Francesco Perono Cacciafoco/The Conversation
If you pay a visit to the Singapore Stone, displayed at the National Museum of Singapore, you might be disappointed. That’s because the inscription – carrying an unknown writing system transcribing an unknown language – is fading. But if you love puzzles, this won’t put you off.
The stone is a fragment of a bigger slab, once welcoming visitors at the mouth of the Singapore River. The British blew it up in 1843, to build a fort. Discovered in 1819, the stone was almost entirely lost. Scottish military officer Lieutenant-Colonel James Low, amid general indifference, was able to save three fragments. He sent them to the Royal Asiatic Society’s Museum in Calcutta to be studied.
They arrived in 1848. Meanwhile, other parts of the stone disappeared in the island. In 1918, the Raffles Museum of Singapore asked Calcutta to return the fragments. Only one was sent back. Nothing is known about the others, which are possibly lost forever. Despite its name, this sandstone slab is not a simple “stone”. It was once part of a monument, an ancient epigraph measuring three-by-three meters and carrying about 50 lines of text.
A drawing of three fragments from a sandstone block that once stood at the Singapore River mouth. The bottom fragment is the Singapore Stone. (Public Domain)
Many epigraphs didn’t survive the insults of time. Archaeological relics are often lost, over centuries. It’s sad, yet unavoidable. But the Singapore Stone was not…
