It was laid in the 1260s, when Henry III sent his new Abbot of Westminster, Richard de Ware, for talks with the Pope in Rome. The Englishman saw a newly installed pavement in the Pope's summer residence, knew it was just the thing for the cathedral which Henry was spectacularly rebuilding around the tomb of St Edward the Confessor, and arrived home with a ship load of marble, glass and Italian craftsmen. Ware's reward was his own tomb incorporated into the design. Henry's tomb, and the saint's shrine, were originally covered in similar work, but all the scraps of marble and glass were picked out as sacred relics by generations of pilgrims.

Only a handful of brass letters remains of the original long inscription, but it was transcribed centuries ago. It names the king, the chief craftsman as Odoricus, gives the date in a tortuous riddle, and then mysteriously suggests that the world will last for 19,683 years, by adding together the life spans of different animals: "add dogs and horses and men, stags and ravens, eagles, enormous whales ...."

Before I move on I would also like to mention another branch of this riddle that can, and should be followed concerning musical time. The word drum and “dream” have a common root, “drom”, meaning music and noise in Germanic languages, but should be traced back further to Greek “drome- race course or run”, Greek “drama- act, play, or deed” and Sanskrit “dramati- run, or do”. The Greek drama was especially in reference to tragedies, which means “song on the occasion of the He-goat.” Tragedies were Dionysian ritual activities. Tragedies were not necessarily “tragic” although they were usually dithyrambic songs concerning the death of a goat or “satyr” plays. The idea of sorrow became attached, perhaps justly, due to a word game. Dionysos was also called Eleuther. This name may mean “the one who arrives” similar to Eleusis and Elysium, both with the sense “arrive” and both referring to the underworld. Not in the modern sense of arrive, but rather “come to shore or land”- ar riparia. It must be remembered in Greece to go to the dead one had to be taken by ferry across the waters of the Styx by the ferryman, Charon (Karon). In Gilgamesh the ferryman is Urshanabi, who ferries over the waters of death. In Egypt, tomb boats were common for Pharaohs.

Originally posted by stereologist
reply to post by ATLien

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There is no more to numerology than the application of whimsy to unrelated numbers.