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Oak Island 90 foot Stone and the Kempton Cipher:  Are the symbols mathematical symbols?

4/18/2016

29 Comments

 
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  In our last article, we shared some of our Oak Island 90 Foot Stone research with you, as it pertained to the man thought to have deciphered the symbols on the 90 Foot Stone.  The only known representation of those symbols that we have today comes from what is known as the Kempton Cipher, so named because Rev. A. T. Kempton produced it in 1949 to both Oak Island treasure hunter Frederick L. Blair, and to historian and author Edward Rowe Snow.  From this single source, we now have a few variations in the symbols because of interpretations made from the information Kempton supplied.  For example, Snow reproduced the rectangle symbol as a Roman numeral two, while Blair's notes show it more as a rectangle.  As Kempton's original notes can no longer be found, the best copy comes to us from the R.V. Harris archive papers housed at the Public Archives of Nova Scotia.  Harris obtained his copy from Blair.  In the image below, using an exact copy of how the cipher was presented in the Blair papers, we get the idea of how the symbols could be open to various interpretations.  All four symbols highlighted below represent the letter "D".
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  Rowe also interpreted the letter "M" as a Roman numeral one, as show below. 
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    Over a year ago, at the same time we were preparing to screen the movie Shakespeare: The Hidden Truth as a fundraiser at our local theatre, we discovered a photo of the never seen before Professor Liechti.  No book on Oak Island had ever published a photo of Liechti before, so we were quite excited to make this find.  That find led to another, which would open up a whole new ongoing line of investigation for us, pertaining to the 90 Foot Stone and the Kempton Cipher.  Of course, to current knowledge, there is no proof positive that the Kempton Cipher represents the actual symbols that were carved on the 90 Foot Stone, taken out of the Money Pit on Oak Island, but it is the best conjecture currently floating around out there.  So what was this new find?  Notebooks from the Liechti household.
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Liechti Notebooks

  These four old notebooks produced some very interesting and tantalizing possibilities.
Within the pages of one notebook is related the story of The Red Cross Knight.  For those who favour the theories revolving around Sir Francis Bacon and the Rosicrucians, this is interesting indeed.  Another notebook was a visitation log, kept by Professor Liechti's wife Minna, which recorded visits with people bearing such names as Creighton, Smith, Marshall, and McNab.  The brief notations of these visits do not tell us whether or not any of these people were related to the people who figure so prominently in Oak Island history.  Perhaps Minna visited with them for reasons of church?  We can't be sure, but it was interesting to see those names in her log book.  What really caught our interest very quickly is that we started to see symbols from the Kempton Cipher jump out at us from the pages of the notebooks.  Imagine trying to keep quiet in the viewing room of the archives when that happened!
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Liechti Notebooks
  Take a look at this page from one of the notebooks.  How many symbols from the cipher do you see on just this page alone?  The centre dot circle, the triple dot, the triangle, the plus symbol, and depending on your interpretation, the letter "C" (some people think of it as a left bracket in the cipher, and maybe it is).  Take a look at another page from the notebooks.
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Liechti Notebook - 1887
  Even the badly written Roman number one makes an appearance.
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Liechti Notebook - 1887
  One frustrating observation we made was that the first four or five pages were cut out of this notebook.  What was on those pages that some previous Oak Island researcher made off with?  Perhaps I assume too much.  Maybe the original owner of the book had need of paper and cut those pages out.  You can tell, from what remains of the pages, that some of those cut out had been written on.

  Now before we go any further, I do have to draw your attention to evidence that this particular notebook was used by Professor Liechti's daughters in their studies at Dalhousie University.  One daughter was named after her mother Minna, and the other daughter was named Bertha.  As one of the notebooks in the collection (the visitor log) belongs to Minna the mother, it may be her name on the page in the image below, but I suspect the names reference the two daughters.

