We discovered an ancient sundial painted in the walls of my school and we estimate it has 671 years old, as the school was built in 1346. When we found it, there were some parts missing ---> [img]http://i.imgur.com/yQHNSVr.jpg[/img] And no one has been able to deduce the missing words of the inscription.
"(...)ol mea contegit? Imò
(...) umbra tuos."
The translation would be:
"the [s]un covers mine? ... In fact,"
"shade [covers] yours"
(This is assuming the question mark is part of it. But, there is clearly some essential information missing, as evidenced by the genders of mea and tuos).
It was eroded over time and now no one knows what the original quote was. Maybe if anyone knows common mottos for ancient sundials we can find out. The sundial only marks hours corresponding to the school's schedule.
If it helps, the missing part has almost the same lenght as the visible words.
Thanks in advance, Nemo.
A couple of questions:
The supplement "sol" is obviously right in the first line. I wouldn't discount the possibility that "imo" is the ablative of imus, rather than a variant spelling of "immo".
The bigger problem is that I think you've got more than half missing. This looks like the last third of an elegiac couplet, with just the last two and a bit feet preserved. The question-and-answer format fits that genre well, and it's the standard metre for inscriptions of this kind. Filling in the blanks is going to mean sorting out the nature of the author's wit, as well as a linguistic problem - it's supposed to be witty, so what's the gag? Something about life and death? A pun on "umbra"? Hmm, have to think about it.
This definitely doesn't look 14th century to me, by the way. Maybe 17th or 16th? Still pretty old!
![http://i.imgur.com/yQHNSVr.jpg[/img]](http://i.imgur.com/yQHNSVr.jpg%5B/img%5D){kind=link}