The Shepherd’s Monument Mystery – Solved.

I was reading Holy Blood and the Holy Grail when I came across the “mystery” of the bas relief based on Poussin’s painting “Les Bergers d’Acadie. The authors said that the inscription DOUSOVAVVM was impossible to decipher, even with a computer. This sounded too wild to be true and I took the challenge of solving the mystery, without a computer. It took four hours, hardly impossible to decipher. My proof is listed below, I will not go into details of the references, they can easily be found on the Internet.

Clues to the Solution (not in order)

Ø      Village of Rennes-le-Chateau is perched on a rocky outcrop

Ø      Antoine Bigou miscarved the date MDCCLXXI as MDCOLXXXI. He changed C to O (not a Roman Numeral) and added an extra X or number 10

Ø      Poussin painted Les Bergers d’Acadie – the title is French

Ø      Sauniere discovered a parchment “…Poussin…hold the KEY”

Ø      Location of Poussin painting in Les Pointls, near Rennes-le-Chateau

Ø      A reverse bas relief carving of Les Bergers d’Acadie is located at Shughburough house near Staffordshire England

Ø      There are eight letters on one line of the bas relief, two letters on next line

Ø      Sauniere decoded the messages and found the Grail even though he was not a Templar initiate – he did not possess the esoteric knowledge thought to be needed

Solution (Order of learning the first five clues is unimportant: The last step can not be deciphered until the first five are understood, and you have the KEY.)

1.      Bigou replaced C with O and added reference to number 10 - CLUE

2.      There are 10 letters on inscription, eight on one line – CLUE

3.      Poussin painted Les Bergers d’Acadie - CLUE

4.      Bas relief is a “REVERSE” of Poussin’s painting – CLUE

5.      Bas relief has a casket obscuring view of Rennes le Chateau – CLUE

6.      Sauniere parchment refers to Poussin – KEY

7.      Replacing O with C in the eight-letter word and reading it REVERSED (i.e. upside down and mirrored) gives for the first line:    AAVACSNC. This is an anagram in French “Ca Canvas” (That Picture). The bas-relief in England is obscuring the location of the Holy Grail in France - SOLUTION

No esoteric knowledge needed.

Solution by Ed McGrath May 16, 2007 (not Jan 17^th)

It's an interesting thought, byt I don't think that necessary solves the mystery of Holy Grail.