The still impenetrable ciphers: from voynich manuscript to sator magic square
“No, Captain; all codes invented by humans are capable of being deciphered by humans.” This is what Edgar Allan Poe wrote in the story “The Gold Beetle” and in most situations it is correct. Yet, there still exist today a series of messages and encrypted texts, of different origins, which for centuries have been waiting for someone capable of revealing their meaning.
At the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University, in the United States, is preserved a 204-page volume, written and illustrated by hand on calf parchment. The book has been radiocarbon dated between 1404 and 1438. An extraordinary object to browse, but one that has proved a torment for scholars. No one has yet managed to understand what language it is written in and why it depicts a series of plants and flowers never seen before, as well as obscure cosmological and astronomical representations. It is no coincidence that it has been called "the most mysterious book in the world".
Wilfrid Voynich, an American rare book dealer, purchased it from the Jesuit college of Villa Mondragone, near Frascati, in 1912. Since then, many have tried to decipher the manuscript.
When, at the end of World War II, US Navy cryptography experts studied and analyzed some old ciphers to test new decoding systems, the Voynich Manuscript was the only one to withstand all the analysis.
Some hypothesized that it was written by Roger Bacon in a sort of disguised Latin, but experts on the philosopher exclude any type of connection with the thirteenth-century thinker.
One philologist proposed that it was written in Ukrainian with the vowels removed, but although translated thus some passages make vague sense, there is no correlation between the text and the illustrations. Another scholar attributed the text to the Cathars and interpreted it as a mixture of different medieval languages, but the proposed translation proved to be nonsensical.
According to recent studies, although some researchers consider it a Renaissance fake created artfully to defraud some rich collector or even a sovereign, the manuscript contains an authentic message that is just waiting to be decoded.
The Beale Cipher
Sometimes, a secret code seems to have been invented to hide a treasure. This is the case of the so-called Beale Cipher. According to an 1885 booklet, entitled The Beale Papers and written by James B. Ward, in 1817 Thomas Jefferson Beale left with 30 men in tow on a buffalo hunting expedition when, during the enterprise, the group came across in a fabulous goldfield.
The men collected three tons of gold, silver and precious stones, which they then buried in Virginia with the intention of recovering them later. But Beale and his companions disappeared and an innkeeper, to whom Beale had left a box to be opened ten years after his disappearance in case something happened to him, discovered that in the chest there were three sheets written with a numerical code.
In an accompanying letter, Beale explained that the three codes concealed the description of the treasure, the location of its hiding place and the list of names of the people among whose the fortune was to be divided. The innkeeper was unable to decipher them and on his deathbed he perhaps passed them to Ward, who managed to decipher only the second one (the description of the treasure) and published the booklet.
Many have tried to locate the treasure which, according to some estimates, could be worth around 40 million dollars today. The authorities of Bedford County (where the fortune is said to be buried) have now prohibited any type of unauthorized excavation, following the damage caused to county properties over the years.
The whole affair, however, appears suspicious to scholars. There is no trace of such a Thomas Jefferson Beale in those years and in that area, and it seems unlikely that 30 people would not only keep a secret about a possible treasure, but would all disappear without anyone trying to discover their fate (in newspapers of the time nothing is found in relation to these disappearances).
Furthermore, various inconsistencies in the text of Beale's alleged letter, such as the use of words which entered the language only many years after the time in which it was written, suggest that the author of the hoax is Ward himself, the sole source of the story.
At the bottom of the well
Another mysterious code linked to treasure is the one that was allegedly found in the well on Oak Island. According to legend, a pirate's treasure is hidden in a deep well on the small island in Nova Scotia. Various expeditions have been attempted to reach the bottom of the well, but without success.
During the excavations, a stone slab engraved with coded inscriptions was also found. According to a possible translation he would say: “Forty feet below, are two million pounds buried" But even in this case, as with the Beale Cipher, there are many inconsistencies.
According to Joe Nickell, both events are nothing more than Masonic allegories: the treasures, in short, do not exist but the stories that talk about them were invented by Freemasons, perhaps enriching pre-existing legends, to pass down some rituals.
Freemasonry is based on a complex allegorical-symbolic system, which often refers to the construction of King Solomon's Temple. In these allegories there is talk of a secret crypt, in which treasures and secrets that can be located thanks to a mysterious code are kept. Plausible hypothesis, which however does not put an end to the mysteries of the Beale Cipher and Oak Island.
The oldest writing in the world has almost been deciphered: the D'Agapeyeff and Dorabella ciphers
It can also happen that an encrypted code remains inviolate because its author forgot the key. It happened, for example, to the English cartographer of Russian origin Alexander D'Agapeyeff, who in a cryptography booklet published in 1939, Codes and Ciphers, included a coded message as a challenge to readers.
All attempts to solve it, however, failed and D'Agapeyeff himself was forced to remove the challenge from subsequent editions of the book because he no longer remembered how he had obtained the cipher.
