The Ultimate Palindrome

After my interest, last week, in the 02-02-20-20 Palindrome [ February 2nd, 2020] and other dates Palindromic, a friend told me about the Sator Square of which I had never heard! How could I have missed it? Mystifying! It is the world’s earliest-known double Palindrome which means it can be read top-to-bottom; bottom-to-top; left-to-right; right-to-left. It dates all the way back, at least, to Ancient Rome, having been found among the ruins of the city of Pompeii, which was decimated and buried in volcanic ash in 79 A.D. during the shattering eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

Here is the Sator Square [left]and it consists of five words that read as a single Palindromic Latin sentence:

Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas

The translation of the Sator Square inscription has been the subject of controversy over the centuries. Much of the disagreement has been over the word Arepo which has no direct Latin translation. Many believe it is a proper noun, a name, so the square could read: The sower Arepo holds the wheel with effort. The other theory is that the name was simply created to help with the palindrome!

The letters can be re-positioned around the ‘N’ in the centre of the square so that it reads Pater Noster, Latin for Our Father and the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer. This reads in two directions with the two remaining letters, ‘A’ and ‘O’ possibly representing Alpha and Omega, a Christian concept about God’s omnipotent presence. Since there wasn't a large Christian presence in Ancient Rome, it might have been a covert symbol for local Roman Christians, when Christianity was proscribed, to identify their faith to each other without fear of discovery and persecution. Throughout the ages, palindromes were also thought to be a safeguard against the Devil because he would be confused by the repetition of the characters. The Sator Square thus became associated with magical properties in widely different
societies, regions and eras. It was used in folk magic to protect crops and livestock and remove jinxes and curses.

 St Barnabas, Alphamstone.

 Difficult to decipher.
The Sator Square etching in
St Barnabas, Alphamstone.

The Sator Square was discovered scratched in the wall of a church, St Barnabas in Alphamstone, near Sudbury in Essex, centuries after Roman times. Although not proven, it is generally assumed that Nicholas le Gryce, rector of the church 1576-1593, was responsible as he has been credited with several other inscriptions etched on the church walls including one which reads: This chancell was repared with newe tymber worke by Nycholas Le Gryce Parson. There is no indication of what the Sator Square might have meant to these mediaeval worshippers but Christian connotations of the Sator square are consistent with the discovery in 1931 of three examples of it on the walls of a Roman garrison at Dura-Europos (abandoned in the third century), now in eastern Syria. But Jewish and Mithraic remains are also present at Dura-Europos.

The discovery of the etched palindrome in St. Barnabas was made by Bari Hooper as early as 1975 though only publicly reported in the Telegraph on 2 May 2015. Mr Hooper, who has made a lifetime study of Essex churches, suggests that the letters in the Sator etching in St. Barnabas, are 16^th century in form. Examples of the Sator-Rotas square have also been found at Cirencester on a piece of Roman wall plaster from the fourth century, and in Manchester on a potsherd in a second-century rubbish pit. Those might be of Christian origin.