Deciphering The Iffley Knot

Nestled in a sleepy corner of a 12th Century church in Iffley, is this delightfully modern sculpture.

A large knot carved out of stone and placed upon a plinth. Look carefully and at the top of the base you'll see a series of strange runes hewn into the rock.

It was a soggy day - as they all are in Oxford - when we discovered it, so we didn't hang around too long to see if there was any information nearby. Nevertheless, I felt sure that these carvings held a meaning. Well, time for a little analysis!

First step was to make the characters a little clearer:

Zoom! Enhance! Isolate!

While these aren't the Runic alphabet, they do have similarities. A quick scan shows a number of very similar symbols. It might be possible to do a frequency analysis, but there aren't many letters to go on. Some of the letters are clumped - which could indicate common pairs, or they could be single letters.

If you'd like a go at cracking the code, stop reading now!

Rather than attack the script directly, let's use the so-called "Alexandrian solution". The artist has many similar carvings on their website. We can see that it is simply a very spacious and informal English font. Tracing over the letters with a can of virtual spray-paint allows us to see the full phrase. And, here is the final result - click to embiggen. A quote from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran.

Show The Solution!