A very curious and cryptic anagram was discovered at two places in Pompeii a city in Italy destroyed by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 70. The form of the anagram is:
ROTAS.
OPERA.
TENET.
AREPO.
SATOR
Another example of the same anagram, dating from the third century A.d., appears in the ruins of Dura-Europos on the Euphrates River. And a third, dating from the fourth century a.d., turned up in faraway Cirencester, England. Other examples of the anagram, dating from the Middle Ages, have been found in various places in Europe. In some cases the order of the lines from top to bottom is reversed, but in any case the lines are the same, whether read vertically or horizontally. Several interpretations of the anagram have been proposed, but it has been observed that these same letters can be rearranged in the form of a cross. In that case they form the first two words of the Lord's Prayer in Latin, both horizontally and vertically preceded by the letter A and followed by the letter O, which correspond to the letters alpha and omega (the first and the last) of the Greek alphabet. If this interpretation of the anagram is correct, its discovery in Pompeii would indicate that there was a Christian congregation in that Roman city before a.d. 79. It would also show that the form in which the Lord's Prayer appears in Matthew is probably the earliest. https://books.google.com/books?id=9b3YA ... 0Q6AEIKTAA
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/were-there-ch ... -evidence/
The argument there were Christians at Pompeii is argued by this:
http://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2017 ... m-pompeii/
And was the subject of this recent book:
http://fortresspress.com/product/crosse ... uvian-town