THE SECRET CODES A MYSTERY IN 3 ACTS, ACT 1: THE CODE IN THE TAMAM SHUD SLIP.

72 Years to the day...

 At 6.30 am on Wednesday, December 1st, 1948, the body of a man was found on Somerton Beach:

The image you see above is from a series taken by Adelaide University in laboratory conditions. It had been found by ex Detective Sergeant Herry Feltus, the man who wrote the definitive book about the Police investigation of the Somerton Man, 'The Unkown Man'. To my knowledge, the examination seemed to be focused on the nature of the paper itself and, by default, the wording on it. I know that the torn piece still exists although it is not in the hands of the University nor Professor Abbott.

THE CODES MYSTERY 

IN 3 ACTS...

ACT 1

THE CODE IN THE TAMAM SHUD SLIP

The body was found on the beach early that Wednesday morning, Police arrived and the 'sudden death' process began. Whilst there is a great deal of detail surrounding the event, our purpose in this post is to focus on one issue. The small scrap of paper that had been torn from a book, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, and which bore the words TAMAM SHUD, it was later to be found rolled up tightly and pushed down into a hard to find waistband fob pocket of the trousers that the man was wearing at the time:

The piece itself when unraveled was quite small, the dimensions being approximately 40 mm wide and 15 mm in height.

Below are some close-up images of the printed letters on the torn piece, they were taken under Infrared lighting and I used the ink removal technique to gain a clearer view of the handwritten coded strings of letters and numbers:

1. Letter T

As you can see, the arrow points to the left-hand end of the ross piece on the letter T and within it there are strings of numbers and letters. In fact, when you examine the T closely, you'll see that it is filled with strings of code. I estimate that much of this has been written at .3 mm in height. Notice how the strings in the crossbar indicated are wedge-shaped, following the shape of that crossbar.

2. First letter A in TAMAM

To the left is a processed image of the first letter A in Tamam

 Next, the same first letter A but this time, there are two highlighted areas containing numbers, the whole letter A is filled and if you see to print it out you would see far more.

3. First letter M in Tamam

To the left, the plain, though processed image, of the first letter M in Tamam.

Next, is the slightly enlarged and highlighted image of that same first M from Tamam.

Notice the strings and in particular, notice the way that the strings across the base of the letter seem to continue across from left to right, closely, but not precisely aligned.

You may also notice the lighter areas in a number of locations surrounding the edges of the letter, they seem to contain parts of strings.

4. Second letter A & second letter M in Tamam:

These two letters are so closely connected by what appears to be code continued across between the spaces between them.

The marked-up. highlighted image of the A & M show a considerable number of strings of code. Note that they are at varying angles with some following the outline of the letters, some straight across and some rising from left upwards to the right.

In particular note the elipse at the top left, it includes some very faint pencil markings in the open space alongside the 'accent/diacritical' mark above the letter A.

The word SHUD

The second word in the phrase is of course SHUD. It, too, is filled with apparent strings of code as you will see in the images below.

The arrow in the above image indicates some relatively clear letters and numbers...

The highlighted version of the word SHUD clearly shows numerous instances of code, again the strings are at different angles with some following the outlines of the letters, some appearing to continue across the space between the letters and some rising from left to right.

DOWNLOADING:

To successfully print out the images shown above, you could download the master image first by right-clicking on the image and select 'Save image'

Once you have done that and assuming you have an image editing package such as pant.net or Gimp, you could then cut individual letters from the piece and make any adjustments needed to clarify, sharpen the images.

Alternatively, you can simply download the individual letters using the right-click and 'save as ' function.

The images below have bot been subjected to the ink removal process, you can still see the hidden codes but not as clearly.

1. TA

2. MAM

3. AM

4. SHU

5. UD

Each and every letter on the torn piece is filled with microcode

The size of the code is extremely small, in places, it is less than .2 mm. That is achievable by hand but the real issue is how was it executed? Consider this, the two words are in black, how was the person who did this able to insert black code letters/numbers with some precision without overrunning his/her work?

A Special Purpose Book?

If you look carefully, you'll see that that whilst the code is a dark colour the background is much lighter. That could have implications as to the nature of the book itself, was it a special-purpose book? Was it manufactured for the purpose, much, as I believe, the Alf Boxall book may have been? Another thought is the use of microdot photography.

The very name suggests that such things were only found under 'dots' when in fact a micro 'dot' could be any shape including the shape of a letter T for example.

I have written a number of posts about the book including one which calls into question the name of the publisher as being Whitcomb and Tombs, here's a link:

https://tamamshud.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-somerton-man-rubaiyat-some-answers.html

The Whitcomb and Tombs Courage and friendship book is entirely the wrong size/aspect ratio.

What was the purpose of the torn piece?

I think we can also say with a high degree of certainty that the torn piece was not part of a proof of identity routine. It was common to use a torn piece of paper for that purpose, in fact, Pavel Fedosimov was given a torn piece of paper that was to be matched up with a piece that had been given to Harry Gold. It is likely that Harry had received his torn piece via a dead letterbox.

So, no, not a proof of identity, a simple torn piece of paper which was readily disposable and that was an advantage.

In contrast, the torn piece was found in a hard to find fob pocket of the trousers that the man was wearing at the time his body was discovered on the beach. As it now seems, this tiny piece of paper was highly significant and had value, it carries what appears to be extensive hidden code and that is why it was concealed.


The Tamam Shud slip was rolled up tight and pushed down into a hard to find waistband fob pocket, that was done so that in the case of a pat-down search it would probably escape detection, being easily mistaken for a seam and that was the idea.

This was Act 1, the second and third acts will follow, 
they contain the final pieces of a puzzle