Shepherd’s Monument is at Shugborough Hall in Staffordshire. The monument was built sometime between 1748 and 1763. The eight-letter inscription on this monument is a sequence of letters–O U O S V A V V, between the letters D M. On Roman tombs, the letters ‘D M’ commonly stood for Dis Manibus, meaning ‘Dedicated to the shades’. The Shugborough Monument, however, is not a Roman tomb. So, this interpretation for D and M can be misleading. Explanations have ranged from a coded love-letter to Biblical verse. The code has not yet been cracked by experts, and remains the world’s top uncracked cipher texts.
Shepherd’s Monument Inscription
