Vintage Russian enamel crossVintage Russian Enamel Cross Necklace
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This well-loved vintage cross seemed to call out to me. I never use crosses or other religious symbols as fashion statements, but rather use them only when I feel called to make something with them, as I did with this little beauty.
The third photo shows the text on the back of the cross. I asked the seller (a Russian man who had many lovely old Russian objects for sale) what the text said. He brushed me off with some nonsense so I didn't press him. One possibility is Greek, but I know some Greek and it doesn't seem to be that. I don't know any Russian, but tried to compare the letters to the Russian alphabet, and failed. Some of the characters could be modern Cyrillic, but not all. At first I didn't realize there were "numerous Cyrillic alphabets" though. Even considering those, I couldn't find the character in the very center between the horizontal and vertical arms (which appears in several other places as well), or the 3-legged "A" to the right of it. I tried using Google Translate to translate some obvious words like "Jesus," "Lord," and "God" but found no matches. I even tried an image match to that 3-legged "A" and found nothing. Then I looked for archaic Cyrillic and found that "A"!!! Unfortunately I was unable to relate that archaic alphabet to present day Cyrillic, at least not yet. I would greatly appreciate it if you can tell us what language this is and what it means!
