Until quite recent history, thewriting of the ancient Egyptians was a secret to man. Eventually, withthe help of the Rosetta stone, Jean-François Champollion was able tosolve the ancient mystery. Since that time, there have been many otherattempts to decipher ancient languages, or to crack codes that havebeen made for fun or fortune. This is a list of the ten most famousciphers and writing systems that are still unsolved.
The disc of Phaistos is the mostimportant example of hieroglyphic inscription from Crete and wasdiscovered in 1903 in a small room near the depositories of the“archive chamber”, in the north – east apartments of the palace,together with a Linear A tablet and pottery dated to the beginning ofthe Neo-palatial period (1700- 1600 B.C.). Both surfaces of this claydisc are covered with hieroglyphs arranged in a spiral zone, impressedon the clay when it was damp. The signs make up groups divided fromeach other by vertical lines, and each of these groups should representa word. Forty five different types of signs have been distinguished, ofwhich a few can be identified with the hieroglyphs in use in the Proto-palatial period. Some hieroglyphic sequences recur like refrains,suggesting a religious hymn, and Pernier regards the content of thetext as ritual. Others have suggested that the text is a list ofsoldiers, and lately it has suggested to be a document in the Hitticlanguage in which a king discusses the *****ion of the Palace ofPhaistos.
The Phaistos Disk
Voynich Manuscript
At least 400 years old, this is a232-page illuminated manuscript entirely written in a secret script. Itis filled with copious drawings of unidentified plants, herbal recipesof some sort, astrological diagrams, and many small human figures instrange plumbing-like contraptions. The script is unlike anything elsein existence, but is written in a confident style, seemingly by someonewho was very comfortable with it. In 2004 there were some compellingarguments which described a technique that would seemingly prove thatthe manuscript was a hoax, but to date, none of the describedtechniques have been able to replicate a single section of theManuscript, so speculations continue. Over its recorded existence, theVoynich manuscript has been the object of intense study by manyprofessional and amateur cryptographers, including some top Americanand British codebreakers of World War II fame (all of whom failed todecipher a single word). This string of failures has turned the Voynichmanuscript into a famous subject of historical cryptology.
Linear A
Linear A is one of two linear scriptsused in ancient Crete (a third script is Cretan Hieroglyphs). They werediscovered and named by Arthur Evans. Linear B was deciphered in 1952by Michael Ventris and was used to write Mycenaean Greek. Linear A isfar from being totally deciphered but it is partially understood and itmay be read through Linear B values. Though the two scripts share manyof the same symbols, using the syllables associated with Linear B inLinear A writings produces words that are unrelated to any knownlanguage. This language has been dubbed Minoan or Eteocretan, andcorresponds to a period in Cretan history prior to a series ofinvasions by Mycenean Greeks around 1450 BC. It is believed that theremay be some connection between Linear A and The Phaistos Disk.
Beale Ciphers
In 1885, a small pamphlet waspublished in Virginia containing a story and three encrypted messages.According to the pamphlet, around 1820 a man named Beale buried twowagons-full of treasure at a secret location in Bedford County,Virginia. He then left a small locked box with a local innkeeper, andleft town, never to be seen again. The pamphlet went on to state thatthe innkeeper, after having not heard from Beale for many years, openedthe box and discovered encrypted messages. Never able to read them, heeventually passed them along to a young friend shortly before theinnkeeper’s death in 1863. According to the pamphlet, the friend spentthe next 20 years trying to decrypt the messages, solving only onewhich detailed the tons of gold, silver and jewels that were buried,along with a general location. The still unsolved messages supposedlygive exact directions, and a list of who the treasure belongs to. Therehave been many exhaustive searches for the treasure, and much effortspent on decoding the other messages, without (confirmed) success.There are many claimed solutions, usually bannered in combination witha book that someone is trying to sell, but no one has ever been able toproduce a duplicatable decryption method.
The Dorabella Cipher
Probably Elgar’s most popular work ishis ‘Enigma’ Variations which, apart from its undoubted musical merit,still tantalises the musical detectives with the hidden ’secrets’ whichElgar cleverly wove into the fabric of the score. But Elgar, who wasfascinated by codes, ciphers, riddles and other forms of puzzles, hasleft us another mystery – the ‘Dorabella’ cipher (pictured above). Onehundred and ten years ago – to be precise, on the 14 July 1897 – Elgarsent a letter to a young friend, Miss Dora Penny, the 22 year-olddaughter of the Rev. Alfred Penny, Rector of St Peter’s, Wolverhampton.The unusual feature of the letter was that it was in a cipher which, acentury later, still presents a challenge. There have been a couple ofattempts at solving it but neither of these seem entirely satisfactory.