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Liechti Notebook - Minna and Bertha Liechti
  So where do we stand?  Here we have Liechti notebooks, containing seven or more of the eighteen unique symbols that make up the Kempton Cipher, but they do not appear to belong to the Professor himself.  What we realized was that many of the Kempton Cipher symbols were mathematical symbols in use in the late 1800s. 
Are all the symbols in the Kempton Cipher mathematical symbols?
  Mathematical symbols?  Is it possible that they are nothing more than mathematical symbols?  Not an ancient language?  Not Alchemy symbols?  Not Masonic symbols?
To be sure, some of the symbols can be found in all of the above, but as it turns out, only mathematics uses the whole symbol set.  None of the others use every symbol.  This was very intriguing.  Kel Hancock, Thomas Kingston, Petter Amundsen (who was not researching with us but was involved in the conversations in the discovery process), and myself, had a few exciting weeks as more and more of the symbols prove themselves to be a part of mathematics and mathematical notation.  But how can we use this realization?  If we accept that all the symbols are mathematical in origin, what does that tell us about the cipher and the person who created it?

  One of the loosely scientific tests we did was to ask a group of individuals from diverse backgrounds to fill out a form that was divided into 18 blocks.  I asked these people to write one unique mathematical symbol in each of the 18 blocks.  This was done without an explanation as to why.  I wanted to see how easy it was for someone to be able to cite eighteen mathematical symbols.  Out of the 30 people I tasked with filling out the form, twenty-six of them had a university education.  Only one person filled out the whole form.  The average number of symbols written on the form was 9.  The only value in this exercise was that it illustrated that it isn't easy to come up with 18 unique mathematical symbols from memory.  The only person to cite 18 unique characters was a mathematician.  This suggests to me that the person who created the cipher was likely either trained in higher mathematics, like a mathematician, engineer, or surveyor would be, or this person turned to a mathematics textbook for his symbol set.  That doesn't really narrow the field to much, but then again, how many people had a book on mathematics at hand in the 1800s or earlier?

Perhaps we could analyze the symbols and prove the cipher a fake.
  Finding the symbols in the Liechti notebooks also drove home the point that many of those symbols were in use in 1887, and that perhaps Liechti himself used them to fake the cipher.  Many Oak Island authors and researchers have raised the possibility that the cipher was made up to excite people and help sell shares in a new treasure hunting venture on Oak Island.  If this was true then perhaps we could analyze the symbols and prove the cipher a fake.  After all, symbols in mathematical notation have a documented origin.  If any of those dates of first use were after 1804, then the cipher was more than likely a fake (if you accept that the were derived from mathematics).

Let's take a look at each symbol in the cipher.  To help us determine the date of first use of a symbol, we used the book shown below and written by Florian Cajori, which was recommended to use by the Professor of Mathematics at Dalhousie University.  He said that this book was the go to book for reference by todays mathematicians.  
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  Here is a brief excerpt from Wikipedia about the expertise of Cajori in the history of mathematics:
  Cajori's A History of Mathematics (1894) was the first popular presentation of the history of mathematics in the United States. Based upon his reputation in the history of mathematics (even today his 1928–1929 History of Mathematical Notations has been described as "unsurpassed") he was appointed in 1918 to the first history of mathematics chair in the U.S, created especially for him, at the University of California, Berkeley.
We couldn't prove the cipher a fake
  Several times during the assessment of individual symbols I thought I had found proof that that particular symbol was too new to have been used in a cipher that was supposedly on a stone and in the ground before 1804 (the year the stone was supposedly found), but each time I was able to push the "first use" date back to a time prior to 1804.  We couldn't prove the cipher a fake in this manner.  What I came to realize was that mathematical symbols get used and reused to represent different values in mathematics.  Over the years, decades, and even centuries, one mathematician would use a symbol in his work, but no other mathematician would use it.  Some symbols came into vogue and fell out of vogue, only to be snapped up again in the future, to be used for another purpose.  To reach this point in my research, I have read more books on mathematics than I ever did in all my years of schooling combined.  I scanned math books written in different languages all the way back into the 1500s, looking for these symbols in their equations.  Sometimes the same symbol was used to represent totally different things.  You see, as I came to find out, duels and been fought and cold wars had developed over the centuries due to disagreements in mathematical notation.  European mathematicians would use a symbol to mean one thing, and British Mathematicians would use the same symbol to mean something else.  Neither accepting the others methods.  As David Blankenship commented to me, "What a stupid thing to fight over".
  After proving to myself that all the symbols used in the Kempton Cipher could be identified as being in use prior to 1804, I turned my focus towards the country of origin for each symbol.  Perhaps a clue could be found there?  Before we discuss whether that bore any fruit, lets take a look at what I was able to find out about each of the symbols as a mathematical symbol.  As was mentioned before, some symbols are so universal that we can find them used in languages, and signage other the math, and some are so universal within mathematics that they are basic geometry that go back to math's misty beginnings.
Let's identify and set aside those universal symbols right away.  I have a page from an early textbook to help illustrate these symbols.
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  As you can see, some of the symbols used in the cipher can be said to be derived from the very basics of math.  Take a look at the image immediately above.  Look in the narrative to the left.  See the cross at the end of the fifth line?

