The Toynbee Tiles — Cryptic Messages Embedded in US City Streets Over Decades by Unknown Artist

Since the 1980s, hundreds of mysterious tiles have been discovered embedded in the asphalt of major city intersections in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and Washington D.C. The tiles, made of linoleum and asphalt-based material, contain cryptic messages referencing historian Arnold Toynbee, the resurrection of the dead on Jupiter, and various political conspiracy references. Their creator was unknown for decades. The tiles are typically the size of a piece of paper and are permanently embedded in asphalt crosswalks, surviving for years despite heavy traffic. The central message on most tiles reads: "TOYNBEE IDEA IN KUBRICK'S 2001 RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPITER." Many tiles include additional text sections referring to media organizations and political targets in violent or conspiratorial terms. The installation method was mysterious — no one was ever caught placing a tile, despite their location in some of the busiest intersections in America. A documentary film, Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles (2011), investigated the case and identified a likely perpetrator: a Philadelphia recluse named Seymour Cohn who died in 2003. However, the identification was never definitively proven. New tiles continued to appear after Cohn's death, suggesting either that the identification was wrong or that someone else has continued the project. The tiles are now considered art objects and Philadelphia has made efforts to preserve some of them. The full meaning of the cryptic philosophy behind them has never been decoded.