Category Archives: Moustier Cryptograms

I’ve just had some nice emails from Belgian writer Dirk Huylebrouck, whose article on the mysterious cryptograms in Moustier church is (today) appearing in popular Belgian science magazine EOS. Dirk’s article has some great photographs, and even includes some insights from codebreaker Jarl van Eycke (whom readers here may know as jarlve and/or from the deservedly famous Zodiac decryption). It’s a nice piece of work, well illustrated and well laid out, one which I heartily recommend to all my Belgian readers.

And here’s the article…

And even better, here’s a PDF of Dirk’s English translation of his own article. Modestly, he asked whether I would prefer to edit it a little: but it’s actually a very clear and entertaining read just as it is, and all that my well-meaning edits would probably achieve would be to lose both his voice and the article’s charm.

Dirk also suggested that I might like to include images of his photos of Moustier’s twin altars here, simply because there are so few of these on the Internet. I am of course more than happy to oblige (click on this for a decent-sized resolution, both images are (c) 2022 Dirk Huylebrouck):

Finally, the interesting bit…

If I have even a small criticism, it would be that the article gives perhaps a little too much space to Rudy Cambier’s Nostradamus-based Moustier theory (which I covered here back in 2013). But in the end you can’t deny it’s a Belgian theory, so I guess Dirk had plenty of reason to indulge it just a little for EOS. 😉

Of course, even though his article captures much of the spirit of the Moustier cryptograms, Dirk is such an eminently sensible chap that he doesn’t hazard his own (inevitably doomed) guess as to what is going on. To be fair, Jarl’s crypto insights – for example, that there are far fewer letters repeated on each line of carved text than you might generally expect – do seem to run directly counter to just about any natural language hypothesis you might have about any possible underlying text. So perhaps there are fewer sustainable (supposedly) “common-sense” readings here than you might otherwise think.

The article also highlight’s Philippe Connart’s suggestion of a possible link with 10th century lettering found at the abbey of Saint-Amand-les-Eaux (40km away). All the same, that does make me wonder whether what we are looking at in Moustier might be an (imperfect) copy of a much older carving, which itself had become worn and illegible over time, leaving us at least “twice removed” from the original.

Dirk’s collaborator Evelyn Bastien (who translated his article into French) felt compelled to add the following open question: “Even if it’s an ‘exercise’, wasn’t it just as easy to engrave a simple prayer, rather than incoherent letters?” This was in response to a theory I once proposed that the ragged nature of the Moustier lettershapes suggested that it might just have been some kind of mason’s practice. And Evelyn’s point is sensible and well-made, because that theory implies a double mystery – not only did someone carve mysterious letters, but also someone else erected those same mysterious letters in their church.

But to be fair, that double mystery is what sits right at the heart of the Moustier enigma: for the challenge to our minds isn’t just that someone made the cryptograms at all, it’s also that a church community then valued them sufficiently to celebrate its own faith right alongside those cryptograms.

In the end, it’s entirely true that all attempts so far to resolve one of this linked pair of durable mysteries have thrown little (or indeed no) light on the other one. But maybe EOS’ readers will prove to have some interesting ideas that have so far evaded us all… here’s hoping!

Here’s a link to a short video piece on the Moustier cryptograms from November 2015, courtesy of Belgian television network Notélé (Christophe M reminded me of this recently, but Etienne had also noted this here back in July).

Incidentally, I tried to grab the video stream so that I could transcribe the text for you here, but sadly Notélé’s online video streaming software proved to be too cunningly clever for the various Firefox add-ons I tried, so I gave up. *sigh*

Going through the film yielded two things that I didn’t previously know about the Moustier cryptograms:

(1) According to church records, the artisan who did the stonecutting (the film says in “1848”, but I’m sure the actual date was 1838) was a local sculptor called Pierre Brébant (?) from Tournai, a mere 15 miles away from Moustier. (However, I can find no trace of him, please let me know if you can do any better).