  The following images show the information we gathered on the symbols:
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Note:  Research by author Joy Steele has shown that a duplicate crossed out character in written word can mean that the preceding letter should be capitalized.  I mention it here because it is an intriguing insight, though just like a crossed out character, it does not change the meaning of the cipher.
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  Note the date of first use (always in red in the lower right-hand corner.  the name of the mathematician to use the symbol will be displayed here as well).  This was one of those instances where I though we had proven the cipher a fake.
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  Further research turned up that this symbol's first known use was in 1720 by Christian Schlesser, and fit the symbols even better than the idea that it was an aleph did.  I also investigated the idea that it was a poorly carved division symbol as well, which would have also suggested that the cipher was a fake.
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  The "colon" symbol is one of the first symbols that started to suggest to me that maybe the symbols chosen in the Kempton Cipher could be used to determine a country of origin for either the cipher or the education of the person who created the cipher.  The use of the colon symbol in a mathematical symbol set suggests that the person who wrote the cipher might be from the European Continent, or at least had been educated there.  As our Professor Liechti had been.  See, I wasn't yet closed to the idea that the cipher was faked.
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Was this another basic geometry shape like the others?
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Was it a poorly written Roman numeral one?  It was really interesting to see it turn up in the Liechti notebooks as well.  Other examples within the notebook were written properly, so perhaps this was simply hurried handwriting.  It makes one wonder though.  Kempton's eyesight was poor and his handwriting really large and messy when he wrote Blair in 1949.  Kempton apologizes to Blair for this and states that his assistant wasn't there to write the letter for him.  If Professor Liechti was the unnamed teacher who sent Kempton the Oak Island story with the cipher somewhere around 1909, he would have been older and retired as well.  Did his daughter write the story up for him?  Would that explain the Roman numeral one looking like it does, if indeed this is what this symbol is?  As far as mathematics go, the symbol used in either manner as shown in the above images, were in use well before 1803.
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This 17th century German math book shows the Roman Numeral one in use back then.
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  In the above image we see that the triple dot triangle as used in the Kempton Cipher is of the German usage, and not the English usage which would have seen it inverted.  I feel that we are starting to see a bias towards mathematical symbols as used by German mathematicians.
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  So there you have it.  One and a half years of researching this possibility has led me to the observations noted in this article.  Does it help clear up any of the mystery surrounding the cipher?  Maybe not.  Does it prove the cipher was faked?  No.  Does it prove the cipher is real? No, but it does show that it could be.  There are no symbols within it that were not in use before 1803.  I believe it also shows that someone with a higher education created the cipher.  Could it have been Swiss educated Professor Liechti, at the bequest of less than honest promoters?  It could.  Could it have been an engineer or surveyor employed by the originators of a pre-1795 Money Pit.  Yes, it could.

Let me leave you with one other surprising piece of information.  Let's look again at the minus oder weniger.
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  The Swiss Mathematician Christian Schlesser is the only mathematician to use this symbol, that I have been able to identify in the last year and a half.  Back then the trail ran cold on this angle of research.   I could find nothing on this man.

  Recently however, in talking with a cousin of mine whose mother is German, he enlightened me to the fact that Schlesser is an Americanization of the name Scheßler.
Armed with this new piece of intel, I just tried looking this mathematician up again, with much better results.   Guess what?  Christian Scheßler wrote books on mathematics and the design of fortifications!

