The "SATOR-AREPO" Word Square

Examined by (Lightweight)
Cryptoanalytic Methodology, with Early
Christian Historical Overview and New
Approach.
(Back to HOME.)

Ritorna al SATOR scritto in italiano."

SATOR
AREPO
TENET
OPERA
ROTAS
(The sower, Arepo, holds the wheels to [their] works.)

(alpha)
P
A
T
E
R
(alpha) P A T E R N O S T E R (omega)
O
S
T
E
R
(omega)
Illus. 1 a,b

Historical overview: the conventionmal academic view,

until the word square was discovered among the ruins
of Pompeii, as a graffito, was that it had been a secret
sign of recognition among the members of the Early
Christian community.
This is not going to be easy. But I get ahead of myself. I will recount my summary of the
current state of academic knowledge of the Sator-Arepo word square in brief, taking the
substance of this historical part of my presentation from an article by Donald Atkinson
that appeared in 1951. (The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, "The Origin and Date of
the Sator Word Square," Vol II, No 2, July-October 1951). I was kindly directed to this
reference upon enquiry to Martin Gardner, former puzzle editor of the Scientific
American magazine.

Before I get into the subject, I should menton that the first time I tried to open this
document using the "Internet Explorer" browser, it garbled my tables. If this happens I
could suggest copying it into a word-processing document and deleting the garbled parts.
If you then printed out the document with blank spaces where the tables were, these could
then be entered with a pen or pencil from the words that make up the square, which I
have been careful to include in the nearby text. Guess what? The next time I opened the
document using "Internet Explorer" it worked perfectly. "Mozilla Firefox" also works
100% perfectly, 90% of the time!

The magic square palindrome SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS is the crowning
achievement of the genre. It reads the same from the upper left hand corner, top down
and left to right; and from the lower right corner, bottom to top and right to left. Four
ways, in other words. Based on long historical association (in the form of its inscription
on amulets together with the phrase [alpha] PATER NOSTER [omega]), it was long
associated with the earliest days of the Christian church. In this context, the latter phrase
was presented in a cruciform array, the phrases intersecting at the letter "N." (See illus. 1-
a,b.) It has been attractive to regard the inscription of the square, in the form of graffiti on
Roman walls, as a secret sign of recognition exchanged between Christians during the
period of persecution by the Roman state.

Together with this, during the crazes for occultism that have swept Europe from time to
time, the square became the subject of wild speculations sporadically, as to what
message, besides that of the (alpha) PATER NOSTER (omega) cruciform array, could
have been encoded by the maker of this square within its constituent letters, for the array
does, indeed, contain all of the letters to be found in the square palindrome, exactly the
same number of times, taking the alphas and omegas as the equivalent to the letters "A"
and "O." Several such authors claimed to have discovered the secret of the universe and
of the philosopher's stone within this square, while others found prayers to Satan for his
powers therein.

Oops! The magic square was discovered in the ruins of

Pompeii, buried in 79 a.D.
These speculations were cut short when the palindrome (without the cruciform array in
conjunction) was discovered among the graffiti of Pompeii; in two places, as a matter of
fact, during the period of intensive excavation and scrutiny that went on just prior to WW
II. Since the city was buried in 79 a.D., it was deemed unlikely, if not impossible, that
any Christian community could have such a developed organisation and liturgy as the
association with the cruciform array implied: the use of the cross as a symbol, the
translation of the Lord's prayer into Latin, and the like.

Prior to 1937, when this discovery was announced to the word, the oldest known record
of this text was an inscription on a Roman wall at Cirencester, in the British Isles, dating
from the fourth century, a.D. Other records are to be found from later times and one such,
I am informed, exists in the form of an inscription on the corner of one of the old
churches in Sienna. A huge popular literature on the square exists in print and on the
internet.

