CX XCX: King of the Jews, and a moderate argument for Hungarian

The following pair of glyphs, which I transcribe as CX.XCX, is apparently an abbreviation for the phrase "King of the Jews":

The evidence for this is first found in the depictions of the titulus crucis, which reads IGHA CX XC C I. (The XC is missing the dot which would make it XCX).

The titulus crucis is said to contain, according to different accounts:

• Mark: The King of the Jews
• Luke: This is the King of the Jews
• Matthew: This is Jesus, the King of the Jews
• John: Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews

From the titulus crucis alone we can't tell which glyphs are supposed to represent what, but the matter is clarified somewhat by a depiction of the scene where the crown of thorns is placed on Jesus' head:

HX.H.HK CUT.C XA IGHA CX XCX C I

According to the gospels, Pilate's soldiers mocked Jesus by putting a crown of thorns on his head, a purple robe on his body, and a reed in his hands, and hailing him as the King of the Jews. Pilate himself was not present at this scene, having scourged Jesus and sent him away, but the RC has Pilate here kneeling before Jesus. The dots on Pilate's robe and on the robe worn by Christ in this scene presumably represent the royal purple.

Between Pilate and Jesus is the glyph XA, which could be a verb like "call", "mock" or "ask", or else an expression like "Hail!" But for this post, I'll focus on the phrase king of the Jews.

The glyphs CX and XCX each include a dot, which could indicate an abbreviation. We also see the dot in the glyph QX, which could be an abbreviation for the word "chapter". In that case, we might guess that the glyphs C and XC (without the dot) should represent the initials of the words for king and Jews.

The following table shows the phrase king of the Jews in a number of candidate languages, and the resulting readings for the glyphs C and XC:

Language	Phrase	C	XC
Koine Greek	βασιλεὺς τῶν Ἰουδαίων	b[a]	i[ou]
Hebrew	מלך היהודים	m	y
Albanian	o mbret i Judenjve	m[bre]	j[u]
Old Church Slavonic	Царю Иудейский	ts[a]	j[u]
Latin	rex Judaeorum	r[e]	j[u]
Romanian	Împăratul iudeilor	i[mp]	i[u]
Hungarian	zsidók[nak] királya	zs[i]	k[i]
Middle Hungarian   (Gáspár Heltai, 1565)	Sidóknac királlya	s[i]	k[i]

In this table the most interesting possibility to me is Middle Hungarian, where the glyph C would be read as an s. We see the glyph C at the end of the name of Pilate (Pilátus in Hungarian) and in the title Christ (CUTB.C, Hungarian Krisztus). This glyph also looks like a mirror image of the Greek letter sigma as it is written in uncial script (also the Cyrillic s).

This is the best argument I've put together so far for a specific language underlying the text. It will be even better if we could explain the C.I at the end of this phrase.

If I'm quiet on the blog for a while now, it's because I'm learning Hungarian on Duolingo. I don't have much free time, so one hobby generally pushed out another...