Markings on a Takouba-mounted European Backsword

[Jim McDougall]

Originally Posted by fernando

An unsupported theory would be that, there is no cyrillic involved here. The mirror atitude of the N could just be the smith's fantasy ... or illiteracy.
Reading the lettering straight forward, we would have ANCONA which is the name, for one, of a city and province in center Italy, somehow related with Roman era history, ancient weapon archeology and the like.
Would there be swordmaking over there during the age of the blade in discussion ?
... Notwithstanding this is a silly approach .

Silly?
Silly is the editorial page on artwork now reaching classic proportion on the other forum!
There are a number of approaches to analysis of markings, and while your observation using Occams Razor is quite viable, sometimes things are not what they seem.