscription was written in the Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
Since Tughras were first introduced around 700 years ago, the object is most likely not older than that. If I were the archeologist, I'd forget about the inscription and try to identify the Tughra fragment instead.
Edited by Doitsujin on 16 May 2014 at 2:05pm
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Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5305 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English
| Message 3 of 5 18 May 2014 at 9:39am | IP Logged |
Someone also posted this article on Reddit and Reddit user fidelis found a picture of an identical 15th/16th century item.
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Penelope Diglot Senior Member Greece Joined 3854 days ago 110 posts - 155 votes Speaks: English, French Studies: Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew
| Message 4 of 5 18 May 2014 at 10:38am | IP Logged |
Always nice to read your posts Doitsujin! :D
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Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6688 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map
| Message 5 of 5 19 May 2014 at 2:57am | IP Logged |
Actually Arabian coins are quite common finds in Scandinavian viking excavations, so seeing Arabian writing on pottery is not a total surprise.
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