Et in Arcadia Ego - Proposed Hidden Meanings

Proposed Hidden Meanings

While the phrase "et in arcadia ego" is a nominal phrase with no finite verb, it is a well-formed construction because substantive and copular verb omission is perfectly acceptable in Latin. Pseudohistorians unaware of that aspect of Latin grammar have concluded that the sentence is incomplete, missing a verb, and have speculated that it represents some esoteric message concealed in a (possibly anagrammatic) code. In The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln, under the false impression that "et in arcadia ego" was not a proper Latin sentence, proposed that it is an anagram for I! Tego arcana dei, which translates to "Begone! I keep God's secrets", suggesting that the tomb contains the remains of Jesus or another important Biblical figure. They claimed that Poussin was privy to this secret and that he depicted an actual location. The authors did not explain why the tomb depicted in the second version of the painting should contain this secret while the distinctly different one in the first version presumably does not. Ultimately, this view is dismissed by art historians.

In their book The Tomb of God, Richard Andrews and Paul Schellenberger, developing these ideas, have theorized that the Latin sentence misses the word "sum". They argue that the extrapolated phrase et in arcadia ego sum could be an anagram for arcam dei tango iesu, which would mean "I touch the tomb of God — Jesus". Their argument presupposes that:

1. the Latin phrase is incomplete
2. the extrapolation as to the missing words is correct
3. the sentence, once completed, is intended to be an anagram
4. Andrews and Schellenberger selected the proper anagram out of numerous possibilities.

Andrews and Schellenberger also claim that the tomb portrayed is one at Les Pontils, near Rennes-le-Château. However, Franck Marie in 1978 and Pierre Jarnac in 1985 had already concluded that this tomb was begun in 1903 by the owner of the land, Jean Galibert, who buried his wife and grandmother there in a simple grave. Their bodies were exhumed and reinterred elsewhere after the land was sold to Louis Lawrence, an American from Connecticut who had emigrated to the area. He buried his mother and grandmother in the grave and built the stone sepulchre. Marie and Jarnac had both interviewed Adrien Bourrel, Lawrence's son, who witnessed the construction of the sepulchre in 1933 when a young boy. Pierre Plantard, the creator of the Priory of Sion mythology, tried to argue that the sepulchre at Les Pontils was a "prototype" for Poussin's painting, but it was situated directly opposite a farmhouse (behind the foliage) and was not in the "middle of nowhere" in the French countryside, as is commonly assumed. Plantard also claimed that the phrase "Et In Arcadia Ego" had been the motto on his Family Coat-of-Arms for generations. The sepulchre was demolished in 1988 by the owner with the permission of the local authorities.