27 books mentioned in Nestorian tablet (?)

[Sami Rabia]

Shlama Bar Sinko, and thank you very much, everyone for your replies, and also yours as it is so useful.
I will have to read read what you have said in more detail when I have some time, but are you saying then that it clearly states 27 books?

Thank you

Sami

Shlama all,

Thankfully, I can read Chinese. I can finally offer something on this forum!

The first thing to notice is that to convert a two ??? into a seven ??? requires someone to erase one of the horizontal strokes, extend the other, and add a vertical stroke with a hook to the right. Since this is carved into a stone, I'm not sure how one could erase strokes.

Supposing erasure is possible, the seven ??? in question is a slight bit atypical. On the monument, the characters are in a grid that lines up horizontally as well as vertically. The seven ??? character is positioned a bit high in its square area. This could be because the top stroke of a two ??? character was reused for the seven ??? character, but the same is true of the twenty ??? character above it, which is also short. Also, the seven ??? character above seems to be slightly imperfect in its vertical stroke, though a forger would have every incentive to make the change as neat and convincing as possible, unless he were of course unable to write Chinese characters with sufficient skill.

Thoughts?

See a full image of the stele by following this link
https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/sinkovit/share...0stele.jpg

bar Sinko