Sator Square

in Italy The Sator square is arranged as a 5 × 5 grid consisting of five 5-letter words, thus totaling 25 characters. It uses 8 different Latin letters: 5 consonants (S, T, R, P, N) and 3 vowels (A, E, O). In some versions, the vertical and horizontal lines of the grid are also drawn, but in many cases, there are no such lines. The square is described as a two-dimensional palindrome, or word square, which is a particular class of a double acrostic. The square comes in two forms: ROTAS (left, below), and SATOR (right, below): and some of them refer to the object as a rebus, ==Discovery and dating==

, Syria, circa AD 200. The existence of the square was long recognized from early medieval times, and various examples have been found in Europe, Asia Minor, North Africa (in mainly Coptic settlements), and the Americas. In 1889, British ancient historian Francis Haverfield identified the 1868 discovery of a Sator square found in ROTAS form scratched on a plaster wall in the Roman settlement of Corinium at Cirencester to be of Roman origin; however, his assertion was discounted at the time by most academics, who considered the square to be an "early medieval charm". This discovery led Della Corte to reexamine a fragment of a square, again also in ROTAS form, that he had made in 1925 at the house of Publius Paquius Proculus, also at Pompeii (CIL IV 8123). The square at the house of Publius Paquius Proculus was dated between AD 50 and AD 79 (based on the decorative style of the interior), and the palestra square find was dated pre-AD 62 (and therefore before the earthquake of AD 62), making it the oldest known Sator square discovery to date. ==Translation==

Individual words The words are in Latin, and the following translations are known by scholars: Similar translations include: "The farmer Arepo works his wheels", or "Arepo the sower (sator) guides (tenet) the wheel (rotas) with skill (opera)". Some academics, such as French historian Jules Quicherat, The boustrophedon style, which in Greek means "as the ox plows", emphasizes the agricultural aspect of the text of the square. In 1983, Serbian-American scholar Miroslav Marcovich proposed the term AREPO as a Latinized abbreviation of Harpocrates (or "Horus-the-child"), god of the rising sun, also called (Georgós Arpon), which Marcovich suggests corresponds to SATOR AREPO. This would translate the square as: "The sower Horus/Harpocrates keeps in check toils and tortures". Duncan Fishwick, among other academics, believed that AREPO was simply a residual word that was required to complete what is a complex and sophisticated palindrome (which Fishwick believed was embedded with hidden Jewish symbolism, per the "Jewish Symbol" origin theory below), and to expect more from the word was unreasonable from its likely Jewish creators. Further anagrams Attempts have been made to discover "hidden meanings" by the anagrammatic method of rearranging the letters of which the square is composed. • In 1883, German historian Gustav Fritsch reformed the letters to discover an invocation to Satan: • :SATAN, ORO TE, PRO ARTE A TE SPERO • :SATAN, TER ORO TE, OPERA PRAESTO • :SATAN, TER ORO TE, REPARATO OPES • French historian Guillaume de Jerphanion catalogued examples that were known formulas for an exorcism such as: • :RETRO SATANA, TOTO OPERE ASPER, and the prayers • :ORO TE PATER, ORO TE PATER, SANAS • :O PATER, ORES PRO AETATE NOSTRA • :ORA, OPERARE, OSTENTA TE PASTOR • In 1887, Polish ethnographer Oskar Kolberg amended the strict anagrammatic approach by using abbreviations and thus deduced from the 25 letters of the Sator Square the 36 letters of the monastic rule: SAT ORARE POTEN (TER) ET OPERA(RE) R(ATI)O T(U)A S(IT), which he considered an ancient rule of the Benedictines; French historian Gaston Letonnelier made a similar approach in 1952 to get the Christian prayer: SAT ORARE POTEN(TIA) ET OPER(A) A ROTA S(ERVANT), which translates as: "Prayer is our strength and will save us from the wheel (of fate?)". • In 1935, German art historian believed he discovered the relief the Rose of Sharon gave to Saint Peter for the sin of his denial of Christ, with the anagram PETRO ET REO PATET ROSA SARONA, which translates as "For Peter even guilty the rose of Sharon is open"; academics refuted his interpretation. • In 2003, American historian Rose Mary Sheldon listed some of the many diverse sentences that can be produced from anagrams of the square including her favorite: APATOR NERO EST, which would translate as saying that the Roman emperor Nero was the result of a virgin birth. ==Origin and meaning==

