Emily Chan
One of the most enigmatic and baffling historical artifacts has to be the Singapore Stone. It was discovered at the mouth of the Singapore River in 1819.
The sandstone slab is inscribed with a mysterious script that experts have not been able to decipher. Now, researchers are turning to artificial intelligence to try to decode the script.
In 1843, the Singapore Stone was partially destroyed when the British blew it up to build a military fort. Lieutenant-Colonel James Low had been in objection to the explosion.
He managed to salvage three fragments of the boulder. One of the pieces was sent to the National Museum of Singapore in 1918.
The location of the other two fragments is unknown, but they had been sent to India shortly after their recovery.
The Singapore Stone is believed to date back to between the 10th and 14th centuries. Recent theories suggest that the strange text is written in Kawi script and contains some words in Sanskrit, pointing to a possible link to the Majapahit Empire or a South Indian rajah.
Experts of various backgrounds have tried to crack the code but couldn’t come up with anything substantial.
“With the Singapore Stone, we have just a small fragment, plus the reproductions of two other (for now) lost fragments, plus some reproductions of the whole slab before it was blown up, with not very clear characters and entire sections missing because of erosion,” said Dr. Franceso Perono Cacciafoco, the lead researcher of the decoding project.
“Therefore, the amount we have is very little. Moreover, its text/script is unique and never found anywhere else in the world.”
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