Shugborough Hall in Staffordshire, England has in its grounds an 18th-century monument commissioned by Admiral George Anson, 1st Baron Anson, bearing an inscription that is thought to be an uncracked ciphertext. Shugborough Hall is the ancestral home of Lord Lichfield and is situated near Stafford on the north eastern edge of Cannock Chase. ... Staffordshire (abbreviated Staffs) is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. ... Wikimedia Commons has media related to: England Travel guide to England from Wikitravel English language English law English (people) List of monarchs of England – Kings of England family tree List of English people Angeln (region in northern Germany, presumably the origin of the Angles for whom England is named) UK... The Taj Mahal in Agra (Uttar Pradesh, India) Monuments are usually created for the dual function of commemorating an important event or person while also creating an artistic object that will improve the appearance of a city or location. ... George Anson, 1st Baron Anson (April 23, 1697 - 1762) was a British admiral and a wealthy aristocrat, noted for his circumnavigation of the globe. ... Inscriptions are words or letters written, engraved, painted, or otherwise traced on a surface and can appear in contexts both small and monumental. ... This article is about algorithms for encryption and decryption. ...

The Shepherd's Monument carries a relief that shows a woman watching three shepherds pointing to a tomb. On the tomb is depicted the Latin text Et in arcadia ego (And I am in Arcadia). The relief is based on a painting by the French artist Nicholas Poussin, known itself as Et in Arcadia ego, but the relief has a number of modifications — most noticeably that it is reversed horizontally. Other differences include a change in which letter of the tomb a shepherd is pointing at and the addition of an extra sarcophagus to the scene. In the art of sculpture, a relief is an artwork where a modelled form projects out of a flat background. ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ... Arcadia or Arkadía (Greek Αρκαδία; see also List of traditional Greek place names) is a region of Greece in the Peloponnesus. ... Et in Arcadia ego by Nicolas Poussin. ... Et in Arcadia ego is a Latin phrase that most famously appears as the title of two paintings by Nicolas Poussin 1594–1665). ... Stone sarcophagus of Pharaoh Merenptah A sarcophagus is a stone container for a coffin or body. ...

Below the relief is the mysterious inscription:

 O•U•O•S•V•A•V•V D• M• 

Theories of the inscription's meaning include a message to a deceased lover or merely a deliberately intriguing decoration. For adherents of the modern Grail-conspiracy legend, the inscription holds a clue to the location of the Holy Grail. This article refers to the Christian artifact. ...

Several decryptions of the inscription have been suggested — for example, a sub-sequence of the letters apparently matches the first letters of a phrase in the Latin Bible — but none are overwhelmingly convincing and due to the shortness of the ciphertext it is not possible to have any confidence in their accuracy. The Vulgate Bible is an early 5th century translation of the Bible into Latin made by St. ...

As of now, the meaning of the monument remains hidden.

External links

• Images of the monument
• Bletchley Park annouces possible solutions to the Shugborough code mystery