Well, perhaps. But if they'd meant "2 to 1" it should have been "1 to 2", similarly.

Any idea what it was supposed to say?

Not really; since the lift was broken, I wasn't able to get into it and find out what floors it was really prepared to take me to. The lift next to it is labelled 2 to 4, so an obvious guess might be that the two lifts go the same distance, but it is only a guess.

It could have been produced by a right-to-left-language-using signpainter?