Arguments raged in the scholarly journals, chiefly among scholars operating in countries
that were predominantly Catholic in their religious culture, and ingenious theories were
advanced to explain the presence of this palindrome on the walls of this site. None of the
arguments was particularly convincing, and even Dr. Atkinson, who presents them all,
was left to make a hedged conclusion that a Christian origin was the only explanation,
regardless of the difficulties, since the alternatives were too far fetched.. These
alternatives included the theory that gangs of slaves had put the two known graffiti where
they were found. The Romans are known to have enlisted slaves to retrieve works of art,
while there were yet people still living who could remember where these had been
located, before the catastrophe buried the city. The trouble with this theory was that one
graffito was in a place where there was nothing to dig up, outside the town theatre. The
other site could have been exposed above the cinders, where subsequent generations of
tourists could have inscribed it at any later date in antiquity, where it was found during
the 1930s excavations. Such graffiti are known, e.g. "SODOMA GOMORA."

The matter lay in abeyance until after the hostilities of WW II ceased. After a couple of
post-war treatises on the subject appeared (besides Dr. Atkinson's) the matter lapsed
without resolution, so far as I have been able to discover. One of these authors, J.
Carcopino (196?), includes many details which my presentation has here ignored as
tangential to the subject we are examining. However, for completeness, I should add that
the form the palindrome took in antiquity was reversed: "ROTAS OPERA TENET
AREPO SATOR." (Cf. Carcopino, J�r�me �tudes d'Histoire Chr�tienne /le
Christianisme Secret du "Carre Magique," �ditions Albin Michel, Paris 196?).
These academic arguments for a Christian origin of the
square were based on a false assumption, as I will now
show.
Every one of the historians who looked at this took for granted that the statistical
improbability of these same letters occurring by chance in the two places, the array and
the palindrome, argued for the necessity that they had a common author. Further, the
presence of "rotas" (Ezekial 1:16 inter alia), "Tau" crosses in "tenet," the "sower" (sator:
"the sower soweth the word," Mark 4:14) were all alleged to cinch the certainty of a
Christian origin on the basis of the improbability of these indications occurring by
chance, on top of the letters being the same, regardless of Pompeii and 79 a.D.

These advocates took the example of the unlikelihood of two identical bridge hands being
dealt in succession as the paradigm.

Acting on the suggestion of Dr. N. Herbert of Boulder Creek, California, I took a look at
this as a problem of cryptoanalysis. Stated simply, merely because the cruciform array
contains the same number of letters the same number of times, this does not argue that
the array was necessarily meant to be encoded in the palindrome. Was there an encoded
message at all, and, if so, is this one necessarily it?

From this point of view, simply because the parents of Ronald Wilson Reagan gave him
that name, and because the phrase "Insane anglo warlord" has the same letters the same
number of times, (I thank the internet for that one!), one cannot reason from these two
facts that his parents encoded the latter phrase intentionally, when they chose the name to
begin with.

Thus, from this point of view, the palindrome would have been a Latin word game. There
were many palindromes generated in the classical world of the simple-sentence type, but
no other square ones have come to light, so far as I have been able to discover, nor are
these findings that I will soon present to be found elsewhere than here. Right now, my
favorite "linear" palindromes in the English language are, "Go hang a salami; I'm a
lasagna hog" and "Stop, murder us not, tonsured rum-pots." How can you beat these?

I elaborate the argument with a few Latin palindromic

word-squares of my own. It is not that difficult; why are
there none from antiquity besides SATOR-AREPO?
Carrying this a step farther, I set out to compose a few such square palindromes myself.
From a very meagre foundation in Latin, and with a few hours' work in the Oxford Latin-
English Dictionary, ed. Lewis and Short, Oxford Univ. Press, I was able to cook up four
of them, which I here present. This is not Cicero or Virgil, I admit. Neither is SATOR-
AREPO. If there is a gross blunder in one or more of these, the presence intact (after
hypothetical scholarly challenge) of only one of these is just that many more than twenty
centuries have produced after the first manifestation of SATOR-AREPO. (See illus. 2a-
2d.)

