Archaeologists operate in Cyprus have discovered a 1,500 - year - sure-enough talisman with a 59 - alphabetic character inscription that reads the same backwards as it does forwards .
As LiveSciencereports , the amulet , which measure 1.4 inches by 1.6 inches , was discovered at the ancient city of Nea Paphos in Southwest Cyprus . On one side there are several images , including a wrapped mummy lie on a boat ( in all likelihood the Egyptian god Osiris ) , and a mythological heel - headed creature called a genus Cynocephalus . But it ’s the amulet ’s flip side that ’s interesting . The palindrome , written in Greek , read like this :
translate , it intend , “ Iahweh is the bearer of the secret name , the Leo of Re secure in his shrine . ” Iaweh being the name of a Greek idol . From the LS article :

Researchers have found similar palindrome elsewhere in the ancient world drop a line Joachim Śliwa , a prof at the Institute of Archaeology at Jagiellonian University in Kraków , Poland , in an clause latterly published in the journal Studies in Ancient Art and civilisation .
Śliwa notes that the scribe made two minor mistakes when writing this palindrome , in two instances compose a “ ρ ” instead of “ v. ”
The amulet was get a line in the summer of 2011 by archaeologists with the Paphos Agora Project . Led by Jagiellonian University professor Ewdoksia Papuci - Wladyka , this squad is excavating an ancient agora at Nea Paphos , and uncovered this amulet during their employment . Agoras served as gathering places in the ancient earth .

Amulets like the one find at Nea Paphos were made to protect their owners from danger and harm , Papuci - Wladyka told Live Science in an electronic mail .
More atLiveScience .
Image : picture by Marcin Iwan , artifact from the excavations of Jagiellonian University in Krakow at Paphos Agora

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