(2) Philippe Connart’s theory about the Moustier cryptograms is that their letter-shapes mimic the 10th century Merovingian-era palaeography employed by a monk in the Abbaye at St Amand les Eaux (formerly known as Elnon Abbey or Elnone Abbey), in a copy of works by the 4th century Archbishop of Constantinople Gregory of Nazianzus.

I have to say I’m really not sure that Connart’s hypothesis really hits the spot: it’s a gigantic leap from the 10th century to the 19th century without any kind of obvious intermediary, or motivation, or need, or connection, or indeed boring churchy paperwork to support it. And of the two unusual letters that Connart highlights (a square-cut C and a zigzaggy S), only the first seems to appear in the Moustier carvings, which could easily be coincidental.

But what sits most awkwardly with me about this is that the Moustier carving simply doesn’t look like the work of a sculptor trying to emulate some high-class 10th century writing. Apart from the presence of a few unusual shapes, the carving looks rather amateurish and awkward: the letter-heights are inconsistent, while the letter-shapes also seem somewhat inconsistent.

Anyway, as always, opinions on this differ.

Namurois Crosses?

Incidentally, “La Belgique Mystérieuse” (1973) refers readers interested in the Moustier mystery to look at a number of ancient Namurois crosses whose inscriptions have resisted all interpretation. (“On connait également dans le Namurois plusieurs croix funéraires anciennes dont le texte mystérieux a résisté jusqu’à présent aux tentatives les plus ingénieuses d’interprétation.“). (p.119)

However, the best-known thing fiting that description was La Croix de Saint-Géry near Chastre, which is a 3-metre-tall cross without any trace of writing whatsoever. (Someone hit it with a car in 2013, knocking the top part of the cross clean off: but it has since been re-erected). Unlike Moustier’s curious carvings, the enigma there is simply that nobody has any idea where the cross came from (it was first mentioned in the 16th century, but seems older).

An 1875 letter by Camille Van Dessel (reproduced on p.284 [p.314 of the PDF] here) pointed to a notice by a M. Bamps in the Bulletin des Commissions royales d’art et d’archéologie suggesting two similar monuments:

L’une a été déterrée dans la plaine derrière Boekrak, l’autre à Zonhoven. M. Bamps prétend que ce sont des croix expiatoires, dont la première fut établie à la suite d’un abus de pouvoir du seigneur de Vogelzanck, la seconde à la suite d’un sacrilège commis en enterrant une statue miraculeuse.

Bamps’ note appears in full here (p.105 [p.119 of the PDF]): but both of the mysterious crosses whose histories Bamps tries to trace also have no inscription.

Hence my current belief is therefore that the Moustier set of inscriptions remains entirely unique in Belgium: but please feel free to leave a comment here if you can correct me. 🙂

A copy of Paul de Saint-Hilaire’s (1973) “La Belgique Mysterieuse” arrived in the post today. I saw it mentioned here, and ordered it because it seemed to be the only book out there (apart from Rudy Cambier’s Knights Templar / Nostradamus stuff) where Moustier Church’s strange cryptograms are discussed at all.

It’s a handy little thing, that divides its mysterious subject matter into:
(1) Megalithic Belgium
(2) Templar Belgium
(3) Lost Treasure Belgium
(4) Alchemical Belgium
(5) Fantastic(al) Belgium
(6) Underground Belgium, and – of course –
(7) Secret Belgium.

Each chapter finishes up with a suggested tour around the Belgian countryside to take in the major landmarks it discussed. So… what does our man say about Moustier, then?

* On p.60, Saint-Hilaire says that the cryptograms may relate to a treasure hidden in the 19th century. (But without giving any sources or references – annoyingly, there is no bibliography).
* On p.119, he notes that the cryptograms are laid out in the same way as you would expect to see “The Tables of the Law” (i.e. the Ten Commandments), but that it has so far proved impossible to find the key.
* On p.129, he speculates that examining some windows of the church and a small chapel in the village might prove useful in decrypting the inscriptions. (But, again, without giving any sources or references).