Chaocipher
John F. Byrne invented Chaocipher in1918 and tried unsuccessfully for almost 40 years to interest the U.S.government in his cipher system. He offered a reward to anyone whocould break his cipher but the reward was never claimed. In 1989, JohnByrne, son of John F. Byrne, demonstrated Chaocipher to two Cryptologiaeditors to determine if it had any commercial value. After making someimprovements and providing additional information they jointly issue anew challenge to would-be solvers. In his autobiography, Silent Years,John F. Byrne, a lifelong friend of James Joyce, devoted the lastchapter to Chaocipher which he had invented in 1918. Byrne describedhis attempts starting in 1920 to interest the State, War, and NavyDepartments in his indecipherable cipher and his frustration with thedisinterest shown by William F. Friedman and other cryptanalyticexperts after he had demonstrated his machine.
Chinese Gold Bar Cipher
In 1933, seven gold bars wereallegedly issued to a General Wang in Shanghai, China. These gold barsappear to represent metal certificates related to a Bank deposit with aU.S. Bank. The gold bars themselves have pictures, Chinese writing,some form of script writing, and cryptograms in latin letters. Notsurprisingly, there is a dispute concerning the validity of the claimfor the deposit. It may help to resolve the dispute if someone candecipher the cryptograms on the bars. Nobody has yet put for the atheory as to their meaning. The Chinese writing has been translated,and discusses a transaction in excess of $300,000,000. It also refersto these gold bars which weigh a total of 1.8 kilograms. You can seethe cryptograms here if you want to have a go at cracking the code.
Shugborough Hall Enscription
D O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V. M
For adherents of the modern Grail-conspiracy legend, the inscription isalleged to hold a clue to the location of the Holy Grail. Following theclaims in the book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail that Poussin was amember of the Priory of Sion and that the painting contains a messageabout the location of the grail, it has been speculated that theinscription may encode secrets related to the Priory.
The Shepherd’s Monument atShugborough Hall carries a relief (pictured above) that shows a womanwatching three shepherds pointing to a tomb. On the tomb is depictedthe Latin text “Et in arcadia ego” (“I am also in Arcadia” or “I ameven in Arcadia”). The relief is based on a painting by the Frenchartist Nicholas Poussin, known itself as Et in Arcadia ego, but therelief has a number of modifications — most noticeably that it isreversed horizontally. Another difference is a change in which letterof the tomb a shepherd is pointing at. In the painting the letter R inARCADIA is being pointed to. The finger in the sculpture is broken, butwas pointing to the N in IN. The sculpture also adds an extrasarcophagus to the scene, placed on top of the one with the Latinphrase. Below the image of the monument are the following letters:
Kryptos
Kryptos is a sculpture by Americanartist James Sanborn located on the grounds of the Central IntelligenceAgency (CIA) in Langley, Virginia, in the United States. Since itsdedication on November 3, 1990, there has been much speculation aboutthe meaning of the encrypted messages it bears. It continues to providea diversion for employees of the CIA and other cryptanalysts attemptingto decrypt the messages. The ciphertext on one half of the mainsculpture contains 869 characters in total, however Sanborn releasedinformation in April of 2006 stating that an intended letter on themain half of Kryptos was missing. This would bring the total number ofcharacters to 870 on the main portion. The other half of the sculpturecomprises a Vigenère encryption tableau, comprised of 869 characters,if spaces are counted. The first person to publicly announce solvingthe first three sections, in 1999, was James Gillogly, a computerscientist from southern California, who deciphered 768 of thecharacters. The portion that he couldn’t solve, the remaining 97 or 98characters, is the same part which has stumped the government’s owncryptanalysts.
The D’Agapeyeff cipher is an as-yetunbroken cipher that appears in the first edition of Codes and Ciphers,an elementary book on cryptography published by the Russian-bornEnglish cartographer Alexander D’Agapeyeff in 1939. Offered as a“challenge cipher” at the end of the book, it was not included in latereditions, and D’Agapeyeff is said to have admitted later to havingforgotten how he had encrypted it. It has been argued that the failureof all attempts at decryption is due to D’Agapeyeff incorrectlyencrypting the original text. However, it has been argued that thecipher may still be successfully attacked using computational methodssuch as genetic algorithms.
