Today’s New York Times has a short article by John Markoff on the Copiale Cipher, the oculist secret society initiatory document recently cracked by Kevin Knight, Beáta Megyesi and Christiane Schaefer. I discussed it in reasonable depth on this blog a few days ago, click there if you want to know more.
I do suspect that there must be hundreds of uncracked ciphers like the Copiale Cipher (though typically much smaller) languishing in <cliche>dusty European archives</cliche>, so it would be excellent to give people a chance to crack them (not just Kevin Knight & his student cadre 🙂 ).
So, archivists of the world, email me scans of your uncracked ciphers, let’s see what cipher mysteries we can crack together!
PS: before I forget, The Curse of the Voynich should finally be back on sale next week, so when it’s in I’ll email a reminder to those people who have asked to buy a copy. At £9.95, it’s far cheaper than the £32.79, £171.98, and £270.46 quoted on Amazon Marketplace! =:-o
Hiya Nick,
Can you please put me down for a copy of the book as well please?
Ta,
N
Niranjan: I’ll email you as soon as I know when they’ll be in.
Here’s another article: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/10/25/8482183-secret-societys-code-cracked
With quotes from Nick, Elonka and me.
I’m just waiting for G/gl to hear about this. (The docs would be out of copyright, no?)
Yes, the NY Times article brought me to this web site. Interesting article. I learned these methods over 50 years ago in the US Army … stationed in Germany and Lebanon … about 20 years ago historical ciphers began to be read … thanks to a coffee shop meeting … based on a letter to the Sacramento BEE …
Concerning historical ciphers, Kevin Brown offers and interesting page:
http://www.mathpages.com/home/ihistory.htm
I worked with Kevin 16 years ago … decoding a 600 AD Akhmim Papyrus … our work seemed solid in 1995 … today I find many flaws … decoding an ancient mathematical thread offers many twists and turns.
I’d like to post a few examples of modern number theory decodings of ancient texts … that need major modifications to report the actual code used by ancient mathematicians.
Best Regards,
Milo Gardner
In 1862 the Berlin Papyrus was published. It was the first ancient Egyptian math text published in the modern era. Over the last 149 years scholars have debated the unit fraction and second degree equation solutions used by the 1800 BCE Egyptian scribe:
http://planetmath.org/encyclopedia/BerlinPapyrusAndSecondDegreeEquations.html
comments would be appreciated. Academia.edu offers another forum to read and discuss this class of paper.
Best Regards,
Milo Gardner
The Egyptian Mathematical Leather Roll was deeded to the British Museum in 1864, and unrolled/ read in 1927. Museum experts under valued the additive contents of the text. Today the following discussion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_Mathematical_Leather_Roll
shows that modern number theory goes beyond additive patterns that also parse the 26 unit fraction series answer sheet.
But how did the scribe actually encode 1/p and 1/pq rational numbers to exact unit fraction series?
Today, scaling factors m/m also scales 1/p and 1/pq to m/mp and m/mpq to exact unit fraction series.
How can the ancient scribal method be determined?
Comments?
Best Regards,
Milo Gardner
Hi Nick! Yahoo News has an article on this too. A little bit of the translation is given, the English page from the ACL article.
BTW, you did mean ‘occultist secret society’, didn’t you? I mean, the All-Seeing Eye is a widely-known Masonic, etc. symbol, but making glasses? 🙂
I’m wondering if Robert Lomas may be contacting you with details of the initiation ceremony of the Masons. Knight-Lomas book “Second Messiah?” Don’t write them off as complete cranks. Read their book. A tout a l’heure!
Addition to my earlier comment. Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas collaborated on several books, some of which dealt with ancient architects/builders and their “secrets”. Robert Lomas still has a website. One particular “puzzle” involved the “mystery” of the musical notes carved into the stonework of an ancient abbey (church?). Not long after their publication, another group (of musicians, I think) played the musical notes. Because I didn’t have a sound card at the time, I have no idea of what kind of music (or message?) may have been translated. If nothing else, their books might give you some fun reading.
Bobbi: I’m not sure I’d want music generated in this way on my headphones. Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “incidental music”! 🙂
Dennis: “oculist” was right, the rites described involve the initiate putting on some kind of glasses and professing to those assembled that they are able to see again. All very strange.