  What does that mean?  On the surface, it suggests that this man had the knowledge to engineer the legendary Oak Island works and to create a cipher that contains his unique symbol.  If only we could place him in the service of the usual suspects.  I have written to the mathematics society in Germany asking for a biography on Christian Scheßler.  The research continues.  Here are some illustrations from one of his books on the subject.
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Demonstrationes Mathematicae oder Untersuchung derer Mathematischen Warheit-und Unwarheiten : allwo von der Arithmetica Geometria Stereometria Mechanica Brenn-Spiegeln/ Fortification
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  This illustration seems to show a weapon which focuses the power of the sun to burn up ships.  I can't read the German language, but if one of you can and would care to find out the details about this illustration, I would love to hear about it. 

Update:  Howard, a reader, tells us that the "weapon is not of German origin, It's Greek, its Archimedes fire ray developed before 212 BC "

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  Our time is more limited than when we started this line of investigation.  I wanted to disclose what we have been working on, in hopes that someone with an interest in Oak Island and better suited to explore the Swiss and German archives might be inspired to look into this further.  As stated in the above image, "Nothing could be learned about this author of this very rare work".

  If you have managed to read this far into the quagmire that is this line of inquiry, I would be interested in what you think on the possibilities raised here.  It may all be a strange coincidence, but I never suspected that it would lead here.  Occam's Razor suggests that our Swiss Educated Professor Liechti created the cipher by drawing upon his European education.  That would fit with the evidence that suggests the symbol choices seem to be derived from that region.  However his motivation to fake a cipher depends upon the perpetration of a fraud by men trying to raise funds for continuing a treasure hunt, and that is something that has been suggested by some, but proven by none.  On the other hand, would Liechti have chosen a symbol that fell out of limited use over a hundred years before he even began his education?  I hope to hear feedback on the content of this article from those with a fresh eye.

Goodnight from The Blockhouse!
29 Comments
Howard
4/18/2016 03:01:29 pm

The weapon is not of German origin, It's Greek, its.Archimedes fire ray developed before 212 BC .
Most of the equations you're showing are semi advanced geometry exercises for solving angles, chords and arcs... Nothing to much mystical there , any civil engineer use the same calculations . As far as the stone thingie goes ...not my cup o' tea BUT the 90' stone cypher should also be plugged into the HO stone and see if it sticks.

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Howard
4/18/2016 03:10:35 pm

What I came up with using the 90' stone compared to the HO stone
H meaning unknown
: =E
+ = U
: =E
Circle with dot = S
SO its ? EUES

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Will
10/30/2020 02:07:50 pm

My very first instinct when I saw this was it's complicated math.which is connected to nolens cross you take the dimensions of the cross plug it into the cypher stone math and there lays the treasure

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Terry J. Deveau link
4/23/2016 04:16:54 pm

Doug: excellent research!

In my mind, there is absolutely zero doubt that someone in Nova Scotia, circa 1900 ± 10, came up with the phrase "FORTY FEET BELOW TWO MILLION POUNDS ARE BURIED" and then went on to encode this phrase as a cryptogram using a simple substitution cypher. Your point that they selected symbols probably most familiar to someone who studied mathematics in Switzerland is an amazing achievement.

Ultimately, though, this cypher is merely a bit of comic relief in the study of Oak Island history. There is zero chance that this phrase encoded into a cypher was ever carved on any stone originally buried 90 feet deep in the Money Pit on Oak Island when that pit was first filled in.

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Dave
12/16/2019 08:05:32 am

Terry, I agree with your first paragraph. But in your second paragraph, I take it to mean no one inscribed a cipher that included the "forty feet below two million .... " phrase.

The inscription has been transliterated and a literal translation derived from the Berber dialect(s) that the inscription includes. The existence of clearly discernible root syllables is possible, once one has gained enough familiarity with all the unfamiliar history and orthography of the graphemes used. (I caution that attempting this is not for the faint of heart, or those who -- like most of us -- have to devote our available time to other matters.)

But it is not only possible, it can be done, and authoritatively based on lexicons and dictionaries that have been published, since the turn of the 20th century. A considerable number of the dialects still have no dialects even in the 21st century.

