Nipson anomemata me monan opsin

Nipson anomēmata mē monan opsin (Ancient Greek: Νίψον ἀνομήματα, μὴ μόναν ὄψιν), meaning "Wash the sins, not only the face",[1] or "Wash my transgressions, not only my face",[2] is a Greek palindrome[fn 1] which was inscribed upon a holy water font outside the church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople:[3]

ΝΙΨΟΝ ΑΝΟΜΗΜΑΤΑ ΜΗ ΜΟΝΑΝ ΟΨΙΝ (meaning "Wash your sins, not only your face").

Fountain named Pigi Zois (Source of Life)

The phrase is attributed to Saint Gregory of Nazianzus.[2]

The inscription can also be found in the following places:

• above the Hagiasma ("Holy Spring") of the Church of St. Mary of Blachernae in Istanbul;
• around the baptismal font at St. Mary's Church, Nottingham;
• around the baptismal font at St. Michael's Cathedral in Barbados;
• the font of several churches in Paris, e.g.,
  • St. Stephen d’Egres,
  • Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, Paris,
  • St. Martin des Champs,
  • St. Pierre de Chaillot,
  • Basilica of Notre-Dame-des-Victoires, Paris;
• at St. Menin’s Abbey, Orléans;
• at Dulwich College;
• at the following churches of the UK: Tewkesbury Abbey (Gloucestershire), Worlingworth (Suffolk), Harlow (Essex), Knapton (Norfolk), St Martin, Ludgate (London), St Ethelburga's Bishopsgate and Hadleigh (Suffolk);
• at the Vlatadon Monastery, Thessaloniki, Greece.[4]
• at the fountain "Pigi Zois" (Source of Life) of Agios Nektarios (between Kolymbia and Archipolis), Rhodos

When the sentence is rendered in capital letters, as would be usual for an inscription (ΝΙΨΟΝ ΑΝΟΜΗΜΑΤΑ ΜΗ ΜΟΝΑΝ ΟΨΙΝ), all the letters are vertically symmetrical except for the Ν. As a result, if the N is stylized Ͷ in the right half, the sentence is not only a palindrome but also a mirror ambigram.

See also

• List of Greek phrases

Footnotes

1. The Romanization is not a palindrome because the Greek letter ψ (psi) is transcribed by the digraph ps. The modern diacritics, which are not symmetrical, are usually omitted from inscriptions of the sentence.

References

1. Barry J. Blake, Secret Language: Codes, Tricks, Spies, Thieves, and Symbols, Oxford University Press, 2010, ISBN 0-19-957928-8, p. 15.
2. Alex Preminger, Terry V.F. Brogan, and Frank J. Warnke, The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, 3rd ed., Princeton University Press, 1993, ISBN 0-691-02123-6, p. 874.
3. R. Langford-James, A Dictionary of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Ayer Publishing, ISBN 0-8337-5047-X, p. 61.
4. "< palindromo > ... Wash the sins, not only the face | Flickr - Photo Sharing!". Flickr. 2012-07-20. Retrieved 2013-10-01.