And that’s all Saint-Hilaire says about Moustier. It’s not much, true: but it is what it is.

* * * * * * *

Having mused on the Moustier enigma for the last few weeks, my own conclusions are:
* I don’t believe that it was carved before 1800
* I don’t believe that it uses a simple substitution cipher
* I don’t believe that it uses a transposition cipher
* I do believe that it includes copying mistakes
* I do believe that it was copied from a written version, not from a carved text
* I do believe that the written version was probably devised for the rebuilding of the Church
* I do believe that the resemblance to The Tables of the Law will prove to be no coincidence

Put all that together, and I suspect that the cipher that was used was very probably what is generally known as the Vigenère cipher (even though it was actually first invented by Bellaso, but we’ll let that pass).

The immediate question is, of course, is whether this is historically plausible for the proposed date? I’m sure it is – in fact, at that very time, it was renowned as le chiffre indéchiffrable, i.e. ‘the unbreakable cipher’.

I also have here a fascinating (if occasionally meandering) book by Ole Immanuel Franksen called “Mr Babbage’s Secret”, which reveals that Charles Babbage had quietly worked out the basic principles of how to crack Vigenère ciphertexts as early as 1846. This was later independently worked out by a Frenchman called de Viaris in 1888, who published his results in the “Génie Civil”, but without attracting much attention.

Because the Vigenère cipher was particularly popular in France, I predict that the plaintext will turn out to be in French: and moreover, I suspect that the key word will turn out to be something to do with the Ten Commandments (or perhaps Christianity in general), or perhaps even the name of something featured in a church window (as Saint-Hilaire speculated).

Anyway, that’s pretty much as good a set of constraints as my historical sleuthing has been able to generate, and I suspect there’s no more useful information out there we can get our hands on. So now it’s probably time to move to phase #2: checking the transcription and doing a bit of cryptanalysis. If it’s a Vig, can we work out what its key-length is? Hopefully we shall see! 🙂

After many years of searching, I finally have a viable excuse reason to go to Belgium that doesn’t involve chocolate, waffles, mussels, chips, or beer. 🙂 And it’s all thanks to the National Security Agency…

I should explain. A few weeks ago, the NSA very generously declassified back issues of its in-house journal “Cryptolog” from August 1974 to Summer 1997 (though admittedly quite heavily redacted in places). Hence I’ve started working my way through them, looking (unsurprisingly) for any Cipher Mysteries stories that haven’t otherwise come to my attention. (Note that there are two Voynich-related snippets listed in the overall index, but these contain nothing obviously new or particularly surprising).

Hence the September 1974 issue of Cryptolog is where I found this particular story. It’s about a church in the Belgian town of Moustier which has a pair of rather curious cryptograms, which Professor Jean Connart (who was writing a history of Moustier), “has been trying since 1961 to discover the meaning” of. Without success, of course.

The first cryptogram is on the church’s St Martin’s Altar (photo by Koen Van de moortel)…

…and the second is on its Virgin’s Altar (photo also by Koen Van de moortel, but scaled up and sharpened by me)…

What’s nice is that the Cryptolog pages answer many of the questions you’d have asked about Moustier Church if you’d had the chance:

According to parish records, the church at Moustier was in such dilapidated condition about 1836 that repairs were needed to/prevent total ruin of the building. In addition, the winds of November 1836 had taken off part of the roof. In June 1838, some work was undertaken “in accordance with the plans of Philibert Pluvinage and Pierre Joseph Lemaitre. “A stonemason (un tailleur de pierre) received board and lodging for 18 days.” (Italics Prof. Connart’s)

In spite of these repairs, the church was (c.1840?) in such poor condition that part of it collapsed when the roof was raised. The contractors had to rebuild the choir and the side chapels (where the altars are) from the ground up.