The origin and meaning of the square has eluded a definitive academic consensus even after more than a century of study. Christian symbol Adoption by Christians Irrespective of the theory of its origin, the evidence that the Sator square, particularly in its SATOR form, became adopted into Christian imagery is not disputed by academics. • In Cappadocia, in the time of Constantine VII (913–959), the shepherds of the Nativity of Jesus are named: SATOR, AREPON, and TENETON. There is an alternative layout proposed with the As and Os positioned at the extreme ends of the Paternoster cross, A 1969 computer study by Charles Douglas Gunn started with a Roma-Amor square and found 2,264 better versions, of which he considered the Sator square to be the best. It also parallels the Roman system of Cardo and Decumanus, being central road crosses through towns. consider the square as being likely of Jewish origin. Fishwick concludes that the translations of the words ROTAS OPERA TENET AREPO SATOR are irrelevant, except to the extent that they make some sense and thereby hide a Jewish cryptic charm, and to require them to mean more is "to expect the impossible". Vinel addressed a criticism of the Jewish origin theory – why would the Jews have then abandoned the symbol? – by noting the Greek texts that they also abandoned (e.g. the Septuagint) in favor of Hebrew versions. • Norwegian philologist Samson Eitrem took the last half of the square starting at N to get: "net opera rotans", which translates as "She spins her works", interpreting it to be a feminine being (i.e. Hecate), a demon, or even the square itself rotating on its TENET spokes, thus giving a peasant Italian pagan origin with the square as a wind indicator. • Some academics such as Swiss archeologist have proposed that it is a numerical number square, which would also imply a Semitic origin. A significant issue is that the square is in Latin, and Romans did not have the ciphered number system of the Greeks or the Semites. However, if the letters are transliterated to Greek, and then assigned ciphered numbers, the word TENET can be rendered as 666, the number of the beast. Walter O. Moeller analyzed the resultant numerical combinations to assert that the square was made by Mithraic numerologists. • In 1925, Zatzman interpreted the square as a Hebraic or Aramaic apotropaic formula against the devil, and translated the square to read: "Satan Adama Tabat Amada Natas". • In 1958, French historian Paul-Louis Couchoud proposed a novel interpretation as the square being a device for working out wind directions. ==Magical and medical associations==

In 2003, Rose Mary Sheldon noted: "Long after the fall of Rome, and long after the general public had forgotten about classical word games, the square survived among people who might not even read Latin. They continued to use it as a charm against illness, evil and bad luck. By the end of the Middle Ages, the 'prophylactic magic' of the square was firmly established in the superstition of Italy, Serbia, Germany, and Iceland, and eventually even crossed to North America". In Germany in the Middle Ages, the square was inscribed on disks that were then thrown into fires to extinguish them. Other examples include Bosnia, where the square was used as a remedy for aquaphobia, and in Iceland, it was etched into the fingernails to cure jaundice. ==Notable examples==

Roman • The oldest Sator square was found in November 1936, in ROTAS form, etched into column number LXI at the near the amphitheatre of Pompeii (CIL IV 8623). Graffiti associated with the particular columns predates the AD 62 Pompeii earthquake, • Four Sator squares were found in 1931–32, all in ROTAS form, etched on the walls of military buildings, at Dura-Europos in Syria, dated circa AD 200. • A Sator square was found in 1966–71, in ROTAS form, scratched into a Roman-era wall during excavations of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome (along with the Roma-Amor, and the Rome Summus Amor palindromes). Early medieval • The earliest Sator square post-Roman times was the 1899 discovery of a ROTAS-form square inscribed on a Coptic papyrus by German historians Adolph Erman and Fritz Krebs in the Berlin Papyrus Collection of the Berlin State Museums (then the ); it has no other explicit Christian imagery. In a similar vein, a thirteenth-century parchment from Aurillac offers a Sator-square chant for women in childbirth. • The phrase appears on the rune stone Nä Fv1979;234 from Närke, Sweden, dated to the fourteenth century. It reads "sator arepo tenet" (untranscribed: "sator ¶ ar(æ)po ¶ tænæt). It also occurs in two inscriptions from Gotland (G 145 M and G 149 M), which contain the whole palindrome. • The Sator square, with some letters changed, features in eighteenth-century books on Pow-wow folk medicine of the Pennsylvania Dutch, such as The Long Lost Friend (see image earlier). ==In popular culture==

(circa 1860) The Sator square has inspired many works in the arts, including some classical and contemporary composers such as works by Austrian composer Anton Webern and Italian composer Fabio Mengozzi, writers such as Brazilian writer Osman Lins (whose novel Avalovara (1973) follows the structure of the square), and painters such as American artist Dick Higgins with La Melancolia (1983), Director Christopher Nolan's 2020 film Tenet has a story structure that mimics the square's concept of interlinked multiple directions of meaning, and incorporates all five of the names from the Sator square: • The main antagonist is named Sator. == See also == • Abracadabra, a second-century Roman magic word • Abraxas, a mystical word in Gnosticism • Nipson anomēmata mē monan opsin, a fourth-century Byzantine palindrome • • The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, a medieval book that contains word squares ==Notes==