Some linguistic analysis on the Hammott Papers

S.HAMBLETT c May 2008

As we have recently seen, Rennes researchers have rather ferociously passed judgement on some papers that the Ben Hammott team had the exciting opportunity to locate and unravel.

The most ferocious attacks have occurred on two web sites - Arcadia, run by Andrew Gough & the Rennes-le-Château Research and Resource site run by a character called Raven. They have a vested interest in not being seen to support English researchers, as they work closely with French counterparts who have no wish to see the Hammott research expanded upon. We thought researchers would be very interested in helping us solve any ‘riddles’ and that they would be excited regarding these finds. However, there has been accusation after accusation, with our integrity called into question, and the repeated attacks suggest outright that we have hoaxed the whole affair, and that we are nothing but liars and fraudsters!

There is one over-riding reason why it should be obvious to all that we cannot have hoaxed these papers. We do not have the elementary French knowledge to be able to even do this. On those grounds alone it is impossible that we could have hoaxed the papers. When people become aware of the full content of the papers they will see this for themselves. The ingenuity of the ’real’ writer of these papers will hopefully reveal to all that we have not the intelligence to hoax them at all.

Our story is reasonably well known. Following some perceived clues that we felt were indicated in some of the statuary in the church of St Mary Magdalene we proceeded to go up to the Devils Armchair and carry out our singular ideas about what the statuary may have been indicating. Contrary to what you may hear, or read about, we had no idea what would be found, if anything at all. I actually recall sitting in the Devils Armchair watching Ben dig, thinking he was wasting our time. It was here that we found the infamous Paper I in a sealed bottle.

One researcher has said:

"Judging from the combined facts and established issues of authenticity with them (the papers) it is more likely that the discoveries of Ben Hammott are poorly made forgeries intended to fuel a sensational but badly substantiated story."

Harsh words indeed. But are his words based on good ‘facts’ & knowledge?

They are in fact based on clips of the documents that the ‘researchers’ have gleaned from the clips shown via the ‘Bloodline’ film and some photos on web pages. It is absolutely legitimate that interested parties should make observations on what they see. To dismiss the whole thing as a hoax, however, based on their limited knowledge is wrong. Some of the comments and points raised were as follows when sections of the papers were shown:

"Notice it says "le vere histoire"…first of all, ‘histoire’ is a feminine noun. Second, ‘vere’ is not a French adjective, but a Latin one. ‘Resurrection’ is also a feminine noun, but on the parchment we read ‘le resurrection’ & "… it says "LA ROUTE QUE VOUS SUIVRE EST PLEINE DE DANGER" that’s not French, it’s English with French words. A Frenchman would never phrase this way. That’s apart from the more elementary grammatical problem that the right conjugation of ‘SUIVRE’ (to follow) would be ‘VOUS SUIVEZ’. Someone has not been paying attention in French classes very well here".

A low-res image they grabbed from the web footage to base their assumptions on

I am assuming that the researchers here feel that this is conclusive proof that the papers were forged by an ‘English’ person who didn’t speak good French, and lacked the skills regarding grammar and syntax to construct believable French sentences.

There followed what amounted to hysterical calls for us to ‘explain ourselves’. Researchers pleaded with us:

Ben, Bill, Sandy: Please convince me you didn't take this mystery and forged a story around it to serve your personal interests. Web site owners cried "The trouble I have with this Hammott thing is that there's nothing elegant about it. It's poorly done. There's errors all over the parchments in the French and Latin. It brings shame to the genre when they claim earth shattering things and at the same time take us for idiots when the evidence they bring looks fabricated by a first grade student"

I would beg to differ. The shame is brought to the genre when evidently elitist groups, with their own agendas, aggressively and unfairly pour scorn on genuine fellow researchers who have not lied, and have always told the truth. Our group will be vindicated, but the behaviour of other research groups leaves a lot to be desired in ethics, honesty and transparency.

And these elitist groups continue:

"At least in the case of De Sede, Plantard, Gerard Thom and many others, you feel it could be true. Thom's parchments and perhaps Bigou's diary is a marvel in 4 languages. Ben's hoax is the poorest in execution in the last 100 years while his claims are the biggest. That's what I very much don't like about his play"

I really do look forward to the day when these researchers have read Ben’s book and can see how ingenious these papers are. Of course, they wouldn’t admit it. That may be a little too much to ask.