Illus. 2-a, b, c, d

S I T A S S A T U M S E R E T M E T A R
I R E P A A R E B U E D O N E E A E R A
T E N E T T E N E T R O T O R T E R E T
A P E R I U B E R A E N O D E A R E A E
S A T I S M U T A S T E R E S R A T E M

SITAS, IREPA, TENET, APERI, SATIS. ("Irepa holds the situated ladies to be
sufficiently tied up." With "areri" and "irera," "...sufficiently dried up.") (Illus. 2-a.)

SATUM, AREBU, TENET, UBERA, MUTAS. ("Arebu has a begotten race, the mute
ladies and [their] 'abundant fruits' [breasts]") (Illus. 2-b.)

SERET, EDONE, ROTOR, ENODE, TERES. ("She plaits, you grind; I am turned about,
Oh man of Thrace, by thy knotless agrument.") (Illus. 2-c.)

METAR, EA ERA, TERET, AREAE, RATEM. ("I will measure off the raft; she,
mistress of the area, shall grind.")
(Illus. 2-d.)

On the grounds that the author of SATOR-AREPO allowed him or herself one coined
proper name that is no more than a word spelled backwards (i.e. "Arepo;" no one has
satisfactorily traced this name to anyone mentioned in the literary remains of the time of
Pompeii), I have allowed myself one such coinage to make a tough job easier.

I managed to get a couple of cruciform arrays out of this.

Illus. 3-a, b

D
O
N
O
R
 E
DONORETRETEES
R
E
T
E
E
S

Comes out of SERET-EDONE &c.

M
E
R
E
A
T
MEREATRETEARA
E
T
E
A
R
A

Comes out of METAR EA ERA &c.

DONOR ET RETE ES ("I am given; you are the net.") This cruciform array crosses at the
"T," in case your web view confuses this matter. (Illus. 3-a.)

MEREAT RETE ARA ("May the altar be rewarded by means of the net.") Ditto this one;
it crosses at the "R" in "RETE." (Illus. 3-b.)

Having practiced the art to this extent, I can assure my reader that starting with the
phrase, (alpha) Pater Noster (omega), and succeeding in cooking up a square palindrome
out of it, would have taken enough divine intervention by itself, without taxing the
Creator to throw in some Tau crosses and "rotas"-es on the side. The proponents of a
Christian origin want us to believe that some worker, with no (known) example before
him, was able to cull out of a newly written translation into Latin of the gospels and
Lord's Prayer a thirteen-letter phrase that turned out to be workable into the SATOR
square. The linear palindrome was common, but no square ones other than the SATOR
one can be found in the detritus of the era, so it is doubtful that such ever existed, as I
have said earlier
Further, why are there no examples of this among the graffiti to be seen in the
Catacombs? Along with "ichthus," if the square were truly a secret Christian sign of
recognition?

The fact, which I already have brought out, that the order of the words in SATOR-
AREPO became changed, so that the "sator" now comes first, in contrast to the way it
appeared in the graffiti at Pompeii, is suggestive that Christian propagandists changed the
order after the cruciform array was discovered to be implicit within the square. This
makes a single author for the two less likely, also, in addition to the factors already
discussed.

If we propose a process of making an anagram from a text, the presence of the same
letters the same number of times in both SATOR-AREPO and the cruciform array of
(alpha) Pater Noster (omega) becomes a much more credible scenario, since this could
have taken place at any time after the disaster at Pompeii and the first appearance of the
two arrays in the artifacts, some hundreds of years later. The presence of these identical
letters now is no longer a matter of chance occurrence. As the example of Ronald Wilson
Reagan's anagram mentioned earlier shows, it is much easier to think these anagrams up
afterwards, than it is to recognise a potential magic square out of a given text.

