THE SOMERTON MAN RUBAIYAT, SOME ANSWERS>>> FIRST PUBLISHED in 2016. 2018 and 8th OCTOBER 2020 UPDATED WITH BOXALL RUBAIYAT IMAGE

THE SOMERTON MAN RUBAIYAT,

ANSWERS ...

(Update at base of page)

...This re-post is for the benefit of those who have shown a lack of knowledge in relation to the nature of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam supposedly handed into the Police. As you will read, there is evidence that this particular version is very likely not the same edition. I should also add that Detective Brown stated that the book in his recollection was a Collins edition.

I recommend that you read this post carefully, it contains some excellent information.

Recently I have been asked a number of questions regarding the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam book that was found and associated with the Somerton Man. To be more precise, the book was:

1. Thrown into the back of a car that was parked not far from the scene where the body of the Somerton Man was found.

2. In a later Police report, this same book was found with the 'back leaf missing' as per a copy of the original Police document:

A note for the experts: The triangular W&T trademark found on the last page of the book shown below, means that the page from which the piece was torn, was not the code page as there is no sign of that trademark on the code page. We are left then with two main options: 

1. The Code was written on the dust cover, which has no trademark
2. The code page came from an entirely different book

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

Part of the goals for this blog is that it should, whenever and wherever possible, set out to provide answers to questions raised in the Somerton Man case. Of necessity this has meant that very often we create more questions when we uncover something new, thankfully we do that quite often as well but that's what makes it all the more enjoyable. Others have a different focus and that's their prerogative.

Now to the current burning questions!

Question 1. Was the back leaf missing when the book was found?

ANSWER: According to the report above, yes, the book was found WITH the back leaf missing

Question 2. Was the back leaf that was missing, the page that once contained the piece that was torn from the book bearing the 2 printed words TAMAM SHUD?

Let's work through this logically:

The fourth paragraph on page 1 of the report above clearly states that the torn piece was found in the man's pocket.

Now to the second page of this report and again the 4th paragraph which states:

'A book, 'Omar Khayyam, with the back leaf missing, was found in the rear seat of a car near where the deceased was found. The piece of paper which was found in the deceased's clothing, bearing 'Tamun Shud' (sic), had been torn from this book.

According to this chain, the torn piece came from the book, so, how would they know it had been torn from the book if the page that it came from was missing when the book was found?

ANSWER: The answer then must be that the page that was missing was not the page that contained the torn piece. That was the last typeset page in the book. This answer in itself raises another question, see below item marked Question 3 in this post.

INTERESTING DATA:

Over the years, a number of versions of the ROK have been the subject of posts on various blogs. In fact I first published a post on that subject around 11 years ago on another blog. 

One of the problems that you get when you have been involved for so long in a case as I and others have, you tend to expect that people would know all of this fine detail. Of course, they don't, and neither should they be expected to.

Part of what follows is from a post I think I wrote originally about 7 years ago and updated it a few times, I'll check it out.

The post was about the discrepancies found in aspect ratios and dimensions of two Rubaiyat's and the code page itself:

A COMPARISON BETWEEN THE ORIGINAL BOOK COVER AS PUBLISHED IN THE PRESS BY SAPOL & THE COLLECTORS VERSION BY WHITCOMB AND TOMBS

Whitcomb & Tombs 

Courage and Friendship series.

This has long been thought to be the same edition and version as that found and associated with the Somerton Man.

COLLECTORS: Size: 5.1 X 6.6 inches.
Aspect Ratio: 17:22

SAPOL: Size: 4.8 X 6.65 inches 
Aspect Ratio 96:133

The aspect ratios and dimensions of these two books, do not match

3. THE BOOK (TORN PAGE) AS PUBLISHED BY SAPOL

Size: 3.75 X 5.5 inches  Aspect Ratio: 15:22

The book above does not match either the SAPOL or Collectors' previously published versions.

The insert above was done by a member of the Adelaide University FB page organised by 

Professor Abbott.

As you can see there is some variation in size and aspect ratios with items 1 and 2 being closest with item 3 being markedly different, in fact it is a full 1 inch shorter, could that be accounted for by the book dust cover being larger? It seems quite a difference. Read on...

THE COMPLEXITY

It gets more complex when you look at the dimensions of the book as described by the University Wiki, it says the book size was 5.5 inches X 4.5 inches which for them tied into the size of the code page. So far so good although we now have another set of dimensions and it doesn't match the original size or Aspect ratio which is 11:9.

There's more:

CODE PAGE 

Whilst I don't believe it was his intention to provide any new information, JS on the Cipher Mysteries blog pointed out that I had previously stated that Gerry Feltus had told me that the phone numbers were positioned in the top right-hand quarter of the back of the book. That's true.

This conflicts with the more recent statement regarding Detective Brown's comment that the telephone number was in 'tiny lettering' beneath the code. This is true, that is what I quoted.

The question is, what was the orientation of the code page on the back of the book? We have separate issues here, the book dimensions the code page dimensions and the orientation of the code on the back of the book.

CODE PAGE IMAGE

If we take Adelaide Uni's view that the book was 5.5 inches wide X 4.5 inches tall, then we should be able to verify that information by looking at the size and aspect ratio of the code page image as found on the Adelaide University wiki, right?

Here are the code page dimensions: Image size: 4.5 inches wide X 3.6 inches tall. Aspect Ratio: 5:4.

That's a full half-inch narrower and one inch shorter than the SAPOL images and the aspect ratio is significantly different.

CODE PAGE ORIENTATION

Let's look at the issue of just where the telephone number might be. In one statement it's in the top right-hand side of the book and in the other it's beneath the code as Detective Brown stated.

Could both statements be correct? I have not been able to find any reference to the orientation of the code on the back of the book: 

 CODEPAGE UNDERLAY COMPARISON :

 The above simply doesn't work, so let's look at it another way, the overlay:

To be correct, these are approximate placed images but the point is that you should be able to see from the above image just how the telephone number can be beneath the code and in the top right hand corner of the book.

Remember that you would be looking at the code page from the back of the book. Please note that in the image below, you can see where the left edge of the code page aligns with the spine of the book.

It's apparent if we are to believe the various dimensions supplied, that there's a big piece of the code page missing?

We could do the same exercise with the larger supposedly original sized images of the book and be left with an even bigger piece of the code page missing:

Even if we were to take the book and code page to the same aspect ratio as the code page, we would still have the strong possibility that the two statements 'Top right quarter' and 'Beneath the code' are one and the same position.

I hope that I have managed to explain this correctly!

The next post will be back on focus and we will look once again at just what secrets the code page has been keeping.

To my knowledge and in regards to the newspaper article referred to at the head of the Police Report at the head of this page, I have not seen any copies of that article. I would say however that given the wording of the Police report, the article was more about the Somerton Man and how the prisoner E B Collins knew him and not about the nature of the Rubaiyat with its back leaf missing. That's how it reads from my perspective. If someone can come up with the actual article that would be a big help.

TWO QUOTES FOR TODAY:

"Men who reject the responsibility of thought and reason can only exist as parasites on the thinking and words of others"

"There are those who always seem angry and looking for conflict, when you meet them, walk away. Their battle isn't with you, it's with themselves"

The first is taken from the works of Ayn Rand and the second is some homespun philosophy I came across, annonymous author. They are both very appropriate for today, 23rd July 2022

The Boxall Rubaiyat

The book itself measures 5 inches x 7.25 inches approximately