Nimcha: Please help with markings

[Philip]

Kubur is right about that. Rare was the literate artisan during the period in question. Illiterate workmen copying from pattern-books or other objects can yield some interesting results. We see it in the scribbly Arabic on Ottoman blade inscriptions as late as the 19th cent. (yet on some Mughal court blades, the fine chiseled inscriptions on the spine are absolutely superb, whether it be from some degree of schooling, and/ or the fact that their manual skill enabled to copy calligraphic writing with extreme accuracy).

E. Astvatsaturyan in ORUZHIYE NARODOV KAVKAZA (Armament of the Caucasian Peoples) pp 56-7 reproduces the clumsy attempts of Caucasian cutlers to imitate the inscriptions on imported European blades, with all the reversed and transposed letters. Smiths in the West didn't do any better, judging from the butchered Latin seen on German and Dutch blades of the 17th and 18th cent. This, from a possibly Dutch saber blade, 17th cent., remounted as a katana in Japan, now in the National Museum, Copenhagen:

Inter Arm Silent Lege (correct: inter arma silent leges , "the law is silent
in wartime")
Inte Domine speraw on Connfunda naternumm (correct: in Te Domine
speravi non confundar in aeternum, "in Thee, O Lord
I have trusted [that] I not be led astray forever)
...cora...ava...is axn...antia (indecipherable)

There are many blades like this , I have a Polish example in my collection. To see this Nipponified Dutch sword, refer to "Et Euro-Japansk Sverd i Nationalmuseet i Kobehhavn" by P T Norheim, VAABEN HISTORISKE AARBOGER XVI, pp 163 173