A 1,000-year-old tablet inscription is one of archaeology’s greatest mysteries.

Singapore Column (Singapore Stone) Located in the National Museum of Singapore, it may disappoint visitors.

This is because its inscription, which bears an unknown writing system, makes an unknown language – fading. However, if you are a fan of puzzles, you will not be disappointed.

Adventures of the Singapore Column

This sign is part of a larger one that once greeted visitors at the mouth of the Singapore River.

The site was blown up in 1843 by the British Army, in order to build a fort.

The Singapore Pillar was discovered in 1819, but has since disappeared.

Amid widespread indifference to their fate, Scottish officer Lieutenant Colonel James Low managed to salvage three of them, which he sent to the Royal Asiatic Society Museum for examination.

The pieces reached their destination in 1848. Meanwhile, other parts of the stone had disappeared.

In 1918, the Raffles Museum in Singapore asked the museum in Calcutta to return the fragments. In the end, only one of them was returned.

Nothing is known about the rest of its pieces, which may have disappeared forever.

Despite its name (Singapore Stone), Sandstonemore than just a stone.

Despite its name, this sandstone slab is not just a “stone.” It was once part of a monument, an ancient inscription measuring 3 x 3 meters, bearing around 50 lines of text on its surface.

Many inscriptions are subject to the erosion of time. Another frequent phenomenon is the loss of remains of archaeological finds – a sad but inevitable fact.

But if you like puzzles, this won’t stop you.

The hardest puzzle of our time

the singapore column However, it is not an inscription yet.

This is because its writing system is unique, has not been found anywhere else, has not been used in any other script, and remains undeciphered.

Unable to understand the text of the inscription, experts can only offer scenarios and guesses about the time frame of its origin.

Cases range from 10^the Until the 13th^the a century, But there is still consensus.

Can the Singapore Stele be linked to the Hindu-Buddhist Majapahit Empire?

Was it an offering from a ruler of southeastern India (a raja) who praised the exploits of the local hero Badung?

Until decrypted, it is impossible to answer these questions.

The written script of Singapore is one of Bigger secrets Decoding and historical linguistics in our time.

Its difficulty can be compared to the mystery of known, unencrypted writing systems, such as Linear A’ And writing NewsWhich was discovered in 19^the The century on Easter Island.

According to cryptography, the longer the text—allowing for comparisons, analysis of repetitions, and recognition of patterns—the greater the chances of decrypting it.

On the contrary, it leads to failure.

It was similar for decoding Linear B’.

This is true in the case of the Singapore column.

An unknown writing system, which also conveys an unknown language, is every codebreaker’s worst nightmare.

However, human ingenuity has overcome similar difficulties in the past.

In 1952 the architect Michael BaileyLinear B was deciphered through a similar case study: an unknown written language system, Linear B, and an unknown language, Mycenaean.

Ventress certainly had a lot of texts at his disposal, but the task seemed impossible. And yet, it happened.

At the moment, the Singapore column remains “silent”.

But the Xi’an Jiaotong University-Liverpool Research Grouptrying to get her to “talk”.

Ready-to-Read Rules: AI Tool to Decode the Singapore Column

Analysts are planning to Read-y Grammarian, AI Program With the ability to “learn” the rescued characters, guess and explain the missing pieces.

Unlike humans, the program has no interpretive biases (cognitive biases that are influenced by the researcher’s beliefs).

Removing prejudices is a necessary condition in the research of decoding language.

If scientists can recover reliable text from the tablet, they will have more material to compare, analyze frequency, and recognize patterns, the first steps toward deciphering and understanding the content of the inscription.