The eye on the dollar bill, explained by its designer
It is the most decoded image in the world and the least read. Charles Thomson explained every part of it to Congress in 1782, Congress adopted his explanation along with the device, and the explanation is dull, specific and public.
An eye sits inside a triangle inside a burst of gold, floating clear of the flat top of an unfinished pyramid. Under the pyramid, a date in Roman numerals. Above and below, two Latin mottoes. It is on the back of the one dollar bill, and it is probably the most searched image in the English language.
Nearly everything written about it is guesswork. It does not have to be. The man who designed it wrote a report explaining every element, Congress adopted that report along with the device on 20 June 1782, and the text has been in print ever since. It is four sentences long.
What Thomson actually wrote
Reverse. The pyramid signifies Strength and Duration: The Eye over it & the Motto allude to the many signal interpositions of providence in favour of the American cause. The date underneath is that of the Declaration of Independence and the words under it signify the beginning of the new American Aera, which commences from that date.
Charles Thomson, 1782, Remarks and Explanation, adopted with the device
That is the whole of it. The pyramid is strength and duration. The eye and the motto over it are a thank-you note: providence kept stepping in on the American side, and this acknowledges it. The date is 1776. The words underneath mean a new era starting then.
Notice what is not there. No pyramid of Giza. No Egypt. No order of any kind, secret or otherwise. Thomson is a classicist and a secretary of Congress writing a heraldic description for a legal instrument, and the register never leaves that.
The eye is not watching you
The commonest modern reading is surveillance: an eye that sees everything, placed above a hierarchy. Thomson's eye is doing the opposite. It is not looking down at citizens, it is being pointed at by the designer as the thing that intervened on their behalf. The sentence is about gratitude, not observation.
The eye in a triangle was ordinary decoration in the eighteenth century, and this archive holds it on objects that have nothing to do with each other. What the Great Seal adds is not a new meaning but a stated one.
What Thomson does not say
There are thirteen courses of masonry on this plate, counting the lettered base course. The archive counts them and records that it is counting them, because Thomson does not mention the number and neither does the blazon. Thirteen is the obvious guess and the obvious guess is not evidence.
He also says nothing about why the pyramid is unfinished. It is the detail people reach for most, and the report is silent on it. The archive marks that silence rather than filling it.
The other side, which nobody searches
The Escutcheon is born on the breast of an American Eagle without any other supporters, to denote that the United States of America ought to rely on their own Virtue.
Charles Thomson, 1782, on the obverse
That is the same man in the same report, and it shows what kind of reader he was. He does not explain the eagle. He explains the absence of the two animals that would ordinarily hold a shield up in a coat of arms, because their absence is the argument. A country with no supporters holds its own shield.
The Olive branch and arrows denote the power of peace and war which is exclusively vested in Congress.
Charles Thomson, 1782
Peace in one foot, war in the other, and the point of the sentence is the word exclusively. This is a document about where power sits.
Why the guessing continues
Two reasons, and neither is a conspiracy. The first is that the reverse is the half almost nobody encountered until it was printed on currency, long after 1782, and it arrived without its explanation attached. A picture separated from its caption will always collect new captions.
The second is that Thomson's answer is disappointing. Strength and duration, providence, a new era beginning in 1776. It is a committee's language, and it does not reward the effort of looking. That is exactly why it is worth quoting: the boring answer is the sourced one, and everything more exciting than it has been added by people who were not in the room.