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.

Palindromic Brexit

Today’s date, Sunday, February 2^nd, is a palindrome in which the date, written in a certain order, reads identically from left to right, and from right to left. If one writes the month first, as in MM-DD-YYYY, the date is 02-02-2020. Similarly and unusually, February 11^th will also be palindromic.. Thus,02-11-20 [carefully shortening the digits of the year!] And for palindromic overload, see December 2^nd 2021. Thus, 12-02-2021 followed closely by December 11^th 2021. Thus 12-11-21. Obviously one needs to tweak the number of permissible digits in the year to make it work but even so, it IS special and interesting to one who finds numbers not her natural metier! ***

Brexit sadness.

Joy unrestrained!

The title of this blog now becomes obvious for it is also the weekend when the endless, chaotic, unnecessary process of Brexit has finally begun its countdown. In spite of Boris vowing not to be ‘triumphant’ there was quite a lot of triumph evident unofficially on Friday with crowds weeping, singing, cheering while the other half of the country remained sad and rueful. Since the day Britain narrowly voted to leave the European Union in June 2016, the issue has divided families, cast a shadow over businesses and paralysed the Government. One half of the country is totally mystified by the opinions of the other half, and vice versa! And despite the Prime Minister vowing to unite the country, that will be almost impossible even though Remainers are resigned to the inevitable tragedy to come. It is a smaller version of the acerbic division in American politics where, to give but one example, the Republican Party in the Senate seriously explains why there should be no witnesses in a trial!

Boris currently is showing atypical good sense in trying, he says, to begin to heal some of the societal rifts. He is talking of steering public money towards the North and Midlands whose normal tribal voting patterns were abandoned in the rush to support his party which loudly promised to ‘Get Brexit Done!’. Hence his late support for the controversial HS2, the stunningly expensive rail link from London to the North which should kick-start the re-invigoration of the economy of the North, shamefully neglected for decades. There lies the dilemma for Boris & Co. His supporters in the South, in Parliament and in Party, foresee free trade, deregulation and the U.K. as a Singapore-style nimble free agent successfully snapping up opportunities in the global economy. But the voters in the North want their car industry and fishing

 The Brits are good at protesting; one of the many anti-HS2
protests over the last two years.

to be protected from global competition; they want their reduced manufacturing jobs to remain or increase; they want Big Government. And Boris’s buccaneering leadership of a government with a huge majority is aiming at an economy which will shed those Northern manufacturing jobs; will use fishing rights to trade off against perhaps financial power in the forthcoming EU negotiations; and which will hugely reduce Government support for areas dependent on traditional jobs as it works its way to becoming Small Government.

Several Flemish people here have commented on the thousands of job in Flanders which will probably disappear as a direct result of Brexit. Yesterday, the podolog I saw showed me a tube of cream no longer available for her practice to buy from Britain, ‘because of Brexit’. Incomprehensible to me but it is happening. And, inevitably, resident Europeans and jobs are gradually disappearing from Britain as the economy begins to shrink a little. The Bank of England forecasts that £23 billion will be knocked off the size of the U.K. economy by 2022. Phew! I am polishing up my Carpe Diem credentials so that I remember to savour every day now!

Must end with a lovely quote from Beatrice and Sydney Webb, those famous economists, Socialists, pioneers and distinguished historians, co-founders of the prestigious London School of Economics:

'Old people are always absorbed in something. Usually themselves.' 

I suppose all the heat and light over Brexit is about self-absorption, though not necessarily all about elderly preoccupation. A real sadness about Brexit is that the vast majority of the young whose lives will be considerably influenced by it, are not in favour of it, while the elderly supporters of Brexit who have chiefly enjoyed the benefits of E.U.membership, cannot expect to suffer the adversities of leaving Europe for very long.

 Beatrice Webb, 1858-1943
Sidney Webb, 1859-1947

***

Palindromic Post Script.

I had not appreciated until I looked at CNN on my Ipad this morning, [3/02/20] that yesterday's date was Really Special in the Palindromic World. That is because it works both in the MM-DD-YYYY format AND in the DD-MM-YYYY. As such, it is a palindromic date in all formats and the only such this century. The previous palindromic date in all formats was 11/11/1111 and the next all format date will be 12/12/2121, in 101 years! The Solihull School Maths. Department wrote on Twitter that, in addition to its other palindromic qualities, Feb. 2nd, 2020 is the 33rd day of the year AND the number of days left in the year is also a palindrome, 333.