I have posted a literal translation to YouTube which took over 10 months of very intensive study and reading to even attempt. I have not shown the actual transliteration in the short video, as this is the essence of my effort. But suffice to say, it is completely defensible within the dialect(s) it is represented. This work could not even commence until some 4-5 months being expended in evaluating the directionality of the 'signs' that are used, and the detection of gender, temporal and other indicators of correct verb interpretation had been achieved. It requires much more than expecting to buy a lexicon for a particular dialect, then extrapolating from there. Because root syllables, much as latin-language words, can have several, or even many, meanings, which represent different verbalizations of ideas, concepts, places, etc., etc.

My literal translation is at https://youtu.be/2dSB_R-Con8

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Gatwick south parking link
5/30/2017 10:23:18 pm

Thank you for sharing this post.

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Alex Keiths
2/17/2018 11:59:54 am

Very interesting read, thanks for sharing.

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Michel
3/22/2018 09:24:25 am

In my mind, the translation of the stone cypher : "forty feet below.......buried" is probably not the proper traduction.

A) If as it seem that Templers are involved, the traduction of the cypher should most likely be in french or latin, less probable Arabic.
Most if not all of the Templers came from France (French) and have close link with the Catholic church (Latin)
Furthermore, leaving an encrypted message for someone to be able to decipher need to be in a language known to these persons.

B) There is also 3 different versions of the symbols of the 90 feet stone. One was made from memory after trace of the stone was lost, on was made in 1804 be a person identify as J.R.Y. ? and the third one from unknown origin.

C) If I am to but hide a treasure, I want to be sure that if I die, my descendants will be able to decipher the message I have left. Therefor it is imperative that the traduction is in a language known to them and that the cypher symbols is also known to them, yet, able to mystify anyone else.

Then again, I am not a specialist and be way off in my thinking,
so take my comment at face value not as a criticism of work made by other to try to solve this riddle.

Michel

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Don Williams
9/15/2018 09:51:15 pm

All of that information that had been collected and compiled and you are still way off the mark.
The symbols were meant to be used for the purpose of creating an overlay that would be superimposed on a map of Oak Island for the explicit purpose of locating specific target sites that serve as the locations of tunnel entrances , step-by-Ste guides to specific treasure locations, line-of-sight guides to specific treasure locations, or to be used in conjunction with specific treasure maps such as the two Mar Del maps, the map referred to as the Key or Kidd treasure map, the Sarah map , or any of the other authenticated maps that have an historic connection to Oak Island.
Anything else is simply fanciful and wishful nonsense. I have made many attempts over the last five years to establish contact and communication with the Lagina brothers and the group who are currently trying to discover treasures on the island and have even had the Atlantic Sector of the federal government Heritage Canada provide a referral and all attempts have been ignored and rejected by the treasure hunters and owners of Oak Island. These are the same individuals who claim that they are serious about finding treasure and that they are willing to follow up on all information that could help them to succeed in finding treasure. They spend millions of dollars every year and suck investors into what now appears to be merely a scam. If they had been in the least bit serious about achieving success then they would have taken the time to contact me to find out what information I have to offer them and they would have had success five years ago and within a matter of days.

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Rick
2/15/2019 12:08:11 pm

I think there response might be tied to your credentials, curious what are they? No slander meant. Thks,

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michael
2/6/2020 07:00:20 am

Don, without having read your theory about the 90 foot stone being a set of survey directions, I myself deducted this reasoning just recently. I believe they are symbols that are a rudimentary geometric way to survey the location of the trap door to shut down the flood system. Why else would it be there just before the trap. Nice to here someone with logic. The TV show is so frustrating to me.