However, in the end, the Christian origin argument

cannot be totally excluded, even if it seems quite
unlikely.
The matter is not a certainty. Why? Because the question arises, if the anagram maker
took a (non-Christian) square Latin word game for his or her point of origin, why are
there no other such word games in existence? As I hope to have demonstrated by my
examples 2-a through d, and 3-a and b, it doesn't seem to be that hard to think them up.
Here is an argument for the Christian origin of the square and array, after all. My
conclusion is that there is not enough evidence to settle on a Christian or pagan origin for
this square, either way.

Contact W. Bentley, P.O. Box 575, Occidental CA 95465, USA; or at

wilderbentley@yahoo.com[.]

Move on to the next treatise that shows how to build a Magic Word Square.

==========================================

WIKIPEDIA s.v. Sator Square

Sator
Sower, planter; founder, progenitor (usually divine); originator
Arepo
 (arrepo) (I) creep/move stealthily towards, also trust, or likely an invented proper
name; its similarity with arrepo, from ad repo, 'I creep towards', may be
coincidental
Tenet
holds, keeps; comprehends; possesses; masters; preserves
Opera
(a) work, care; aid, service, (an) effort/trouble
Rotas
(rota) wheel, rotate; (roto) (I) whirl around, revolve rotate; used in the Vulgate
Psalms as a synonym for whirlwind and in Ezekiel as plain old wheels.

One likely translation is "The farmer Arepo has [as] works wheels [a plough]"; that is, the
farmer uses his plough as his form of work. Although not a significant sentence, it is
grammatical; it can be read up and down, backwards and forwards. C. W. Ceram also
reads the square boustrophedon (in alternating directions). But since word order is very
free in Latin, the translation is the same. If the Sator Square is read boustrophedon, with a
reverse in direction, then the words become SATOR OPERA TENET, with the sequence
reversed.[1]

The word arepo is a hapax legomenon, appearing nowhere else in Latin literature. Most
of those who have studied the Sator Square agree that it is a proper name, either an
adaptation of a non-Latin word or most likely a name invented specifically for this
sentence. Jerome Carcopino thought that it came from a Celtic, specifically Gaulish,
word for plough. David Daube argued that it represented a Hebrew or Aramaic rendition
of the Greek Αλφα ω, or "Alpha-Omega" (cf. Revelation 1:8) by early Christians. J.
Gwyn Griffiths contended that it came, via Alexandria, from the attested Egyptian name
Ḥr-Ḥp, which he took to mean "the face of Apis". (For more on these arguments see
Griffiths, 1971 passim.) In Cappadocia, in the time of Constantine VII, Porphyrogenitus
(913-959), the shepherds of the Nativity story are called SATOR, AREPON, and
TENETON, while a Byzantine bible of an earlier period conjures out of the square the
baptismal names of the three Magi, ATOR, SATOR, and PERATORAS.

If "arepo" is taken to be in the second declension, the "-o" ending could put the word in
the ablative case, giving it a meaning of "by means of [arepus]." Thus, "The sower holds
the works and wheels by means of water."

Appearances
Square in Cirencester.

Anagram formed by the letters of the sator square

The oldest datable representation of the Sator Square was found in the ruins of Pompeii.
Others were found in excavations at Corinium (modern Cirencester in England) and
Dura-Europos (in modern Syria). The Corinium example is actually a Rotas Square; its
inscription reads ROTAS OPERA TENET AREPO SATOR.

Other Sator Squares are on the wall of the Duomo of Siena and on a memorial.[2]

An example of the Sator Square found in Manchester dating to the 2nd century is
considered by some authorities to be one of the earliest pieces of evidence of Christianity
in Britain.[3] Like the Corinium square, the Manchester square reads ROTAS OPERA
TENET AREPO SATOR. A further example is found in a group of stones located in the
grounds of Rivington Church and reads SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS, the
stone is one of a group thought to have come from a local private chapel in Anderton,
Lancashire.[4]

An example is found inserted in a wall of the old district of Oppède, in France's Luberon.

There is a Sator Square in the museum at Conimbriga (near Coimbra in Portugal),

excavated on the site.