The Taman Shud Case

One liner of the Story -In December 1948, a beach-goer in Adelaide discovered a corpse with a mysterious six-word message in its pocket, sparking a decades-long investigation into the unsolved case of Alfred Boxall and the enigmatic "Taman Shud".

The Somerton Man was 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 after the Persian phrase tamám shud (Persian: تمام شد),[note 1] meaning "is over" or "is finished", which 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 Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám, authored by 12th-century poet Omar Khayyám.

Following a public appeal by police, the book from which the page had been torn was located. On the inside back cover, detectives read through indentations left from previous handwriting: a local telephone number, another unidentified number, and text that resembled a coded message. The text has not been deciphered or interpreted in a way that satisfies authorities on the case.

The wind howled through the streets of Adelaide, South Australia as the sun descended on the evening of December 1, 1948. Little did anyone know, in a short time this eerie night would be remembered as the start of one of the strangest unsolved cases in Australian history.

The body was discovered soon after 8am that morning. In the shallow sand of Somerton beach, a policeman found the corpse of a well-dressed, middle-aged man. He was lying peacefully on his back, with his head reclined on the seawall promenade. Aside from the odd placement of his tightly curled toes, the man seemed almost untouched by the night’s disturbances.

The police knew they were dealing with a strange case. Clothes were expensively tailored and his wallet contained a tram ticket, some coins, and a neatly folded corner of lined paper, ripped from a book. The body was well-kempt, but it was too badly decomposed for a cause of death to be identified. Natural causes were ruled out. An autopsy found that the man had died of unknown causes, and that he had been dead for approximately 12 hours. Nothing else was found—no passport, driver’s license, or any other form of identification. It was as if the man had never existed.

And then, something even more strange was discovered. In the pocket of the man’s trousers, a small piece of paper was found with the words “Taman Shud” on it. Local police were stumped as to at it’s meaning, and so decided to take the case to the respective newspaper agency. As public interest in the case grew, the cryptic words “Taman Shud” only deepened the mystery.

It was soon discovered that “Taman Shud” was part of an ancient, forgotten poem. In a collection of 10th century Persian poems titled “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam”, the words roughly translated to “it is ended”. Several weeks after the body was found, a copy of the book was discovered in the back seat of a car parked near the Somerton beach. The book was open at the page containing the poem, and it appeared as though the last verse had been cut out.

Speculation ran wild surrounding the identity of the unknown man. “Somerton Man”, as he became known, was initially thought to be a Cambridge-educated New Zealander or a British spy. However, despite intensive investigations, concerted efforts to identify the body were fruitless.

The unsolved case has since come to be known as one of the most mysterious unsolved deaths in Australia’s history, and has gained notoriety across the globe. Nobody knows who Somerton Man was, or how he died, and to this day, the case remains unsolved. But still, the mystery of “Taman Shud” captures imaginations. It is a chilling reminder that death can be a total stranger, and even a life can vanish into nothing, leaving only questions left unanswered.