Shugborough inscription

The eight-letter inscription, framed by the Roman tomb inscription 'DM'

The Shugborough inscription is a carved sequence of letters - O U O S V A V V - that has never been satisfactorily explained, and has been called one of the world's top uncracked ciphertexts. The letters are carved on the 18th-century Shepherd's Monument in the grounds of Shugborough Hall in Staffordshire, England, below a mirror image of Nicolas Poussin's painting, the Shepherds of Arcadia. The inscription became widely known as a result of its mention in the 1982 pseudohistorical book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln, in which the authors suggest that Poussin was a member of the Priory of Sion and that his Shepherds of Arcadia painting contains hidden meanings, perhaps referring to the location of the Holy Grail.

Recent research (see Morton Solution) suggests the letters are merely the initials of the residents of Shugborough in the early 19th century. Viscount Anson and Mary Vernon-Venables (V.A.V.V.) inherited Shugborough Hall from Thomas Anson, the traditional creator of the monument.

The Monument

The Shugborough relief, adapted from Nicolas Poussin's second version of The Shepherds of Arcadia

The monument was built sometime between 1748 and 1763, commissioned by Thomas Anson, paid for by his brother, Admiral George Anson, and fashioned by the Flemish sculptor Peter Scheemakers. The relief copy of a Poussin painting from the 17th century shows a woman and three shepherds, two of whom are pointing to a tomb, on which is carved the Latin text Et in arcadia ego ("I am also in Arcadia" or "I am, even in Arcadia"). The carving displays a number of small alterations from the original painting, such as changed letters, and an extra sarcophagus has been placed on top of the main tomb. Above the Poussin scene are two stone heads, one of which bears a strong likeness to the goat-horned Greek god Pan.

Below the relief carving on the monument, an unknown craftsman carved the mysterious eight-letter inscription, contained within the letters 'D.M.' On Roman tombs, these commonly stood for Diis Manibus, meaning "dedicated to the shades".

Theories

Josiah Wedgwood, Charles Darwin and Charles Dickens are all said to have attempted to solve the enigma and failed. In recent decades, investigators have proposed several possible solutions

• One suggestion is that the eight letters are a coded dedication by George Anson to his deceased wife. In 1951 Morchard Bishop speculated that the letters might be an acronym for the Latin phrase Optimae Uxoris Optimae Sororis Viduus Amantissimus Vovit Virtutibus ("Best of wives, Best of sisters, a most devoted Widower dedicates (this) to your virtues").

• According to the Shugborough Estate, another suggestion is that the letters stand for Orator Ut Omnia Sunt Vanitas Ait Vanitas Vanitatem, a version of the phrase "Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, all is vanity" from Ecclesiastes, albeit different from that which appears in the Latin Bible.

• Margaret, Countess of Lichfield has claimed that the inscription was a love message, referring to the lines Out Your Own Sweet Vale, Alicia, Vanishes Vanity. Twixt Deity and Man Thou, Shepherdess, The Way, but no source for these words has ever been traced.

• A. J. Morton said the letters match the names of the residents of Shugborough in the early 19th century.

• Other suggestions have included one that relies on pronouncing 'UOSV' as 'Iosef', interpreted as a reference to the biblical prophet Joseph, and another that involves reading 'VV' as 'TEN', with reference to Roman numerals.

No solution has yet been proposed which rests on a solid cryptanalytic footing.

Holy Grail

The enigmatic inscription became widely known as a result of the 1982 work The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln, in which the authors suggest that Poussin was a member of the Priory of Sion. The authors suggested that Poussin's Shepherds of Arcadia contains hidden meanings of great esoteric significance. Public interest in the inscription grew when some of the book's themes were explored in other works, such as Dan Brown's 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code. Speculation arose that the inscription may encode secrets related to the Priory of Sion, or even contained a clue to the location of the Holy Grail.

As a result, this was one of the avenues explored by a team of codebreakers at Bletchley Park in 2004, while another team sought explanations related to the love story. Among them, Oliver Lawn proposed that the letters may encode the phrase Jesus H Defy, where the H supposedly stands for "Christos" (Greek for "Messiah") and the reference is to the story of a Jesus bloodline allegedly preserved by the Priory. Sheila Lawn, his wife, preferred the love story theory. As with the acronym theories, neither of these suggestions enjoyed reliable cryptanalytic support and both were presented as speculative.

Morton solution

In February 2011 The Daily Telegraph reported that A. J. Morton had proposed a solution to the Shugborough Inscription cipher. According to the Morton Solution, the first four letters merely represent the ancestral lands of the last four.

External links

• 2011 Da Vinci Code Riddle SOLVED
• The Final Solution of The Shepherd Monument
• Images of the monument
• The Changing Face of Poussin's Pentagon, by Geoff Bath
• Shugborough Hall and the Holy Grail, by Graham Phillips
• New puzzle for war code breakers (BBC)
• Bletchley veterans tackle 'toughest puzzle yet' (The Guardian)
• Da Vinci Code at Shugborough Hall (BBC)
• Holy Grail 'clue' at stately home (The Times)
• The Solution to the Shugborough code and the location of the Holy Grail

• The Return of The Christ?