Shugborough House inscription
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Shugborough Hall in Staffordshire, England has in its grounds an 18th-century monument commissioned by Admiral George Anson, 1st Baron Anson, bearing an inscription that is thought to be an uncracked ciphertext.
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[edit] The monument
The Shepherd's Monument carries a relief that shows a woman watching three shepherds pointing to a tomb. On the tomb is depicted the Latin text "Et in arcadia ego" ("I am also in Arcadia" or "I am even in Arcadia"). The relief is based on a painting by the French artist Nicholas Poussin, known itself as Et in Arcadia ego, but the relief has a number of modifications — most noticeably that it is reversed horizontally. This suggests that it was copied from an engraving.[1] Another difference is a change in which letter of the tomb a shepherd is pointing at. In the painting the letter R in ARCADIA is being pointed to. The finger in the sculpture is broken, but was pointing to the N in IN. The sculpture also adds an extra sarcophagus to the scene, placed on top of the one with the Latin phrase.
Below the relief is the mysterious inscription:
O•U•O•S•V•A•V•V
D• M•
[edit] Theories
Several decryptions of the inscription have been suggested — for example, a sub-sequence of the letters apparently matches the first letters of a phrase in the Latin Bible — but due to the shortness of the ciphertext it is not possible to have any confidence in their accuracy.
[edit] Love message
A strong theory of the inscription's meaning is that it is a coded dedication from Admiral Anson to the late Lady Anson. The letters D.M. on Roman monuments commonly stand for "Diis Manibus”, meaning dedicated to the shades. In 1951 Morchard Bishop suggested that the remaining letters signified the Latin phrase Optimae Uxoris Optimae Sororis Viduus Amantissimus Vovit Virtutibus. This means 'Best of wives, Best of sisters, a most devoted Widower dedicates (this) to your virtues”. According to the Shugborough estate another explanation is that the letters stand for: Orator ut omnia sunt vanitas ait vanitas vanitatem, a Latin version of the phrase 'vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, all is vanity', from Ecclesiastes[1]
Margaret, Countess of Lichfield later claimed that the inscription referred to the lines "Out Your Own Sweet Vale, Alicia, Vanishes Vanity. Twixt Deity and Man Thou, Shepherdess, The Way", and that this was a love message. No source for these words has been traced.[1]
In 2004 codebreakers at Bletchley Park were briefed to look for possible solutions. One team sought explanations related to the love story. Code breaker Sheila Lawn argued that Bishop's suggestion was a likely explanation.
[edit] Holy Grail
For adherents of the modern Grail-conspiracy legend, the inscription is alleged to hold a clue to the location of the Holy Grail. Following the claims in the book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail that Poussin was a member of the Priory of Sion and that the painting contains a message about the location of the grail, it has been speculated that the inscription may encode secrets related to the Priory. One team of Bletchley code-breakers were briefed to pursue this possibility. Oliver Lawn (husband to Sheila) proposed that the letters may encode the phrase "Jesus (As Deity) Defy", a reference to the story of the Jesus bloodline allegedly preserved by the Priory.[2]
Both solutions were presented by the Lawns as speculative. They are simply possible readings starting from an assumption that a particular meaning is encoded. The Lawns stated that the message is so short that many solutions are possible, and that there can be no way of determining by cryptography alone which is correct.[3]
[edit] Notes
[edit] External links
- Images of the monument
- Shugborough: "The Shepherd's Monument" Art historical report and direct interpretation.
- The Temple Grids - The solution for those worthy enough
- BBC-Article about the Shugborough House inscription in relation to the Priory of Sion
