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Old 22nd March 2024, 01:22 PM   #4
Jim McDougall
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Location: Route 66
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My first thoughts were also calling on you Udo!! as you always have the answers to the mysterious markings and cyphers etc. especially in these European blade matters. However this inscription on the one side of the blade is of course not German, but really not of a particular language at all. As it happens I have been just working on some of this esoterica, and can add this suggestion based on what I have been covering.



Howard L. Blackmore ("Hunting Weapons" 1971, p.41) best describes these conventions of inscriptions etc. on German hunting swords blades through 18th century.

"...in hunting the swordsman often needed more than confidence in his blade. It had to possess some mystical quality to spur him on to greater deeds or bring him luck.On many hunting sword blades therefore magical signs or numbers are engraved for this purpose".
He also notes that often a hunting scene or motto may accompany this type motif....in the case of this example, the two are distinctively separated with motto on one side of blade, the 'occult' on the other.

In looking at the 'magical' inscription there does not appear to be any sort of linear contunuity, therefore likely an amalgamation of interpretations of characters perhaps from different alphabets or scripts. There seem to be resemblances to those of Hebrew (with Cabalistic assoc.); Glagolitic (old Slavic); and even the celestial (angelic) script (Agrippa 16th c) further with similar Enochian (Dee & Kelley 16th c.).
It would seem this inscription was likely contrived to add the magical impetus much desired in Germany in these hunting swords.

It is notable that similar thinking brought these kinds of conventions to military swords as well in these times, adding talismanic quality to the blades much valued for similar reasons.

Sources listed by Blackmore;
"Waffen mit Astrologischen und Kabbalischen Zeichen"
Karl Graf Rambaldi, Z.H.W.K. Vol. IX (1921-22) pp.128-138

Cronau(1885) Weyersberg (1926)
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