There is a published report (Moulart, Basecles; Esquisse religieuse) that the ancient altar of St. Martin was sold or offered for sale at Basecles in 1843. Basecles, a Belgian town near the French border, contains the Church of St. Martin which dates from 1779 and is considered the best product of the Tournai School. Does the Moustier St. Martin’s altar come from Basecles? Were both it and the Virgin’s altar constructed in l843? Or does only the stonecutting date from that time? Answers to these questions could have a bearing on the date of the Moustier cryptograms and their underlying message.

Given that we have reasonable photos of these cryptograms (rather than the hand-drawn monochrome copies that appear in the Cryptolog pages) to work with, we’re arguably at an advantage over the NSA right from the start. And from that I can see that the letter carving is really rather… variable. The height of each row of letters seems inconsistent, with the vertical bars on the U in “LUBΓPNID” plainly different lengths; each row is 7, 8 or 9 characters long; there seems to be no obvious rationale as to whether individual characters have serifs or not; while some characters appear to be formed of merged pairs of letters, possibly accidentally (copying ciphers onto paper is hard, let alone onto stone) or deliberately (to squeeze them into a rectangle), it’s hard to tell.

Yet from the distinctive ‘R’ shape, and the closeness of the match between the materials and framing motif, I think it very likely that the two were carved by the same person at basically the same time.

If you want to take this on, here are my (provisional) transcriptions. I’ve transcribed the “Γ” character as ‘F’, the “Λ” character as “^”, and the composite “Γ-merged-with-L” character as “[“. And being in Belgium, you’ve got Flemish, French, German, and Latin (at least) to choose from as possible plaintext languages. Just be grateful that the dating seems to rule out Klingon. 😉

Moustier Church, St Martin’s Altar cryptogram

J N L K B F P R
V M G H W H[
Q L S B N F HP
M G [ K H V R
^ L R N F S X V

P F V B L P M R
R A [ G K T D
B N D F J V R W
L U B F P N I D
C [ T R ^ Q M

Moustier Church, Virgin’s Altar cryptogram

L F E G K R V Q
Y P Z H N R L B D
M F ^ N V D [
N ^ P V J H M ^
L F N ^ B K P

N C L X B P D W
R N [ C H Z R P
M D X R ^ P L N
H F ^ L D N X W
E N L V N D ^ P N

As far as the transcription goes, I’m far from sure about what’s going on here. I have a sneaking suspicion that part of the mystery might arise from a laziness in the carver, because “E” only appears in the Virgin’s Altar, while “[” appears twice as much in St Martin’s Altar. That is, might “[” simply be a lazy ‘E’, and “^” a lazy “A”? Or might “[” instead be a merged “L + Γ” pair?

As far as letter frequencies go (~27 unique shapes used):
16: N
12: P / L / R
10: F / ^ (note that I included the one instance of ‘A’ in the count for ‘^’)
9: V / D
8: B / H
7: M
6: [
5: K
4: W / X / G
3: J / C/ Q
2: Z / S / T/ E
1: I / Y / U

As far as the cryptanalysis goes, there are quite a few patterns:
3-grams: BFP (2 instances, both in the St Martin’s Altar cryptogram)
2-grams: R^ (4 instances), ^P, PN, ^L, PM (3 instances), plus 14 other 2-grams that repeat once.

PS: Koen Van de moortel describes the cryptograms as a “table with 700 year old secret code, referred to in the “Centuries” from Yves de Lessines, stolen and published by Nostradamus“. Basically, the story there is about a 14th century Cistercian monk called Yves de Lessines, whose book “Les Centuries” Rudy Cambier (of the University of Liège) recently claimed was reused by Nostradamus for his Prophecies. Cambier also claims in his book that “Les Centuries” also describes where the Knights Templar hid their treasure. Just so you know!