Sator Square
As seen at Corinium Museum, Cirencester.
A text description of this object read as follows:
"The famous 'acrostic' believed by many to be an early Christian coded message. The words, which read the same both across, down and backwards, are scratched onto a piece of 2nd century wall plaster."
The acrostic itself reads as follows:
R O T A S
O P E R A
T E N E T
A R E P O
S A T O R
As I read here, "by "repositioning the letters around the central letter Ν (en), a Greek cross can be made that reads Pater Noster (Latin for "Our Father", the first two words of the "Lord's Prayer") both vertically and horizontally. The remaining letters – two each of A and O – can be taken to represent the concept of Alpha and Omega, a reference in Christianity to the omnipresence of God. Thus the square might have been used as a covert symbol for early Christians to express their presence to each other."
Fascinating stuff... an early reference to Christian worship in Corinium, dating back to somewhere between 160 and 260 AD maybe? Then again... why the need for crypticity? The Romans were tolerant of the British cults (aside from Druidism famously) - were they not also tolerant of Christianity in Britain - along with all the other Eastern cults? As I understand, there was no empire-wide edict against Christians until the Decian persecution of 250 AD. But that didn't touch the West and even during the Great Persecution of 303-312/313 AD (303-305 in the West) there was only one edict that, at most, may have been lightly enforced in Britain and that was the first one that prohibited Christians from assembling for worship. According to Wikipedia, "the persecution, after all, had been the project of the Eastern emperors, not the Western ones."
I've read that the fact that two Sator squares were found during the excavation of Pompeii and thought to predate 79 AD (when Pompeii was destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius) casts doubt on the Christian-origin theory, since it's unlikely that there was a Christian presence in Pompeii prior to the eruption, and Latin wasn't in use as a form of Christian expression at that time. Either that or the squares appeared in Pompeii after the eruption?
Maybe the Sator square originated as a board game as the classicist Mary Beard suggests?
The Latin translates as something like "The sower Arepo holds the wheels with effort" - ROTAS being the key word here, with what might possibly be a 'magical' meaning to those who... understood... this... gibberish.
Has anyone ever debunked the theory that the words might simply be the only words that the originator could come up with to construct a five-word Latin palindrome?
Sator Square
As seen at Corinium Museum, Cirencester.
A text description of this object read as follows:
"The famous 'acrostic' believed by many to be an early Christian coded message. The words, which read the same both across, down and backwards, are scratched onto a piece of 2nd century wall plaster."
The acrostic itself reads as follows:
R O T A S
O P E R A
T E N E T
A R E P O
S A T O R
As I read here, "by "repositioning the letters around the central letter Ν (en), a Greek cross can be made that reads Pater Noster (Latin for "Our Father", the first two words of the "Lord's Prayer") both vertically and horizontally. The remaining letters – two each of A and O – can be taken to represent the concept of Alpha and Omega, a reference in Christianity to the omnipresence of God. Thus the square might have been used as a covert symbol for early Christians to express their presence to each other."
Fascinating stuff... an early reference to Christian worship in Corinium, dating back to somewhere between 160 and 260 AD maybe? Then again... why the need for crypticity? The Romans were tolerant of the British cults (aside from Druidism famously) - were they not also tolerant of Christianity in Britain - along with all the other Eastern cults? As I understand, there was no empire-wide edict against Christians until the Decian persecution of 250 AD. But that didn't touch the West and even during the Great Persecution of 303-312/313 AD (303-305 in the West) there was only one edict that, at most, may have been lightly enforced in Britain and that was the first one that prohibited Christians from assembling for worship. According to Wikipedia, "the persecution, after all, had been the project of the Eastern emperors, not the Western ones."
I've read that the fact that two Sator squares were found during the excavation of Pompeii and thought to predate 79 AD (when Pompeii was destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius) casts doubt on the Christian-origin theory, since it's unlikely that there was a Christian presence in Pompeii prior to the eruption, and Latin wasn't in use as a form of Christian expression at that time. Either that or the squares appeared in Pompeii after the eruption?
Maybe the Sator square originated as a board game as the classicist Mary Beard suggests?
The Latin translates as something like "The sower Arepo holds the wheels with effort" - ROTAS being the key word here, with what might possibly be a 'magical' meaning to those who... understood... this... gibberish.
Has anyone ever debunked the theory that the words might simply be the only words that the originator could come up with to construct a five-word Latin palindrome?