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Dave
2/6/2020 01:17:31 pm

Michael, you responded to Don with a rhetorical question "Why else would it (i.e. the 90 foot stone) be there just before the trap". If you have looked at my YouTube video and given it serious review, you should come away with the notion that it was meant as a warning message from the builder(s) to any interloper happening to dig down that far. It is not meant to be comprehensible to the finder, if the finder is not part of the creators' entourage or descendants or heirs, part of their cognoscenti if you will. And that is why, IMO, it also has additional meaning which may become apparent to anyone considering that the 'signs' used on the stone apparently were very real in regards to their message, or certainly real with respect to the intent of the message. It is not a survey or some kind of encrypted treasure map. It is a simple yet profoundly revealing message.

jon Adams
3/21/2020 09:27:24 pm

s a mason and a student of esoteric masonry I am intruiqed by your studies. please keep me informed

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John of Lunenburg
11/17/2018 04:40:26 am

This is wonderful research. I have believed the base language of the code was something other than English all along. But what I am surprised you didn't point out based on this background, is the "tree of life" and "Nolan's cross" as it's known, could have been the initial preparation and layout for a fortification on the island that was never completed. I don't recall ever hearing that possibility raised previously.

Thanks for your work!

John

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John Lord
1/16/2019 01:27:24 pm

Symbols and ciphers

The % symbol on the stone (in this case backwards % symbol, of having dots instead of the 0/0 or 0\0 modern designation).

There is no known existence of use prior to 1425 ... then later in the comments ... the earliest use of this symbol is in a 1339 arithmetic text - WIKI reference - percentage symbol age and dating.

If the % symbol is valid (forwards or backwards) then 1339-1425 is a potential oldest date for this cipher, .. up to the stone being drawn 1803/1804 in other documents, ... This could be any date within this 1339 - 1804 period for this carved stone (i.e. real or fake).

CIPHER

Whether Leichti (most probably) solved the cipher ... and Kempton passed along the findings ... whether the entire cipher is real or fake, ... whether the entire stone is real or fake ... is a multiple and complex anomaly of unknowns - not having THE STONE with the ENGRAVINGS on it.

The cipher is virtually a bogus cipher of symbols, mathematica, and pseudo-Greek letters.

As a Mason and Rosicrucian, and somewhat knowledgable about codes and ciphers, this engraving and its found-solution is much like the later 1844 novel of Alexander Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo about a prisoner and a priest. The priest took years deciphering a precious and ravaged document (edges worn off). You need to fill in the missing French-Latin letters on both sides of the document - to read the full statement about a massive treasure horde location. One wonders if Dumas wrote his book on parts of the Oak Island Treasure Stone (!).

Having knowledge of the masonic and Rosicrucian symbolic ciphers - NO CIPHER DESIGN of the many "#," "double-crossed "X," or other geomatria (Platonic solids etc) have anything like this hodge-podge of characters. Even thinking about the hidden ciphers in Baconian or Shakespearean writings, nothing compares to this bogey cipher.

Of any people coming to this location (with historical contacts) Eric the Red and Leif Ericsson (Norse 900s-1100s), Welsh Prince Madog (1170), English Ralph de Sudley 1200s, Templars 1100s-1300s), Portuguese Prince Henry Navigator (1400s), Spanish (1400s-1600s), French (1500s-1700s), and English (1600s-present) ... these would be people highly educated in Latin, Norse Runes if ciphering slashes and cross bar lettering), and any ancient Greek or German that would confuse a non-learned person in decoding the stone. As such, this hodge-podge of the historical THE STONE, its drawing, ... are also all faked up. A fake discovery, a fake stone, a fake cipher, ... and what would be solved by letter substitution (how many words are 3-lettered ?, how many 4-lettered, etc). And the cipher amazingly ONLY ciphers out into pure (and modern properly spelled out words - no Roman Latin, no Olde English, no Welsh, no Scottish, no Spanish, no French, no Norse, ...

Just that statement would make this stone of a British occupation vs anybody else, and in those British contacts of Sudley (1200s), English Templars (1100s-1300s), and English (1600s-present).

A context of these dates would be the Templars and the Crusades - and hiding something - or the raucous 1600s English times, and anything during the Cromwell Revolution (royal jewels), Protestant Reformation wars, and English-French wars.

And it is again noted that Rev. A.T. Kempton (Cambridge, Mass.) and other Canadian (Freemason) Kemptons of the Nova Scotia region have long been curious about this island enigma. As well as I - the leading Kempton/Kimpton clan genealogist - and distant cousin to both of these individuals.

