Until quite recent history, the writing of the Ancient Egyptians was a
secret to man. Eventually, with the help of the Rosetta stone,
Jean-François Champollion was able to solve the ancient mystery. Since
that time, there have been many other attempts to decipher ancient
languages, or to crack codes that have been made for fun or fortune.
This is a list of the ten most famous ciphers and writing systems that
are still unsolved.
Who was the Somerton man, how did he die, and what do these strange codes found on a book connected to the man mean? An unidentified male body was found on Somerton Beach in Adelaide, Australia in 1948 wearing a sweater and coat despite the hot day, carrying no identification. There were no clues as to his identity and dental records and fingerprints matched no living person. An autopsy discovered bizarre congestion, blood in the stomach and enlarged organs but no foreign substances. A suitcase found at the train station that may have belonged to the man contained a pair of trousers with a secret hidden pocket, which held a piece of paper torn from a book imprinted with the words “Taman Shud”. The paper was matched to a very rare copy of Omar Khayyam’s ‘The Rubaiyat’ that was found in the backseat of an unlocked vehicle and on the back of the book was scrawled five lines of capital letters that seem to be a code. To this day, the entire case remains one of Australia’s most bizarre mysteries.
In 1933, seven gold bars were allegedly issued to a General Wang in Shanghai, China. These gold bars appear to represent metal certificates related to a bank deposit with a U.S. Bank. The gold bars themselves have pictures, Chinese writing, some form of script writing, and cryptograms in latin letters. Not surprisingly, there is a dispute concerning the validity of the claim for the deposit. It may help to resolve the dispute if someone can decipher the cryptograms on the bars. Nobody has yet put for the a theory as to their meaning. The Chinese writing has been translated, and discusses a transaction in excess of $300,000,000. It also refers to these gold bars which weigh a total of 1.8 kilograms.
Want $40 million in buried gold, silver and jewels? All you have to do is solve an infamously “impossible” set of ciphertexts, one of which effectively provides that much-sought X on the map. The treasure was reputedly buried in Bedford County, Virginia by one Thomas Jefferson Beale, who entrusted his encrypted ciphertexts to a local innkeeper. After the innkeeper’s death, a friend who was given the papers spent twenty years trying to solve the ciphers, finally completing the one that describes the treasure. Despite many tries, the two others have never been solved.
At least 400 years old, this is a 232-page illuminated manuscript entirely written in a secret script. It is filled with copious drawings of unidentified plants, herbal recipes of some sort, astrological diagrams, and many small human figures in strange plumbing-like contraptions. The script is unlike anything else in existence, but is written in a confident style, seemingly by someone who was very comfortable with it. In 2004 there were some compelling arguments which described a technique that would seemingly prove that the manuscript was a hoax, but to date, none of the described techniques have been able to replicate a single section of the Manuscript, so speculations continue. Over its recorded existence, the Voynich manuscript has been the object of intense study by many professional and amateur cryptographers, including some top American and British codebreakers of World War II fame (all of whom failed to decipher a single word). This string of failures has turned the Voynich manuscript into a famous subject of historical cryptology.
Linear A is one of two linear scripts used in ancient Crete (a third script is Cretan Hieroglyphs). They were discovered and named by Arthur Evans. Linear B was deciphered in 1952 by Michael Ventris and was used to write Mycenaean Greek. Linear A is far from being totally deciphered but it is partially understood and it may be read through Linear B values. Though the two scripts share many of the same symbols, using the syllables associated with Linear B in Linear A writings produces words that are unrelated to any known language. This language has been dubbed Minoan or Eteocretan, and corresponds to a period in Cretan history prior to a series of invasions by Mycenean Greeks around 1450 BC. It is believed that there may be some connection between Linear A and The Phaistos Disk.
Sources: Listverse, wiki Media common,
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10. D’agapeyeff Cipher
75628 28591 62916 48164 91748 58464 74748 28483 81638 18174The D’Agapeyeff cipher is an as-yet unbroken cipher that appears in the first edition of Codes and Ciphers, an elementary book on cryptography published by the Russian-born English cartographer Alexander D’Agapeyeff in 1939. Offered as a “challenge cipher” at the end of the book, it was not included in later editions, and D’Agapeyeff is said to have admitted later to having forgotten how he had encrypted it. It has been argued that the failure of all attempts at decryption is due to D’Agapeyeff incorrectly encrypting the original text. However, it has been argued that the cipher may still be successfully attacked using computational methods such as genetic algorithms.