In regards to the papers, the points raised about the language, syntax and grammar etc were very interesting. I have said that I do not know who wrote these papers. And it remains so today. It may even be nearer the truth to say that we will never one hundred percent and categorically know who wrote them. However, the ‘content’ of the papers do seem to suggest to me that the writer was someone ‘close’ to the mystery. Also, elements of the way in which the ‘codes’ had to be deciphered, and how the church of St Mary Magdalene was to be used, suggests perhaps that it is also someone close to the mystery. Why do I say this? Because in all the years I have researched the mystery, I have never read anywhere research even coming close to the kind of thought processes advocated in the papers. The nearest could be said to be the way Lincoln or De Sede suggested that the ‘Stations of the Cross’ should be used to discern a coded message in the decorations instructed by Sauniere in the Church of Saint Mary Magdalene.

Let me elaborate. In Lincoln's 1991 publication, the ‘Holy Place’ on pages 38 - 41, Lincoln refers to a particular way that Sauniere may have wanted to give precise instructions. He says that the ‘first hint is in the blatantly irrelevant background detail’ in Station of the Cross Number 6. Lincoln says the way the ’soldier holds his shield up against the sky …. Is as strange as it is meaningless, yet it is the first element of a precise instruction that Sauniere wishes to give’.

Lincoln refers to the ’incredible ingenuity which has been employed to communicate information in a cryptic way.’ By analysing these instructions Lincoln arrives at the following:

"Au bout (du) clier, (faites un) demi tour vers (le) haut nid (de) kaolin. Cime on regarde’. Translated Lincoln says this means: "At the bottom of the enclosure, make a half turn towards Cardou. One is looking at the Crest".

Lincoln goes on to say -

"It would be possible to argue that this has been merely an amusing attempt to squeeze meaning from the meaningless were it not for the fact that the message makes absolute sense on the ground’. Lincoln himself admitted that this decipherment was to ‘prove to be extremely productive and certainly helped to point in the right direction’.

The means to solve the clues and riddles in paper I, when searching for the next papers (II & III) proved to be in the same vein as the decipherment above. Particularly ingenious, in my opinion, is the clue on Paper II leading to the discovery of paper III. And this is just the ‘clues’. There is other vast information on the papers alerting us to what the nature of the ‘treasure’ is, what we will find, historical information from the writers point of view as well as other interesting information relating to the mythology of Rennes le Chateau. And then there is the information on the papers that we havent even come close to working out what is trying to be indicated. On Paper I there is a 3 part key design. Why? What does the key indicate? Why use a key? Why a 3 part box with the key drawn into it? Why are there three crosses on the end of the key? Why is one labelled 'Golgotha'? What do the three parts of the box signify? Is it just to indicate the 3 steps to find 3 papers? Or is it more significant? And what about the map of the grounds of a church in Paper I? What is that all about?

The concepts utilised in the papers were as in depth as the instructions Lincoln had identified that Sauniere used, if not significantly more in depth!

So - was the writer of these papers we discovered a rather clever French researcher, who decided to have some fun planting bottles around the landscape? Or was it a dumb English person trying to hoax finds relating to Rennes Le Chateau? Or could it be someone close to the mystery itself, who knew what they were talking about, in the vein of perhaps De Cherisey or Plantard? Or could it be someone closer to the mystery than even that? Marie Denarnaud for example? Or Sauniere? Or an associated priest? The simple answer is that we do not know. What one must do is subject the papers to full examination, and with the results come to some reasoned and informed observations.

The papers have been studied by a graphologist. The ink has been tested by the Radio Carbon Dating Laboratory at Oxford University. And on the 7th May 2008, I sent some of the papers for analysis by a University based Professor of French Linguistics for his opinions.

Why did I do this? I wanted to see what sort of information could be gleaned by a linguistic expert. What did the written French tell him? What sort of person wrote the papers? But most of all, as I was not an expert in the French language, I wanted to ask about the grammatical errors and other such points being referred to by other researchers. I was almost certain that the ‘Rennes researchers’ were not ‘French language experts’. I also had a hunch that neither were the French researchers. Admittedly they knew more than me about their own language. But how in depth did they know their own language rules and history? In the same way that I am English, and speak the English language, I am no expert on that same English language and the ‘rules’ of the language once it gets past the usual ‘A’ level standard.

In the same vein, I think that the French researchers may not be as expert as they think they are!

My test was set up on the following lines. The ‘expert’ chosen to look at the papers had to:

1) Know nothing of Rennes le Chateau and have no prior links or knowledge to myself or the Hammott team.
2) He/she should have impeccable credentials in the field of French language and Linguistic skills
3) He/she should also speak English fluently as well as French.

