The Singapore Stone, housed at the National Museum of Singapore, presents a tantalizing mystery for linguists and historians alike. This ancient slab, inscribed with an unknown script transcribing an unknown language, remains an unsolved puzzle, shrouded in historical and cryptographic enigma.
The Singapore Stone is a fragment of a once larger slab that stood at the mouth of the Singapore River. In 1843, the British blew it up to build a fort, obliterating much of the monument. The stone, discovered in 1819, was nearly lost to history. However, Scottish military officer Lieutenant-Colonel James Low salvaged three fragments, sending them to the Royal Asiatic Society’s Museum in Calcutta in 1848. While one fragment was returned to Singapore in 1918, the others have vanished, potentially lost forever.
Despite its moniker, the Singapore Stone was more than just a piece of rock; it was a significant epigraphic monument, originally measuring three-by-three metres and featuring approximately 50 lines of text. Most ancient epigraphs succumb to time’s ravages, but the Singapore Stone’s script is particularly unique, unmatched by any other known writings. This singularity has left it undeciphered, stymying efforts to understand its origins and purpose.
Without the ability to read the text, scholars can only hypothesize about its origins, with proposed dates ranging from the 10th to the 13th century. Speculations abound: was it linked to the Majapahit empire or a tribute from a South-Eastern Indian rajah celebrating the local hero Badang? The true story remains obscured until the script can be decoded.
This challenge is one of the greatest in the field of language decipherment, akin to the enduring mysteries of Linear A and the Rongorongo script. Although much of the original slab is lost, existing fragments and historical reproductions offer some hope. Before its destruction, the stone was hand-drawn in 1837 by politician William Bland and philologist James Prinsep. Even Sir Stamford Raffles, the British founder of Singapore, made attempts to understand its inscription. The surviving fragment and these early reproductions provide crucial clues.
A fundamental principle in crypto-linguistics is that the more text available, the better the chances of deciphering it through comparison, frequency analysis, and pattern recognition. The Singapore Stone’s limited text makes this task exceedingly difficult, presenting a formidable challenge to researchers.
However, history offers a glimmer of hope. In 1952, architect Michael Ventris deciphered Linear B, an unknown script representing an unknown language (Mycenaean Greek), by methodically analyzing available texts. Ventris’s success, though seemingly insurmountable, shows that such feats are possible.
Today, researchers at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, including myself, are leveraging artificial intelligence to tackle the Singapore Stone’s mystery. Our AI program, Read-y Grammarian, is designed to “learn” the surviving characters and hypothesize the missing parts of the text. Unlike human researchers, AI can work without interpretive biases, a significant advantage in decipherment efforts.
By generating a reliable reconstruction of the stone’s text, we hope to create more material for comparative analysis and pattern recognition, the initial steps towards decipherment. If successful, this approach could finally give voice to the silent, solitary stone, revealing its secrets for the first time in centuries.
For now, the Singapore Stone remains an enigmatic relic, its story untold. But with the aid of advanced technology and relentless human curiosity, we may one day unlock its ancient message, adding a fascinating chapter to the annals of history and linguistics.