The Shugborough Inscription: The Ten Letters No One Has Ever Deciphered
In the rolling parkland of Shugborough Hall in Staffordshire, England, there stands a curious garden monument, raised in the middle of the eighteenth century by the wealthy Anson family. It is called the Shepherd's Monument, and at its heart is a carved marble relief depicting a scene from a famous painting: three shepherds and a shepherdess gathered around a stone tomb in an idyllic landscape, pointing at an inscription upon it. But it is not the shepherds that have drawn cryptographers, scholars, and treasure-hunters to this quiet corner of England for more than two centuries. It is a single line of letters, chiseled below the relief, that no one — in all that time — has ever convincingly explained. It reads: O·U·O·S·V·A·V·V, framed at either end by the letters D and M, set slightly lower. Ten Letters and No Key Written out in full, the sequence is D O U O S V A V V M. Ten letters, arranged in an order that corresponds to no known word in any language, that spells no obvious n...