This steel ball is 3/8" in diameter. At first glance it's an ordinary steel ball bearing. I found it one day when I was going through some little scraps of silver from back when I used to make jewelry. I had what I thought were three 3/8" silver beads in there. As I was putting the beads back into the bag where I kept them I noticed one felt heavier than the others. I looked at it more closely and realized it was not a bead. It had no hole through it. It was solid.
All this stuff in the bag is at least 20 or 30 years old. I don't know where, when or who gave me the sphere. I started testing it. I did the scratch test on a ceramic tile. It made a gray streak so it was steel and not Hematite which gives a red streak.
Then I tried a Magnet. It was attracted to a magnet but was not magnetic itself. I got the magnifying glass and looked at it more closely and that's when I noticed it was not a plain steel ball. It had some kind of writing on it. The writing was etched into the surface. It wasn't scratched into the surface. It was etched by some kind of acid or something. The design was a repeating design so that the same thing is on both sides encircling the sphere around the middle.
It was the same design repeated on both sides. There was a circle with what looks like the Roman Numeral 2 ( II ) but the tops and bottoms were connected into one line across the figure. Beside that is an enclosure of several symbols into an oblong round cornered box like an Egyptian Cartouche. I don't recognize any of the figures but they remind me of Runes. They may be some kind of Hieroglyphs. I do not know. I don't even have any way to know if they are right side up or upside down.
I have done drawings of it as best I can. So today I tried taking photographs. I just have a cheap digital camera and don't have a Macro lens.
If anybody who sees this knows anything about what it is, what was used for, where it came from or how I ended up with it please let me know. If the hieroglyphs are readable please let me know what they say.
