A video of the encrypted tomb inscription in Lisbon

Blogleser Frank Schürmann hat ein Video vom Pigpen-verschlüsselten Grabstein in Lissabon gedreht. Darin wird auch erklärt, wie man den Text entschlüsselt.

Deutsche Übersetzung (Beta)

A few months ago I blogged about the encrypted tombstone of Adelaide Baptista Neves (1858-1891), located in the “Cemitério dos Prazeres” cemetery in Lisbon. Of the 20 or so encrypted tombstones I know of, this one is the largest and the one with the longest ciphertext.

Quelle/Source: Reddit

A video

After my article, blog reader Frank Schürmann from Haltern wrote to me and provided me with a video he shot about the said cemetery. Frank has his second home in Lisbon and speaks Portuguese. The video is 12 minutes long and shows much more than just the encrypted gravestone. Between 3:50 and 4:30 the grave can be seen.

From 7:50 Frank tries to decipher the tombstone – with success. It is a Masonic cipher, following the diagram below:

Quelle/Source: Schürmann

The order of the letters in this diagram is unusual, but otherwise it is a normal Pigpen cipher. What is unusual, however, is that there are also symbols for the numbers from 0 to 9:

Quelle/Source: Schürmann

This results in the following plain text (thanks to Richard SantaColoma for deciphering the text):

A MEMORIA SAUDOSA DE MINHA QUERIDA. ESTREMOSA ESPCSA. ADELAIDE BAPTISTA NEVES NASCEU A 27 DE AUGUSTO DE 1858 VIVEU 33 ANNO. 2 MEZES E 19 DIAS. FALLECEU. A 15 DE NOVEMBRO DE 1891. MANDADO ERIGIR POR SEU. MARIDO. JIAQUIM JOSE CARDOZO NEVES EM 16 NOVEMBRO DE 1864. PAZ A TUA ALMA.

There is a German translation in the video at 10:15.

On the steps of the tomb are the numbers 11, 22 and 33 (from bottom to top). This could be a Masonic symbolism that has something to do with the age of the wife (33 years, symbols for three stages of life).

Intentional errors

Starting at 11:10, Frank points out something I hadn’t thought about before: The text contains some spelling errors. Especially strange is that the surnames of the spouses are spelled differently: The wife is called MEVES, while her husband is referred to as NEVES. Is this an oversight? Or is there intention behind it? Perhaps a reader can say something about this.
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Further reading: Der verschlüsselte Grabstein im Schatten des World Trade Center

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