Other times, a joke may become a mystery because its perpetrator was a celebrity. The English composer Edward Elgar, author of the famous march “Pomp and Circumstance”, wrote an encrypted letter to Miss Dora Penny in 1897.
The woman was unable to decipher its meaning, which remains unknown to this day.
Certainly Elgar did not imagine that his letter would be preserved and would later become an enigma, known as the Dorabella Cipher, insoluble for the best cryptographers in the world.
There are 87 characters reminiscent of Arabic writing, arranged on three lines, which resemble a simple substitution cipher, based on a text originally written in English whose letters were then replaced with specially invented signs.
Every attempt made, however, has shown that this hypothesis does not lead to any results. The Elgar Society announced a competition in 2007, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the composer's birth, for whoever managed to decipher the code. Nobody won.
Code crimes
That a crime is linked to a cipher seems more like a spy novel plot than fact. Yet, it happened more than once. In 1948 an undocumented man was found dead on Somerton Beach in Adelaide, Australia. A rolled up piece of paper on which the words “Taman Shud” were printed was found sewn inside a trouser pocket. It turned out to be the last words of a book of poems, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam.
One person told the police that the night before the body was found he had discovered a book in his car which had been left unlocked: when he checked it, he saw that the roll of paper matched perfectly with a piece torn from the book.
Examining the volume, it was also discovered that it contained a five-line coded text written by hand, and still inviolate. The identity of the man was never discovered. Two pages written in code were also found in the pockets of Ricky McCormick, the victim of a 1999 murder in St. Charles County, Missouri.
The FBI was never able to decipher them, or find out how or why McCormick was killed.
Serial killers
Between the '60s and '70s, in Northern California happened several random murders by a serial killer who, in some letters sent to newspapers, signed himself Zodiac. There were seven confirmed victims, but Zodiac (whose identity was never discovered) claimed to have killed 37 people.
Among his messages to the press, he also sent four cryptograms, three of which were never deciphered. In the only one that was decrypted, Zodiac explained how much he liked killing people, while in the remaining (undecrypted) messages he claimed to have revealed his real identity.
The case, which inspired numerous films, including the first of the Inspector Callaghan series starring Clint Eastwood, is still open in various jurisdictions in California.
Challenges and riddles
A merely playful challenge is the one that the artist James Sanborn created on behalf of the CIA. In the headquarters of the American secret services, in Langley, Virginia, there is an S-shaped sculpture that Sanborn has named Kryptos (from the Greek for "hidden").
It is entirely perforated with 869 letters of the alphabet apparently randomly arranged but which, in reality, hide a message. Dictology enthusiasts, as well as CIA cryptanalysts, had fun searching for a solution.
At present, three-quarters of the text has been decrypted and it is a meditation on the nature of secrets and the elusiveness of truth. On the fourth part, however, all the experts have so far been stuck, so much so that there is a group made up of over 2,000 people on the web, committed to finding a solution.
A mysterious inscription on a monument in Shugborough Hall, England, is also still seeking an explanation. The monument, built between 1748 and 1763, was commissioned by the then English parliamentarian Thomas Anson. It shows a bas-relief copy of the Shepherds of Arcadia, a famous painting by Nicolas Poussin.
Below this representation are the letters "DM" (which perhaps stand for Diis Manibus, that is "Dedicated to the shadows" as was used on the tombs of the ancient Romans) and then a sequence of eight letters: OUOSVAVV whose meaning is still dark.
One hypothesis is that it is the acronym of a Latin dedication to his deceased wife: Optimae Uxoris Optimae Sororis Viduus Amantissimus Vovit Virtutibus (Best of wives, best of sisters, a most devoted widower dedicates to your virtues).
However, there are other possible solutions, one of which claims that, once deciphered, the message would indicate the distance between Shugborough and the Oak Island well.
The magical Sator square
On a large number of archaeological finds found throughout Europe, a Latin inscription appears, in the form of a magic square, composed of five words: SATOR, AREPO, TENET, OPERA, ROTAS. By superimposing one word on another in the indicated order, a palindromic sentence is obtained, which remains identical whether it is read from left to right or vice versa; or from top to bottom or vice versa.
The oldest example of this "magic" square was found in Pompeii (79 AD), on a column of the building called Palestra Grande, but several are found also in Italy: on the Cathedral of Siena, in the Certosa di Trisufti in Collepardo (Fresinone), in the Collegiate Church of Sant'Orso in Aosta, in the Abbey of Valvisciolo in Sermoneta.
What is it about? Its meaning is not clear, a literal translation (assuming that the term arepo, non-existent in Latin, indicates a type of chariot) does not help: "The sower, with his chariot, carefully holds the wheels". Perhaps a reference to the Creator who takes care of his works, perhaps an apotropaic message similar to Abracadabra, perhaps an anagram hiding the symbol of the cross.
No one can say for sure, but there is no doubt that this strange seal, which has been with us for at least 2,000 years, will continue to fascinate scholars for a long time to come.
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