Sator square

Duncan Fishwick, On the Origin of the Rotas-Sator Square, The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 57, No. 1 (Jan., 1964), pp. 39-53

SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS The SATOR Square - In this Magic Square the words read the same backwards and forwards, horizontally and vertically. It was used for protection and for overcoming dange…

A 16th century German 'oath skull' (a human skull on which defendants swore their oath in Vehmic courts) - engraved with the 'magical' Roman 'Sator square', mysterious palindromic word-squares found across the Roman world, comprising the words SATOR, AREPO, TENET, OPERA, ROTAS.

Found in the ruins of Pompeii, the Latin inscription SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS (“The sower Arepo holds the wheels with effort”) may be the most symmetrical sentence ever composed. If it’s written conventionally, it’s a palindrome, reading the same forward and backward. And if it’s written into a square: … it reads the same left to right, top to bottom, right to left, or bottom to top.

The meaning of the five by five SATOR square is a subject of scholarly debate, but it has been used as a protective talisman for centuries.

something strange happened here

The word "TENET" originates from the Sator Square, a word square containing a five-word Latin palindrome that dates back to Ancient Rome. In every direction the square is rotated, these five words appear both horizontally and vertically - a property that fits the time inversion concept.