I did my search for relevant qualified persons via the Internet, as I felt this absolutely precluded any possibility that the ‘expert’ would be biased towards the Hammott team and how we were interpreting the research. The first person I picked was a Professor of French & Linguistic Scholarship at a leading University. Currently he teaches the history of the french language & french socio-linguistics. He specialises in Medieval texts and is an editor of a Journal that deals with these subjects and research into them, as well as french language and its history,syntax, grammar etc.

I hope that 'Rennes researchers' realise that this scholar would know his onions (pardon the pun) about the French language! And he graciously gave some of his busy academic time to help me with my enquiries.

I have contacted two other experts, for other independent appraisals of the papers and their opinions are being sought as I write this article. I will update their impressions as soon as I have them and all will be published in Rhedesium.

I explained to the Professor that the French papers I had acquired needed elucidating. I explained I was not well versed in the French language which is why I was looking for an expert opinion. I explained that I did not know the provenance of the papers.

I said that the ’language is French, but includes some non-French words. For example, the word ’vere’ is used ….. I have seen that this can be used in French ’patois’ but in a French dictionary it does not appear to be an official French word. Would you be willing to look at some of the papers and give me your considered opinion on the type of language used, and whether this language can be used to date the papers, or whether the language is in a particular regional dialect? The papers also seem to mix up gender forms, and use wrong verb conjugations. As I am not a French language expert, in your opinion could there be a reason why this would occur? Or do you think you could tell if the papers were written by a non-native French speaker, trying to write in French? Or has the language been made to look this way? I would be most grateful for your professional opinion’

The Professor was happy to look at the papers, and I scanned him over sections of the papers for his perusal.

I scanned to him:

1) Half of the ‘Signe secret’ paper
2) Half of the Paper II side 1
3) The complete second clue on Paper II side 2

The Professor had some interesting observations to make, suggesting some details that we had not thought of before. He answered all the questions I put to him, and elucidated as much as he was able to within the confines of his particular competencies.

Part of the low-res Signe Secret Message they took from the ABC Nightline footage

He first said that ’These are interesting documents, although not (as you have realised) without raising certain problems‘.

He went on to split his comments into the factual and the speculative.

He said: "All three documents are written in French. I do not see anything in any of them that I consider identifies them in terms of geography, and (once the numerous oddities and errors are set on one side) there is very little which points to anything other than fairly standard, written, modern French. There are one or two Latin words (e.g. Corpus Christi), but you would probably expect that. In the first document (beginning signe secret) there are, as you noted, some linguistic oddities: the word vere, and the apparent gender errors.It is the case that in certain dialects of north-eastern France (from the Middle Ages up to the present) the feminine definite article la reduces to le: this is not, contrary to what is often supposed, a change in or an error of grammatical gender, but a purely phonetic reduction of the final -a to -e (effectively) of French mutée.The word vere could (just about) be either a real mediaeval form (although I'm not sure I have encountered exactly that), or, more probably, a bogus attempt at creating such".

First of all, I was pleased to read that the documents were in French. Hopefully this would preclude the accusations that English hoaxers had tried to construct these documents. And it also seemed from the Professor's point of view that the ‘apparent gender errors’ were perhaps not as big an issue as some Rennes researchers had picked up on. It was interesting to read also that ‘vere’ was an archaic mediaeval form of a word. I had seen the word ‘vere’ in other contexts on French websites, usually those dealing in ‘patois’. It was interesting that the Professor speculated on whether the word ‘vere’ was an attempt to create a bogus looking presumably medieval rendering. Why would the writers have done that?

The Professor was not in a position to be able to date the document from the writing he could see. He said:

‘as far as I can see this is basically modern written French‘.

This was an important point for me that I needed to be clear on. I pressed him further for clarification, asking: ‘You mention that you think all three documents point to 'fairly standard written modern French'. Can you expand on this a bit more? What dates constitute 'modern French'? Is it the last 20 years, the last 50 years, or the last 200 years for example?’

His reply was as follows:

‘Modern French, for most purposes, means effectively since about the 18th century. There is a fairly limited change, at least in the written form of the language, since, in practice, 1700 or so‘.

Therefore we did seem to have a dating of sorts. In his professional opinion the written French was modern, that is from 1700 - up to the modern day.

An interesting observation that the Professor made, which I was not expecting was the following:

‘It seems to me (and I stress that I'm not an expert) that the three documents are written in a similar, but not the same hand. I imagine that the originals would be more revealing in that respect than the scanned version".

I think I, and Ben, and the rest of the team had assumed that all the papers we had located were written by the same person. We had assumed that one person, working alone, and wanting to impart certain information, devised this method of encryption and deciphering alone, and then had placed the papers in secure bottles around the landscape.

