The first engraving in J.C Barchusen's Elementa Chemicae, 1719, has at its centre a stylised Divine or cosmic cloud. In the centre of this is what appears to be a four lettered word. I always have read that as "mens", but obviously this was just my brain correcting the jumble of characters. A contact has asked me to read these characters but having puzzled a bit over this I find it impossible to come to a clear solution.
The nearest I can get is to read the character on the right as a stylised "yod", followed by a "heh", then an obscure character, and another stylised "heh". However, I feel this is rather stretching what can be seen on the engraving. Barchusen's engraver does not seem to be familiar with Hebrew and makes a bit of a mess of some other Hebrew in the engraving.
I wonder if anyone can make sense of this.
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