The riddle of Igls is solved

Another Tyrolean script mystery has been solved. The mysterious signs in the Igler Totenkapelle have revealed their secret. Tyrol's number one semiologist, Erhard Maroschek, also solved this enigma. With bravura, in my opinion.

Only last summer the historian had translated the enigmatic inscription on the Goldenes Dachl. It is a quotation from the Gospel of John, chapter 8 verse 12 'EGO SUM LUX MUNDI...' The solution of this riddle was a very special feat. Artists, scientists and even writers had been working on the signs for centuries, trying in vain to 'translate' the script. Erhard succeeded in translating the secret code last summer after more than a decade of grappling with it. He was so nicely on the ball that I wanted to present him with another Tyrolean riddle a few months later. How about if he could also unravel the mystery of the black signs on the church walls in Igls and St. Sigmund?

I made a personal discovery two years ago in St. Sigmund. In the church there I noticed strange signs on the church wall. What this meant, no one could answer me. Subsequent research revealed that similar mysterious signs were written on the wall in the Igler Totenkapelle.

After only recently my Blog post about these writing findings had gone online, I turned again to Erhard Maroschek. I asked him to take a look at the photos with the mysterious inscriptions from Igls and St. Sigmund im Sellrain. I did so in the justified hope that he would also crack this tough nut. My reasoning: Whoever manages to decipher Maximilian's cipher on the Golden Roof will also be able to cope with the writing in the two churches. The fact that he managed to do it in such a short time distinguishes him in my eyes as a true 'scribe'.

Barely six weeks after my inquiry, I actually received a first e-mail with the terse message that he had cracked most of the code of the script. I immediately set out to visit the trained historian, orchid specialist, font decoder and municipal employee in Lermoos. During the bus ride to the Außerfern, I couldn't stop asking myself one question: How do you manage to decipher a secret script of which there is neither a decoding reference nor a comparative script?

As a reminder: in the mortuary chapel of Igls and in the church of St. Sigmund im Sellrain, cryptic black signs were uncovered on the wall during renovation work. The signs in Igls came to light in 1970, those in St. Sigmund somewhat later. That they were made by the same hand was clear from the start, even to me as a bloody layman. At first glance, they do not resemble any known script and are somehow reminiscent of Cyrillic letters. So far there was only one attempt to decipher them. With rather moderate success

My first question: How had Erhard Maroschek managed in this case to 'translate' at least individual letters in order to get hold of a 'corner' of the solution? "In St. Sigmund there is a drawing showing a winged angel, a trefoil and two Gothic lancet windows. Staircases can be seen through the windows, one leading up, the other down," he says. To the right of it is a sign written in large letters that looks like an M. It is one, too. "I recognized the name Michael, we are talking about the archangel Michael," Erhard describes this aha experience. With this he had his 'foot in the door', so to speak, of this secret writing.

If the scribe had reproduced the drawing of the archangel from his memory in the late Middle Ages, there must be or have been a model for it. Did such a model exist in St. Michael in the Gnadenwald? Or did the scribe know of another St. Michael's church with a similar drawing, such a window with fresco above?

The question of who was the scribe of these mysterious signs now enters the centre of the investigation. What had prompted him to write on the walls in large letters? Did he paint them on the wall in secret, perhaps even at night and in the fog? These are precisely the questions that have kept Erhard Maroschek very busy.

"I also had to do a kind of historical profiling at the same time as my decoding," he says. In the course of his decoding work, he noticed various things. Details that point to the person who wrote fantasy letters on the wall more than five hundred years ago.

First of all, there is the scope and size of the inscription in Igls. It may be assumed that the scribe worked on it over a long period of time. "He probably stayed in this room for a long time," says Maroschek. "And there's two possibilities: either he was a prisoner who was locked up in what is now the chapel of the dead. Or he was lying injured in what is now the chapel, which might have been something similar to a military hospital." A clue to the length of stay has also been left by the scribe: There are a total of 35 straight lines at various points in the chapel.

The writer confesses in his 'wall newspaper' in Igls that he could not write. He was, as he himself recorded in writing, 'OHN SCHRIFTLMAACHT IN LOCH', i.e. he did not have the power to write. And was also in a 'hole'. The only question is what he meant by hole.

What is certain is that he knew letterforms which he used in his message. "This knowledge," says Maroschek, "probably comes from a 'Breverl', a printed writing which people formerly carried as a talisman. They believed it would give them protection from harm." It is probable that he could not read this Breverl himself, but he but admired its design and tried to draw the necessary letters.

Maroschek concludes from the frequency of invocations and requests and the repeated use of the word 'OHN' (he lacks something) to an awkward situation of the writer. He was probably in an extremely difficult situation. The word 'LOTH' - it already means "lead" in Middle High German - also occurs twice in the text. So the scribe must have been familiar with it. Did he have windows glazed with lead? Or was he a roofer who soldered lead for eaves?

One mystery, however, remains unsolved. What is the meaning of the four drawings the scribe made? At first glance, one might suspect crosses. But this need not be the case. One can just as well recognize medieval weapons in them. Maybe there is someone among the readers of my post who can help here. If so, please comment in the comments column below the text. Thank you.

Erhard Maroschek's summary: "There is no dispute that the person in question was a man. He was either injured or captured. In all probability he could ride a horse and was certainly a Catholic The writer reports the circumstances of his 'emergency cure' in the dungeon of the house of God and asks Mary for assistance His name may have been Lenart, meaning Leonhard. The man was desperate."

For all friends of intelligent puzzle guessing, Erhard Maroschek has described how he deciphered the inscriptions. And how he profiled the scribe. Click here for the 'Making of': The story around the findings