This is what the Sator square of the film Tenet is

We don't know what the Sator square evoked by Christopher Nolan was for, but it can tell us something about the relationship between play and magic

Sator square in Oppède (France) Christopher Nolan has struck again, and with Tenet since title piqued the curiosity of cinephiles. But what is the famous Sator square that the director has infused into the plot? There are several ways to answer this question.

The description of the square is simple. it is made up of five Latin words of five letters that form a square: sator arepo tenet opera rotas. Each word is double-faced and the whole sentence is palindrome, that is, it can be read both from left to right and in the other direction, maintaining the same meaning. Apart from tenet (palindrome), they are pairs of anagrams. A perfectly symmetrical square of words, readable both horizontally and vertically even in reverse. Tenet is also a palindrome, meaning it can be read in both directions while maintaining Three of these squares were found in Pompeii, destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD: they are currently the oldest ever found. Another ancient example comes from Syria (II-III century), then several have sprung up during the Middle Ages, in Italy and in Europe, often associated with churches.

(Photo: odder public domain via Wikimedia commons )

In search of a meaning

We don't know who invented it, nor what its meaning was (or if it had one). In a very forced way, you can order the words in a sentence that translated means The Arepo sower drives the plow (wheels) with difficulty. But this also reveals an imperfection of the square: Arepo is not a Latin word, and in this translation it becomes an unlikely proper name.