Tamam Shud case

The Somerton Man
The Somerton Man
	Police photo of the corpse, 1948
Born	c. 1905
Died	1 December 1948; Somerton, South Australia
Resting place	West Terrace Cemetery, Adelaide, South Australia; Gravesite: P3, 12, 106
Other names	Unknown Man (police terminology), Somerton Man; Carl 'Charles' Webb
Known for	Mysterious death

The Tamam Shud case, also known as the Mystery of the Somerton Man, is an unsolved case of an unidentified man found dead at 6:30 am, 1 December 1948, on Somerton beach, Glenelg, just south of Adelaide, South Australia.[1]

It is named after the Persian phrase tamám shud, meaning "ended" or "finished", 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 Khayyam, authored by 12th-century poet Omar Khayyám. Tamam was misspelt as Taman in many early reports and this error.[note 1]

Jessica Thomson living in nearby Glenelg was questioned in connection with the case, her phone number was found in the book.[2] Shortly afterwards, she gave birth to a boy with the same rare ear trait as the unidentified man.[3]

Notes

While the words that end The Rubaiyat are "Tamám Shud" (تمام شد), it has often been referred to as "Taman Shud" in the media, because of a spelling error in early newspaper coverage or police reports which has persisted. In Persian, تمام tamám is a noun that means "the end" and شد shud is an auxiliary verb indicating past tense, so tamam shud means "ended" or "finished".

References

The Advertiser, "Tamam Shud", 10 June 1949, p. 2
The Advertiser, "Police Test Book For Somerton Body Clue", 26 July 1949, p. 3
Stateline South Australia, "Somerton Beach Mystery Man", Transcript, Broadcast 27 March 2009. Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 27 April 2009.

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[2] While the words that end The Rubaiyat are "Tamám Shud" (تمام شد), it has often been referred to as "Taman Shud" in the media, because of a spelling error in early newspaper coverage or police reports which has persisted. In Persian, تمام tamám is a noun that means "the end" and شد shud is an auxiliary verb indicating past tense, so tamam shud means "ended" or "finished".

[editorial-1] The Advertiser, "Tamam Shud", 10 June 1949, p. 2

[Micro-3] The Advertiser, "Police Test Book For Somerton Body Clue", 26 July 1949, p. 3

[Stateline-4] Stateline South Australia, "Somerton Beach Mystery Man", Transcript, Broadcast 27 March 2009. Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 27 April 2009.