The Professor went on to say:

"The second document in particular (beginning chercher) seems to me to be a childish hand. If I had to say, I think that none of these documents really make me think of any French handwriting that I have had to deal with (although I have only accidentally encountered material later than the Middle Ages, or earlier than relatively modern writing)"

This particular piece of writing was actually one of the clues on Paper II. It may be significant that this ‘childish’ hand was portrayed in this way. As the Professor goes on to say, on the whole, these papers, in their own way are quite sophisticated. Therefore, presumably one is not meant to think the papers were written by a child, but that the childish aspect was perhaps somehow ‘intentional’. Why would this be the case?

We then went on to discuss the linguistic accuracy of the documents. The Professor was of the opinion that ‘The linguistic accuracy of the three documents is quite different, and this may or may not confirm the hypothesis that they are written by different people. The first (signe secret) is relatively accurate.’ I found this interesting, as it was the document that most observers were picking up on as the most convincing evidence of proving that the papers were ‘hoaxed’.

He continued ‘That is to say, there are oddities in it, and indeed grammatical mistakes, but they are consonant with somebody who was not particularly educated and who is trying to write in a deliberately rather strange style. For example, word order in the sentence regarding resurrection (dupe etaient son disciples ...) is very odd. Clearly the - s on the end of disciples is wrong, or there should be an s on the first dupe, and son should be ses. The only other explanation is that someone has worked out that medieval French masculine nouns take a final -s, which they do, sometimes, but not with son. On the whole I think this is too clever an argument. This is not French which is either entirely incomprehensible, or incompatible with a native speaker. Roughly speaking, I think the same could be said of the second document (chercher) though here, the style is even stranger, because it appears to be, in effect, a set of instructions for the location of something. That has led to some oddities, but not all that many errors, in the French. Incidentally, many of the mistakes in both these documents are compatible with something having been dictated, or written by somebody who, whilst a native speaker, and thus fluent in the spoken language, may not have had much familiarity with the rules of writing".

Now, there are many interesting points that the Professor raises, which may be interesting in the context of Rennes Le Chateau studies. Firstly, this idea that there may have been different hands writing each of the documents. He also confirms that generally, the French is ‘relatively accurate’. The most interesting point I noticed was the idea that the writer or writers were ‘… trying to write in a deliberately rather strange style‘.

The Hammott team had noticed from the very first discoveries that the writer was writing in a strange style. We felt this was because there were some sort of codes embedded in the messages. This was another point I wanted to clarify and be very clear about so I asked the Professor the following:

‘You seem to suggest that perhaps the writer was writing in a deliberate way. Do you think this would correlate with an idea that all documents may carry a code of some sort? Or at least a specific intention on the part of the writer when he wrote in this way?"

The Professor replied that:

‘Yes, it seems to me that there may well be some element of coding in these documents. It is difficult to understand why anybody would have deliberately written in so strange a way, had it not been to signal to the reader that these were coded documents, and possibly to establish some bogus credibility for them‘.

So far, we have conflicting information about these papers. They are written in modern French, and are generally accurate. They seem to be written by a native French speaker. The writing and language seems to have been constructed in such a way as to suggest a code of some sort, or an intention on the part of the writer to convey something. The Professor mentions the possibility of the purpose of this being to establish ‘some bogus credibility for them’.

But it is difficult to see what ‘credibility’ they are trying to impart. I have already said that I do not know who wrote the papers. And as the Professor had not looked at the signatures of Sauniere on the documents, he was not referring to the sceptical observers’ ideas that someone was trying to pass off the papers as being written by Sauniere. So once you removed that, what would the writer/s have been establishing credibility for? And how did they think this credibility would be furthered, when the language is strange, and convoluted? As the Professor also noted:

"The only other explanation is that someone has worked out that medieval French masculine nouns take a final -s, which they do, sometimes, but not with son. On the whole I think this is too clever an argument‘ (my emphasis)

Clearly, the Professor felt that the writer of these documents may not have been clever enough for his other explanation in regards to the language and writing etc. But why should that be so? Perhaps it was a very intelligent person ‘pretending’ to be less intelligent? Or is that stretching credibility too far? The other option i thought about is this: if the writer is someone unable to have worked out that medieval French masculine nouns take a final -s, etc as the Professor stated, then is it possible that the writer was copying from older documents? As one can see, it is suggested that the ‘location clues’ "(are) a set of instructions for the location of something. That has led to some oddities, but not all that many errors, in the French". So the writer knew his French.

