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Page 4.

History, Continued

Many scholars, over centuries, have attempted to crack the Sator Code (to borrow and paraphrase a now-famous book title of U.S. author Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code). The most exhaustive bibliography of their books and papers is kept by Dr. Rose Mary Sheldon*, Ph.D., Chair of History at Virginia Military Institute. Dr. Sheldon is an expert on ancient secret services, spies, and cryptography.

In 1914, a Dr. S. Seligman published an article titled Die Satorformel (The Sator Formulation) in a German scholarly journal. He summarized all the work done to that time. Since 1881, there have been a flood of papers on the Sator Square, all without satisfying result. Much of Seligman's finding has remained in place to recent times, except for a startling Pater Noster (Our Father) connection discovered in 1923 (which, as I have stated, does not imply any Christian connection, but strongly points toward God the Father, Jupiter).

Among the many theories listed by Dr. Sheldon are the following.

The French scholar Jerome Carcopino (1881-1970) believed arepo to be related to a Gaulish word for plough--which echoes my finding, except that I have found an antecedent PIE root (ar-) that is likely the ancestor of many words, including the Gaulish arepennis and the quasi-Latin arepo.

Other scholars have felt that Arepo is a proper name, perhaps of a man or a god.

The most common reading has been: "The sower Arepo holds the wheels with effort." In my opinion, this is meaningless. No gem of insight will ever be plucked from this absurdity.

C. W. Ceram suggested the rebus be read boustrophedon style (back and forth, as the ox plows; ironic, given my plow theory), so that it would read something like "The Sower Arepo the work holds, holding the work is the sower Arepo." Again, with all due respect, this is meaningless and will forever remain a flashlight without batteries, shedding no light.

Dr. David Daube (1909-1999) of Oxford and later University of California, Berkeley, felt that arepo is a reference to Alpha-Omega, which occurs among other places in Revelations 1:8 of the Christian Testament. We will let that and other cups pass us by.

The Welsh poet and scholar Dr. J. Gwyn Griffiths (1911–2004) saw arepo as a reference to the baby Horus, or J Harap/Harpocrates, an Egyptian deity fondly adopted by Mediterranean sailors and spread to most port cities.

Some theorists have felt that the Sator Square was a Christian invention, a sort of secret handshake like the fish and Chi-Rho anagrams, used by members of the persecuted sect to communicate with one another.

I see no connection, but will remain neutral on this issue, for reasons that will become evident. Again, it is clear that Sator (Sower) is an epithet widely used by Roman authors in reference to Jupiter.

The Christian conjecture received momentum with the proposal that one can rearrange the letters to form a simple, non-palindrome construct in the form of a cross that reads paternoster left to right (but not right to left) and top to bottom (but not bottom to top)--with two letters left over, A and O, which some interpret as meaning Alpha and Omega as in the following depiction:

Most scholars today feel that this is likely a pure coincidence. I am more inclined to think it is, if anything at all, a nod to Jupiter, Father of Gods and Men, or the Hellenic Zeus, whose name derives from theos, god.

It has been pointed out as well that the letters alpha and omega, which have taken on metaphorical significance in Christian mythos, do not perhaps exercise the same ancient warrant—since the more common Hellenic expression for doom or death lay with theta, not the last letter in the typical Hellenic alphabet, but the first letter of the word thanatos, meaning death. In short, trying to stretch the evidence to conform to a Christian paradigm is simply another manifestation of creationism, fitting the evidence to create a theory rather than the honest and logical opposite approach of allowing the evidence to lead us to an unbiased result that can be verified in the petri dish of logic.

None of these translations and theories—too many to name here, a few examples given—has provided a satisfying translation or explanation.

Let me now go back to my translation, and a brief personal history of its discovery.

NOW AVAILABLE: The book (article) by John T. Cullen is now available for purchase at Amazon.com and other sites or stores. Visit:

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