Hi,
http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/page.cfm?PageID=226&NewsID=85
Better fo a non UK citizen to forward this to the list? (:-))
Regards,
Jean
"Bletchley Park annouces possible solutions to the Shugborough code mystery.
WW2 Bletchley Park codebreakers Oliver and Sheila Lawn have been evaluating possible solutions and ideas for solving the coded message on a garden monument designed and installed at the Anson family?s Shugborough, Staffordshire estate between c1748-1758. Of the many communications received in emails, letters, books, telephone calls and face-to-face, 48 promising approaches to cracking the code were identified and analysed in depth.
Bletchley Park developed its own ?Premier Codebreakers? League? to classify the different codebreaking groups, with the following results:
CODEBREAKERS? PREMIER LEAGUE
No. of Solutions Position in League
Knights Templar
Academicals 9 1
Arcady Orient 8 3
Numbers
Argyle 6 7
Batty Brothers Albion 6 9
Rennes-le-Château
Rovers 6 4
Nifty City Shifters 5 8
Lorn Lovers
United 5 2
Runda Town
2 6
Maritime Wanderers 1 5
Two teams produced the most solutions: Knights Templar Academicals (9), who focused on The Knights Templar, Jacobite rebellion and Freemasonry themes and Arcady Orient (8), with proposals and ideas that centre on the Holy Grail and religious quests. The Bletchley Park team ruled out the Batty Brothers Albion (6), whose contributions covered UFO?s and Nostradamus, among others, or whose material arrived surprisingly soon after the challenge had been announced. Nifty City Shifters? work was soon set aside because it was based on transposition, a codebreaking technique for which the Shugborough message has insufficient letters. Similarly, numerologists? proposals, Numbers Argyle, were set aside, along with Runda Town (languages such as Icelandic, hence ?runda? or round, and Hebrew) and Maritime Wanderers (nodes and Turkish maritime maps). Rennes-le-Château Rovers (occultism) yielded some more plausible theories, though not directly.
The top three scoring teams included several Arcady Orient supporters. Among these, author Louis Buff Parry, suggests that the scene carved on the Shugborough Shepherds? monument, after a painting by Poussin, shows Rachel as the shepherdess, with shepherds Jacob, Joseph and Benjamin. Whilst this team refers to much historical research, its direct application to decrypting the Shugborough monument is unclear and apart from the ?Rachel? reference, there is no new evidence or interpretation.
However, two results from the league of successful ? or not ? codebreaking, may have made one piece of Shugborough Estate bas-relief a little less enigmatic than it was. The top scorers were from Kinights Templar Academicals and Lorn Lovers United.
Lorn Lovers, second in the Codebreakers? Premier League, contended that the message was intended for a dear family member or sweetheart, arguably Thomas Anson writing to his wife. The most convincing approach here is ?Optima Uxoris Optima Sororis Viduus Amantissimus Vovit Virtutibus?. The first letter of each word forms the main part of the Shugborough inscription and translates from Latin as ?Best wife Best Sister, Widower most Loving Vows Virtuously?. WW2 Bletchley Park codebreaker Sheila Lawn confesses to, ?being rather fond of this particular team and interpretation of the message.?
Knights Templar Academicals head up the League and provide what Bletchley Park?s codebreakers believe to be the most rigorous attack on the mysterious message?s defences. The analysis is a dissertation, passed to Bletchley Park?s Director Christine Large following some esoteric historical research. The work was done in the mid-1990?s by an American hobbyist based in the UK. It bears the mark of a codebreaking professional. The author, whose identity at present cannot be revealed, begins with an extensive and academically disciplined review of the monument?s historical background, comprising almost all the themes subsequently researched by other would-be codebreakers. A thorough cipher analysis is then undertaken. Letter frequencies are done, decryption matrices tested to ?bring out? the solution, indeed, all the conventional ways that key could be combined with plain (uncoded) text to form a cipher. The author then makes a number of assumptions about the Shugborough messa! ge, works out the matrices that would need to be anagrammed for possible plain text and decides to take a more specific approach, involving a shortcut.
As WW2 Enigma codebreakers know, in order to break the message, the key setting has to be obtained. What none of the other proposed ?solutions? to the Shepherds? Monument inscription had done is discover a key. This is what the anonymous author then sets out to do. Furthermore, he claims to have discovered that the key is actually visible, over and over again, on the monument itself. By careful inspection, he says, the key ?1223? is revealed. After anagramming, a plain text message emerges: JESUS H DEFY.
The significance of the letter H in this phrase, according to the author, is ?Christ? (transliteration for the Greek letter X or chi, meaning ?messiah? or ?the anointed one?). In the context of the monument?s time, the author goes on to say that the inscription can be decoded as, ?JESUS (AS DEITY) DEFY. By the eighteenth century, a secret order known as the Priory of Sion was emerging. The Order?s views were held to be heretical, notably by the Church of England, because the Order considered Jesus to have been an earthly prophet. The author contends that the inscription is an underlying statement intended to be kept secret because of its controversial nature.
Alternatively, the message may indicate a location in writings or in a place that could be a further clue on the path to finding the Holy Grail that some hopeful Shugborough mystery followers have assumed, exists. As one correspondent wrote, ??some pearls of wisdom may turn out to be nothing but shiny stones of possibility.?
Some enthusiastic future codebreakers and optimistic fortune hunters may look forward to a treat in their Christmas stockings. National Codes Centre Bletchley Park plans to offer, from early December, its Top Ten Codebreaking Tips. Details will be published shortly on the website, www.bletchleypark.org.uk. The ?JESUS H DEFY? author?s permission to publish his dissertation to a wide audience is being sought. And the Bletchley Park team is putting out a call for other unbroken codes that its expertise and worldwide connections might help break. Meanwhile, Bletchley Park remains open-minded about the definitive answer to Shugborough?s monumental mystery. ?In codebreaking, no stone should be left unturned,? said Bletchley Park Director Christine Large."