Perhaps the answer is to be found in the Professor's other intriguing observation. That ‘many of the mistakes in both these documents are compatible with something having been dictated, or written by somebody who, whilst a native speaker, and thus fluent in the spoken language, may not have had much familiarity with the rules of writing"

When I first read that, considering the closeness of the relationship between Sauniere and Denarnaud, if one was going to accept a scenario that Sauniere was behind these ‘clues’ - did he get Marie Denarnaud to write the papers? It may seem a wild and preposterous suggestion, but the papers do actually refer to Marie Denarnaud and the threats against her! Whatever the truth of the matter, these suggestions and intrigues are fascinating.

On the third piece of writing (Half the text of the writing on Side II of Paper II) the Professor had this to say:

" The third document is a rather different animal. Here, there are one or two genuine linguistic oddities (chrestiens with an -s- in the middle instead of an accent -- I suspect the spelling was still possible until the seventeenth century but the other forms in the document are more modern), and overall, the handwriting seems to me to be almost gratuitously eccentric (redundant capitals, strange letter forms particularly on -e, and so on). Moreover, the level of error in this document seems to me to be much more considerable than in the other two (and not, I think, simply because it is longer).In fact, I am not at all convinced that this was written by a native speaker, or, if it was, then it has been deliberately written in a style which does not look like normal French. By this, I mean that there are (for example) word order and syntax forms which are simply not French. Yet the vocabulary, and the spelling, are relatively accurate and in their way, quite sophisticated. (my emphasis) Regarding the third document in particular, my suspicion is that what you have here is a deliberately constructed representation of what the writer perceives this sort of document to be like, and designed to convince the unsuspecting that it is somehow authentic because it is obscure, badly written, and at times almost gibberish; or written by somebody who, with the best will in the world, was simply not capable of doing any better. I incline, I think, to the first explanation".

What is one to make of this? What kind of document was the writer perceiving? That using archaic spelling of words was intentional to create the feeling that the document is authentic in some way? But authentic regarding what? How does the observation sit that the vocabulary and spelling etc is relatively accurate and quite sophisticated, and yet it is ‘obscure, badly written and gibberish’? Because it needed to be in some kind of code?

This was another serious point I wanted to be clear about. I asked the Professor :

"Finally, just so I can be clear, you suggest (in relation to the third document) that the writer has "deliberately constructed (a) representation of what the writer perceives this sort of document to be like, and (is) designed to convince the unsuspecting that it is somehow authentic because it is obscure, badly written, and at times almost gibberish". Do you mean that you think the whole document is deliberately concocted to fool someone, for example, or is the writer, in your opinion, actually quite stupid and it shows in his language use etc? An ignorant person perhaps? I guess what I am really asking is this - is the design & language used made to look stupid and ignorant intentionally, or is it actually the case that the writer of the third document didn’t know what they were doing and really is ignorant?"

His reply:

"Yes, I think that the entire document has been deliberately concocted, not so much to fool people, necessarily, as to create a spurious pseudo-archaizing and pseudo-mystical framework. I think it is unlikely, although possible, but in the case of the third document it has been put together by a non-native speaker who was so incompetent in French that they made a complete mess of the syntax. … Elsewhere, it is reasonably accurate."

The contradictions show how complicated these documents are. Some areas show ignorance, and elsewhere they are ‘reasonably accurate’. We would suggest that this is because the documents have been tailored to take into account that other messages are embedded in the overall text preventing it from making complete sense when read word for word. The Professor countered that the texts "clearly,…. are within a loosely ecclesiastical or religious context"

All in all, the jury is still out. I am hoping that within the context of the other tests that have been carried out we can begin to construct the history of these documents. I think that what I can show is that particular researchers are wrong in assumptions that ’... this Hammott thing .... there's nothing elegant about it. It's poorly done…’

I think I would rather take the word of a Professor of French Linguistics who clearly found the documents interesting. He confirmed that they were written in code, and that the vocabulary, and the spelling, are relatively accurate and in their way, quite sophisticated. It supports the supposition that the creators of these texts took them seriously, wanted to impart something very important and were quite ingenious in how they did it.

What it all means, only the future will tell.

S. Hamblett (admin@rennesalchemist.com)

Authors Note: The Professor and his identity is not being divulged. This is due to unscrupulous fellow researchers who are embarking on a course of action to discredit the Hammott finds. It is not appropriate for an academic University Professor to be subjected to calls and harrassment because he kindly gave an opinion on these French papers.  Although he gave permission for his findings to be used, he is not  aware of the RLC research community & their behaviour  so I feel, for the time being, that his identity should remain private.  Hopefully this decision will be able to be reviewed in the near future.