It is a known history that the FitzAlans (Norman 1066 cousins to Duke William Conqueror) were part of the (undocumented) English crusades, and the FitzAlans were the Commanding General of the First Crusade (not mentioned in FRENCH catholic ! crusade books). As such, these English Templars were CELTIC christians, neither catholics nor Anglicans. Anything having to do with America, would be the Celtic Christian templars, ... and those earliest of Mayflower Pilgrims (Celtic Christians - not later Protestants) - and definitely not Puritans (Anglican English Episcopaliam puritans) of the early colonies - of which the Kemptons arrived with the Mayflower and then in the winter 1632/34, of which we-all Kemptons descend from. These FitzAlans were a close cadre of the nobility, and siding with the House of Lancaster (Celtics) vs the House of York (Anglican) religious warfare of those days. These FitzAlans were historical partners with the later banished Black Douglas lineage of John and James Douglas, as Dukes of Touraine (in France) in the 1300s-1400s, Other entitlements was that the FitzAlans were made Captain of the Cinque Ports (5 ports) a very powerful (admiralty) in their own right - the same in modern US and Canadian Coast Guard positions - equalling Admiralty powers. As such, these FItzAlans, having celtic christian, templar crusaders, and sailing and port options, fit into the history of the New At

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Dave
2/6/2020 01:23:47 pm

John, a lot of content you included. But none of this shows a direct association with either the symbols of the stone (as generally accepted even if not presently documented in the historical record.)

But if you are suggesting it is not a mathematics cipher, I completely concur, albeit apparently for other reasons than your own.

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Kim
3/26/2019 04:54:34 pm

Christian Schebler’s picture of mathematical fortification is exactly how Fort Beauséjour / Fort Cumberland was built in Nova Scotia

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Dave
7/2/2019 03:24:54 pm

Some good comments, especially the insights into Masonic symbols. The symbols that are often depicted in relation to the so-called (non-existent?) 90-Foot Stone are in fact very real. It would take more space than I am allowed to cover all the bases.

First we need to separate the "message" from the "medium". This is very important when comparing alphabets used for handwriting (quill pen, for example) from those intended to be applied by a stone mason. Won't bore you with all the minutiae but the medium makes a very big difference -- a person writing in cursive script requires much less space, effort, energy, etc. to convey the same message that might be intended for a mason.

Secondly, just because the medium may not be relocatable does not in and of itself prove that purported messages, signs, symbols etc. were not real at some point in the past. Whether it be an artist's conception, or a old papyrus, the symbols to be applied to pen or stone (or clay) have to be selected and executed.

Since if you stayed with me to here, I am announcing publicly that after a lengthy period of study, the symbols in use are very real and may be found in many places from the islands off west Africa to the deserts and mountains of much of North Africa.

They are slightly different dialects of Libyco-Berber Script. (I will gradually elaborate as my work proceeds. I have some of the "signs" interpreted. (It's very slow, and you have to be able to read French, as the scholarly works are associated with the period in which much of Northwest African was under the aegis of the French Empire.

IF you want to learn more, please respond in some manner.

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Jess link
12/15/2019 09:22:48 pm

I would like to know more.

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Dave
12/16/2019 08:14:21 am

Jess, we all hope to learn more about the stone, such as does it still exist, is there an extant, credible rubbing or drawing of the inscription exactly as it appeared on the stone.

Based solely (for now) on the credibility of the sample provided to Dr. Barry Fells by P. Donahue, and recognizing that he appears to have made some changes which IMHO call his interpretation into serious doubt, I have nevertheless used it as the basis for a transliteration and translation from Berber dialect into French, then into English.

