#   The "cups" may be stylized flowers.
#
#   A superficial look at the black-and-white copies may leave the
#   impression that the sectors are solid cylinders, and that the dark
#   stripes are their shadows. However that interpretation is excluded
#   when one looks closely at how the radial lines connect to the
#   "cups".
#
#   There is no obvious place to start reading the letters between the
#   arms of the central star; but if one starts at 11:00 (the smallest
#   sector) the letters spell out "dolsedy"; which may be an
#   unexpected splitting of "dolshdy", a rather common word.
#
#   The radial lines and the outer text probably start at the
#   decorated band at 02:00. On the other hand, the decorated band may
#   be just a filler addded to patch up a mistake (the attempt to fit
#   an alternating pattern into an odd number of sectors).
#
# Last edited on 1999-02-12 05:12:43 by stolfi
