Somerton Man
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The Somerton Man is an unidentified man whose body was found on 1 December 1948 on the beach at Somerton Park, a suburb of Adelaide, South Australia. The case is also known by the Persian phrase tamám
Reconstructed photograph made by police of the man, 1948
Location on Somerton Park beach where the corpse was found, marked by an 'X'
Suitcase and effects, found at Adelaide railway station. From left to right are detectives Dave Bartlett, Lionel Leane, and Len Brown.
The handwriting found in the back of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. The text is presumed to be some sort of code.
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
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The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is an 1859 translation from Persian to English by Edward FitzGerald of a selection of quatrains attributed to Omar Khayyam, dubbed "the Astronomer-Poet of Persia".
Somerton Man
…was printed on a scrap of paper found months later in the fob pocket of the man's trousers. The scrap had been torn from the final page of a copy of Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, a poetry book. Following a public appeal by police, the book from which the page had been torn was located. On the inside back cover, detectives could…
Front cover of the first American edition (1878)
A collection of postcards with paintings of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, by Indian artist M. V. Dhurandhar
Calligraphic manuscript page with three of FitzGerald's Rubaiyat written by William Morris, illustration by Edward Burne-Jones (1870s).
Illustration by Adelaide Hanscom (c. 1910).