Selimus omnium imper Turcarum/ Terribilis sophim vicit ac fugavit cam/ Sonum et tomobeum multis delevit/ praeliis Aegyptu Arabiaq suo adiecit/ Imperio reversus Constantinopolim vl/ cusim renibus contraxit, quod cancris/ in morem serpens eum extinxit Ann/ Regini 7
Got that? U’s look like V’s, everything is capitalized and the right-hand side is missing a centimeter or so, where the inscription is broken off. It is inscription Latin, which is notoriously weird. However, a quick and dirty translation runs roughly: ‘Selim, emperor of all the Turks, of terrible wisdom, fought and conquered…with many battles added to his empire Egypt and Arabia and returned to Constantinople. He contracted a cancer of the kidney in the manner of sirpence (a skin infection of anthrax) and died in the year… the seventh of his reign.’
Selimus I was a real person: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selim_I
He also had a dubious play written about him in 1594 by Robert Greene called ‘Selimus, Emperor of the Turks’.
You are probably wondering what exactly this has to do with the house? Well some of you may know of the dark painting lurking on the mantle, the guy in the turban? While cleaning the other day, curiousity drove me to grab a flashlight and figure out the almost illegible writing on it. The result is above. Of course, none of that answers the questions of who picked it up and why? I am sort of wondering, given the literary inclinations of the house, if it has more to do with the play than with anyone’s propensity for picking up odd souvenirs of dubious quality while travelling in the Middle East in the late 1800’s. But I simply don’t know, I do know it has been on the mantle for at least sixty years, but that doesn’t help.
Now aren’t you glad you know all that?!
Acair Fearann 
Er – sure! Y’know, it’s sorta like visiting tourist attractions, e.g.: you live in Manhattan and you never, ever go up the Empire State building unless some tourist friend from somewhere outlandish comes along and says it has to be done. I’ve looked at that dim painting ever since when (more than 60 years, I’d hazard a guess) and never really given it a thought. Just one of those really miscellaneous odd decorations of the place; move it, you’d miss it, leave it there, you never give it a second thought. My bet is a travel souvenir – maybe you should look in the family bookshelf on Egypt and see if it happens to be mentioned.
The problem with the odd decorations is that despite being in the same place all the time, it is remarkably hard, having taken everything off the shelf, to put them back in the correct spot. It says nothing good about one’s power of observation when you can’t recall which teapot went where…
I think that the painting is proabably a souvenir, it is just such an odd piece; but then I know absolutely nothing about Ottoman Empire art or the tourist trade in the Ottoman Empire in the late 1800’s. I’ll have to look and see if it is mentioned anywhere in the letters/travelogues.