Antique Wooden Box with Carved Hieroglyphics! tabletop pool balls and quite an old one

and quite an old one I believe (Victorian era German I think)-- composition over carved wood frame

making a really wonderful tabletop sculpture

such that one end would hook into the other

to protect them from the cats

with an opening of 2" x 2

Antique Wooden Box with Carved Hieroglyphics! tabletop pool balls and quite an old oneI'm not quite sure how the surface of this box came to be so, but it makes me super happy that it did, and I feel as if it might just hold the secrets of the universe! (My guess it that a child many years ago went to work on it with a sharp tool, yielding a mix of letters and numbers and symbols that, together with a few gauges and a bit of paint here and there add up to a pretty fantastic surface. The sides and bottom are much less carved up; the