Many medieval European churches and castles have Sator square inscriptions. Medieval examples of the square in SATOR-form abound, including the earliest French example in a Carolingian Bible from A.D 822 at the monastery of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The existence of the square was long recognized from early medieval times, and it has been found on the continents of Europe (and Byzantium in Asia Minor), North Africa (mainly Coptic settlements), and the Americas. One of the four Sator squares (all in ROTAS-form) found at Dura-Europos, Syria, circa A.D 200. Since medieval times, it has also been known as a Templar Magic Square. Some academics call it a Rotas-Sator Square, and some of them refer to the object as a rebus, or a magic square. The earliest Roman-era versions of the square have the word ROTAS as the top line (called a ROTAS-form square, left above), but the inverted version with SATOR in the top line became more dominant from early medieval times (called a SATOR-form square, right above). The square comes in two forms: ROTAS (left, below), and the SATOR (right, below): The square is described as a two-dimensional palindrome, or word square, which is a particular class of a double acrostic. In some versions, the vertical and horizontal lines of the grid are also drawn, but in many cases, there are no such lines. It uses 8 different Latin letters: 5 consonants (S, T, R, P, N) and 3 vowels (A, E, O). The Sator square is arranged as a 5 × 5 grid consisting of five 5-letter words, thus totaling 25 characters. Sator square (in ROTAS-form) on the eight-century facade of Abbey of St. In 2020, The Daily Telegraph called the Sator Square "one of the closest things the classical world had to a meme". It has featured in a diverse range of contemporary artworks including fiction books, paintings, musical scores, and films, and most notably in Christopher Nolan's 2020 film Tenet. The square appears in several early and late medieval medical textbooks such as the Trotula, and was employed as a medieval cure for many ailments, particularly for dog bites and rabies, as well as for insanity, and for relief during childbirth. The square has long associations with magical powers throughout its history (and even up to the 19th century in North and South America), including a perceived ability to extinguish fires, particularly in Germany. There are many other less-supported academic origin theories, such as: a Pythagorean or Stoic puzzle, a Gnostic or Orphic or Italian pagan amulet, a cryptic Mithraic or Semitic numerology charm, or that it was simply a device for working out wind directions. It has instead been argued that the square was created in its ROTAS-form as a Jewish symbol, embedded with cryptic religious symbolism, which was later adopted in its SATOR-form by Christians. This origin theory fails to explain how a Roman word puzzle then became such a powerful religious and magical medieval symbol. The discovery of the "Paternoster theory" in 1926 led to a brief consensus amongst academics that the square was created by early Christians, but the subsequent discoveries at Pompeii led many academics to believe that the square was more likely created as a Roman word puzzle (as per the Roma-Amor puzzle), that was later adopted by Christians. Ī significant volume of academic research has been published on the square, but after more than a century, there is no consensus on its origin and meaning. In 2022, the Encyclopedia Britannica called it "the most familiar lettered square in the Western world". The earliest square that included explicit additional Christian-associated imagery dates from the sixth century, and by medieval times Sator squares had been found across Europe, Asia Minor, and North Africa. The earliest Sator squares were found at several Roman-era sites, all in ROTAS-form (where the top line is "ROTAS", not "SATOR"), with the earliest discovery at Pompeii (and also likely pre-A.D. The Sator Square (or the Rotas-Sator Square, or the Templar Magic Square) is a two-dimensional acrostic class of word square containing a five-word Latin palindrome. A Sator Square (laid out in the SATOR-format), etched onto a wall in the medieval fortress town of Oppède-le-Vieux, France
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