Shugborough inscription

The Shepherd’s Monument stands in the parkland of Shugborough Hall, a Staffordshire estate built in the 18th century. Its plain Doric portico frames a relief copied from Poussin’s ‘Et in Arcadia ego’, showing shepherds pointing at a tomb inscribed with the Latin words ‘I am also in Arcadia’. Below the relief a stone plaque bears the ten-letter sequence O U O S V A V V above the Roman initials D M. The monument was commissioned by Thomas Anson between 1748 and 1756 and includes carved heads, a frieze of laurel wreaths and an anthemion antefix. The inscription has never been convincingly decoded and remains one of the world’s most famous unsolved ciphers. In 1951 Oliver Stonor proposed it was a dedication to Anson’s wife, while Steve Regimbal read it as a Latin rendering of Ecclesiastes 12:8. Former NSA linguist Keith Massey suggested a prayer for the Way to True Life, and George Edmunds argued it conceals the latitude and longitude of a buried Spanish treasure. Staff at the hall remain sceptical of every theory. Visitors walk through the hall’s grounds to reach the monument, passing lawns and mature trees. Inside the portico the rusticated arch frames the Poussin relief and the inscribed plaque. The carving shows small changes from the original painting, including an extra sarcophagus on the tomb. The surrounding park offers long views across the estate, linking the monument to the wider landscape of Staffordshire.