This was the second and larger parchment found in
the small church of Rennes-le-Château by Bérenger Saunière and it reputedly led him to
the source of a vast fortune. I say 'reputedly' because no one really knows for sure where
his vast fortune came from. Some say he unearthed a treasure, some say it was gifts from
the rich families of the region while others believe that the source of his fortune was
something more sinister. Whatever the true source, it has been the subject of much
controversy over the years. The considerable efforts made to decipher this manuscript have
met with only limited success.
As with Manuscript 1 the writing is based on an ancient
style known as Uncial with elements of Half Uncial thrown in for good measure. It is
believed that the coding techniques used within this document are mediaeval in origin. The
author was well versed in Latin and Greek which would make him either a scholar or a
priest. Although the manuscript may look untidy, considerable care, attention and effort
went into its preparation. I have studied it for many years on and off and I can see at
least 13 possible codes that are immediately apparent. An expert in Cryptography may well
be able to discover others too.
A Brief Overview of the Codes in this
Manuscript
This page is devoted simply to drawing your
attention to each of these 'Main' codes. In the next page I will begin to delve deeper into
each one in turn and will offer some of the currently held views of what they mean as well
as my own observations.
Please note Ms2 is quite
large (278K) and may take about 30-40 seconds to load
Code 1
An enigmatic and at first glance simple looking
pictogram located towards the bottom of the page.
When inverted it reads:-
The word SION also appears a number of times on the
small manuscript and in particular the group
SINON,
near the bottom of the parchment. Note the O which is in fact a Greek Theta and which also
appears twice on the small manuscript. Also note the very interesting marks separating the
A from the N. Carefully drawn and undoubtedly highly significant.
Code 2
At the bottom of the document are two lines of
Latin Text quite different from any of the rest:-
Even a layman can spot that there is something not
quite right here. For one thing Latin does not use accents. The arrangement of the words
into groups of 3 is most odd and why on earth did he insert crosses to separate the groups
and large dots to separates the words?
Code 3
If you begin to read the manuscript and compare it
to the true Latin text of John 12 verses 1 to 11 you will quickly see that letters have
been added to almost every word. For the reader's benefit I have transcribed the text of
the manuscript with each added letter highlighted. By clicking on the button
below you can view the manuscript's text (in italic) with a comparative text from the bible
above each line.
By the end of the manuscript you will
find that
140 additional letters were carefully inserted.
Code 4
At first glance the manuscript looks like a jumble
of letters and perhaps the most striking of the hidden codes can easily be overlooked. You
have to look at the page carefully and then you see that interspersed among the letters
are some very tiny ones which when read in sequence spell out the words REX MUNDI.
Code 5
On lines 9, 10 and 11 you will find letters
raised slightly above the lines. Beginning with the first letter, each subsequent one is
positioned exactly 7 letters further on. All together they spell out the words
Genesareth is the ancient name for the sea of
Galilee and this small section of text literally means "Towards Genesareth".
These letters, incidentally also form part of the 140 additional letters inserted in to
the manuscript.
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