I mention this in another post this same date, and include the YouTube link there. But for convenience, here it is again: https://youtu.be/2dSB_R-Con8

jon
3/21/2020 09:24:21 pm

as a student of esoteric masonry I am very interested in further findings

Reply
Joel link
9/26/2019 12:54:58 pm

First I am a novice treasure hunter, metal detectorist, adventurer, and general PIRATE at heart..... Knowing what i do about hidden treasure.....WHY would you bury a coded message at 90 feet? if it's in code, it could be on the surface. Furthermore even if it was the ark of the covenant, and they had hundreds of years to prep the site for "burial" wouldn't the whole point of it all to be able to return at some point and with little to moderate exertion dig up the treasure? A TRUE BURIED TREASURE can be hidden at 3 or 4 feet or below the frost line.....MEANING that at 10 feet NO ONE would EVER find it. Even with an elaborate tunnel system somewhere somehow there would be an easy access whether it was only exposed at low tide or a hidden entrance. I believe that the hidden treasures were discovered and spent many many years ago, and in order to conceal that fact the concept of NOPE I DIDN'T FIND ANYTHING came to be. I HOPE I'M WRONG, but its similar to me standing on a beach after I've just put my 5th gold ring of the day in my pocket when someone asks "FOUND ANYTHING"......uhhhhh NOPE

Reply
Larry
1/4/2020 12:00:03 pm

Couple of ideas.
It's a gravesite. The cove has a ship in it that's a grave.
Why would they put a stone indicating a treasure in the ground 90' below the surface? It's a decoy to where the real treasure is. If you want something hidden, you wouldn't put clues to it's location!!
The stone is a burial marker or a headstone..

Reply
Jason F
4/6/2020 02:08:42 am

I've been interested in Oak Island ever since reading about it over 30 years ago as a young teen. After the first time I read a semi-detailed account of the 90 foot stone (20+ years ago) my first thought was that the "forty feet" translation and the replicated symbols were quite obviously fake. Since then every new piece of information I've learned has only reinforced this for me. That's why I was very surprised to see how much interest and credence was given to the 90 foot stone on The Curse of Oak Island. (To clarify - it's very possible that a stone with symbols on it was taken out of the money pit, but it's extremely unlikely that the supposed replication the translation is based on is authentic).

To keep it short I'll just bullet point my reasons:

*Assuming they both exist/existed, it's fairly unlikely that the message would be written in English - based on who could have buried it and when it could have been buried.
*Even if the language used was English, it would be English from at least 250 years ago, possibly much older. Spelling and word choice would not perfectly match modern English.
*There's no logical reason to bury a message 90 feet underground stating that the treasure was forty feet below. If such a message were going to be left it would be much closer to the surface where it could actually serve a purpose.
*The symbols are an odd choice for a coded message being carved in stone. 1) Carving is a lot different (and more difficult) that writing - it's easy to unintentionally chip pieces off if trying to make small or complex designs. It would make sense to use symbols easy to accurately carve and many of these symbols are not. 2) If creating your own symbols for a code (especially one being carved into a rock and buried, which could lead to damage or wear) you would choose symbols very unique and identifiable to avoid mistakes when translating, which is not the case with these symbols.
*The translated code that is presented is the easiest form of code to decipher. It's just a straight forward substitution cipher. It's almost impossible to imagine that it took 150 years before someone translated it.

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Lee
4/14/2020 07:14:13 am

Here is a crazy idea... What if its a combination of things??? At first I thought it was like a map then I thought it was geometrical shapes then I thought it was a mathematical problem Then thought it could be a Language... So just 1 symbol could have multiple meanings... For example I have seen an upside down triangle as part of math then it also could be a letter and a word all at the same time the upside down triangle could mean water and a line going through an upside down triangle is earth and so on...

Reply
ElHamid
5/13/2020 02:41:16 pm

Hi,
This writing is an Amazigh (Berber) language of North Africa, we call it TIFINAGH


Best regards

Reply
Dave
5/13/2020 10:41:50 pm

Hamid, I completely agree, as can be seen from my post in this forum page dated 7/2/2019.

I have also posted on You Tube my efforts to translate the supposed message, i.e. in absence of any real image of it. You can view it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dSB_R-Con8. I welcome your thoughts on this, even though we may never learn with any certainty what the symbols actually were. Regards, Dave

Reply
Lee P
12/8/2020 01:38:07 pm

Wonderful information, thank you. One thing about your comment “ This 17th century German math book shows the Roman Numeral one in use back then.”. On closer inspection you might find it is not the numeral for one, but rather a capital “I” as part of the illustration. It in fact includes all the letters A to I. Still great work!

Reply
Cory link
12/11/2020 01:53:28 am

Hi grreat reading your post

Reply



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