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News — For nearly two centuries, scholars have puzzled over an inscription of just 20 characters, cast upon an unusual bronze sphinx statue believed to have originated in Potaissa, a Roman Empire military base camp located in present-day听Romania.

Peter Revesz, a University of Nebraska鈥揕incoln expert in computational linguistics, recently made听听in approximately 50 news articles from around the world when he solved the听mystery.

鈥淟o, behold, worship! Here is the holy lion!鈥� is his translation, revealed in the January issue of听听Based on his experience using databases to compare and identify alphabet symbols and languages, Revesz concluded the inscription uses an archaic Greek alphabet to convey words in a proto-Hungarian听language.

In addition to the听, stories about Revesz鈥檚 discovery appeared in听听听听听and听

A crucial clue to identifying the alphabet was the realization that, not only was the inscription written right to left, but its characters were rendered as mirror images of alphabetic听symbols.

Once Revesz identified the language as an ancestor of Hungarian, the puzzle pieces fell neatly together. He recognized that the inscription uses deliberately alliterative language in a poetic meter 鈥� an accented syllable followed by two unaccented听syllables.

鈥淭his is what I think is a poem,鈥� Revesz said. 鈥淚t fits together with the statue itself, a winged lion. It seems to be relaying a prayer line or perhaps a hymn of a minority听religion.鈥�

The statue鈥檚 base included a spike for it to be inserted into a pole, which possibly allowed it to be used in religious processionals as a flagpole or standard bearer, Revesz听added.

A member of UNL鈥檚 computer science faculty since 1992, Revesz describes himself as an interdisciplinary scholar. He holds a courtesy appointment in the university鈥檚 Department of Classics and Religious听Studies.

Revesz said his work is an example of how computational techniques can be used to understand history and language. Another example of the growing field of study is when Nebraska computer science major听听that was nearly destroyed in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D.听79.

Revesz has loved ancient history and language since he was a child. He credits Paris Kanellakis, his doctoral adviser at Brown University, for fostering those听interests.

Kanellakis was a renowned computer science scholar who was also fascinated by the undeciphered ancient writings of the Minoan civilization. On his desk, he kept a replica of the Phaistos Disk, a Minoan artifact that was covered on both sides with a spiral of stamped symbols. Revesz, who began deciphering ancient inscriptions in 2008 while teaching at the University of Athens as a Fulbright visiting professor, later used computational linguistics to decode the inscription on the Phaistos Disk as a hymn to a solar deity. Also using computational linguistics and mathematical methods, Revesz discovered that the Minoans wrote much about nature, female deities and cave spirits on 28 Linear A inscriptions. Kanellakis tragically died at age 42 in the 1995 American Airlines Flight 965 crash in Colombia and did not live to witness these exciting听developments.

Deciphering the Potaissa sphinx offers insights about minority religions during the Roman Empire, as well as how widespread the Egyptian-derived sphinx cult became before Christianity grew dominant, Revesz听said.

鈥淭he translation not only satisfies many researchers鈥� curiosity, who have pondered this artifact over decades, but it contributes to a broader understanding of cultural life in the Roman province of Dacia (where Potaissa was located) in the third century,鈥� he听said.

Although the sphinx was found in a Roman province, sphinx worship was not part of the mainstream ancient Roman mythology that featured Jupiter, Juno, Minerva and other gods and goddesses that remain familiar to many even today. Revesz said the Potaissa sphinx is evidence that provincial culture was a complex composition of ethnic groups, with influences that could be traced back to Greece and even further to听Egypt.

Many mysteries remain about the little statue, including its whereabouts today. It was acquired by an art collector, Count J贸zsef Kem茅ny, in the first half of the 19th century, and its provenance is uncertain. The statue disappeared when Kem茅ny鈥檚 estate was looted during the Hungarian War of Independence in听1848-49.

Revesz based his detective work on a detailed drawing of the sphinx and its complete inscription that appeared in Illustrirten Zeitung, an illustrated German news magazine, in听1847.

In a paper about the Roman Empire鈥檚 minority sphinx cult, archeologist Adam Szab贸 of the Hungarian National Museum wrote that the statue likely was associated with a sanctuary where the Egyptian goddess Isis was听worshiped.

With a female head and winged lion鈥檚 body, along with a sun symbol on its chest, the Potaissa artifact bears resemblance to both the sphinx of the Naxians, given by the people of Naxos to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi in Greece, and the Pazyryk sphinx, a central Asian artifact that dates to the Iron Age. In a听听about his research, Revesz describes the dispersion of sphinx and sphinx-like objects across thousands of miles in the Middle East, Europe and Central听Asia.

Romanian archeologist Nicolae Vlassa attempted to translate the inscription into Greek in a 1980 paper. However, Revesz found Vlassa鈥檚 translation unconvincing, due to decipherment errors Revesz explains in his research publication. Revesz suspected that, instead of Greek, the inscription used Greek characters to phonetically convey a language that lacked its own听alphabet.

Revesz, who was born in Hungary, noticed that the final six characters, when mirror imaged and rearranged into left-to-right order, resembled 鈥渁rslan鈥� 鈥� a Turkic word for lion that became part of the Hungarian language. Other characters resembled Hungarian words for 鈥渨orship鈥� and 鈥渓o, behold鈥� and an ancient Greek word for 鈥渉oly鈥�. Some evidence indicates proto-Hungarian speakers were resettled into Dacia after Romans colonized the听region.

鈥淚t is well-known that the Roman Empire contained diverse populations and languages,鈥� Revesz said. 鈥淪tudying this statue feels as if the winged sphinx has flown to us from the distant past and also brought us a听message.鈥欌��