74826 26475 83828 49175 74658 37575 75936 36565 81638 17585
75756 46282 92857 46382 75748 38165 81848 56485 64858 56382
72628 36281 81728 16463 75828 16483 63828 58163 63630 47481
91918 46385 84656 48565 62946 26285 91859 17491 72756 46575
71658 36264 74818 28462 82649 18193 65626 48484 91838 57491
81657 27483 83858 28364 62726 26562 83759 27263 82827 27283
82858 47582 81837 28462 82837 58164 75748 58162 92000
9. Taman Shud Case
Who was the Somerton man, how did he die, and what do these strange codes found on a book connected to the man mean? An unidentified male body was found on Somerton Beach in Adelaide, Australia in 1948 wearing a sweater and coat despite the hot day, carrying no identification. There were no clues as to his identity and dental records and fingerprints matched no living person. An autopsy discovered bizarre congestion, blood in the stomach and enlarged organs but no foreign substances. A suitcase found at the train station that may have belonged to the man contained a pair of trousers with a secret hidden pocket, which held a piece of paper torn from a book imprinted with the words “Taman Shud”. The paper was matched to a very rare copy of Omar Khayyam’s ‘The Rubaiyat’ that was found in the backseat of an unlocked vehicle and on the back of the book was scrawled five lines of capital letters that seem to be a code. To this day, the entire case remains one of Australia’s most bizarre mysteries.
8. Kryptos
It’s like a tease, standing outside the headquarters of the CIA in daily view of some of the nation’s brightest cryptographers yet eluding them for years. The Krytpos monument is a sculpture by artist Jim Sanborn bearing an encrypted message divided into four sections, three of which have been solved since its installation in 1990. With misspellings in the code intact, the first part reads, “Between subtle shading and the absence of light lies the nuance of iqlusion”, and the second part references some invisible buried treasure ostensibly located some 200 feet from the statue itself.
7. Dorabella Cipher
Sent by cipher enthusiast Edward Elgar to his friend Miss Dora Penny, the Dorabella Cipher seems upon viewing like it might not mean anything at all. But this string of strange symbols, made up of semicircles in various configurations, has been the subject of unfruitful study for over a century. Musicologist Eric Sams claimed to have solved it, but his methods are unproven and his translation is 22 characters longer than the cipher. Another speculation is that the code is not text, but a melody.
6. Chinese Gold Bar Cipher
In 1933, seven gold bars were allegedly issued to a General Wang in Shanghai, China. These gold bars appear to represent metal certificates related to a bank deposit with a U.S. Bank. The gold bars themselves have pictures, Chinese writing, some form of script writing, and cryptograms in latin letters. Not surprisingly, there is a dispute concerning the validity of the claim for the deposit. It may help to resolve the dispute if someone can decipher the cryptograms on the bars. Nobody has yet put for the a theory as to their meaning. The Chinese writing has been translated, and discusses a transaction in excess of $300,000,000. It also refers to these gold bars which weigh a total of 1.8 kilograms.
4.The Beale Papers
Want $40 million in buried gold, silver and jewels? All you have to do is solve an infamously “impossible” set of ciphertexts, one of which effectively provides that much-sought X on the map. The treasure was reputedly buried in Bedford County, Virginia by one Thomas Jefferson Beale, who entrusted his encrypted ciphertexts to a local innkeeper. After the innkeeper’s death, a friend who was given the papers spent twenty years trying to solve the ciphers, finally completing the one that describes the treasure. Despite many tries, the two others have never been solved.
3.Voynich Manuscript
At least 400 years old, this is a 232-page illuminated manuscript entirely written in a secret script. It is filled with copious drawings of unidentified plants, herbal recipes of some sort, astrological diagrams, and many small human figures in strange plumbing-like contraptions. The script is unlike anything else in existence, but is written in a confident style, seemingly by someone who was very comfortable with it. In 2004 there were some compelling arguments which described a technique that would seemingly prove that the manuscript was a hoax, but to date, none of the described techniques have been able to replicate a single section of the Manuscript, so speculations continue. Over its recorded existence, the Voynich manuscript has been the object of intense study by many professional and amateur cryptographers, including some top American and British codebreakers of World War II fame (all of whom failed to decipher a single word). This string of failures has turned the Voynich manuscript into a famous subject of historical cryptology.
2. Linear A
Linear A is one of two linear scripts used in ancient Crete (a third script is Cretan Hieroglyphs). They were discovered and named by Arthur Evans. Linear B was deciphered in 1952 by Michael Ventris and was used to write Mycenaean Greek. Linear A is far from being totally deciphered but it is partially understood and it may be read through Linear B values. Though the two scripts share many of the same symbols, using the syllables associated with Linear B in Linear A writings produces words that are unrelated to any known language. This language has been dubbed Minoan or Eteocretan, and corresponds to a period in Cretan history prior to a series of invasions by Mycenean Greeks around 1450 BC. It is believed that there may be some connection between Linear A and The Phaistos Disk.
1. Phaistos Disc
The disc of Phaistos is the most important example of hieroglyphic inscription from Crete and was discovered 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 of the Neo-palatial period (1700- 1600 B.C.). Both surfaces of this clay disc are covered with hieroglyphs arranged in a spiral zone, impressed on the clay when it was damp. The signs make up groups divided from each other by vertical lines, and each of these groups should represent a word. Forty five different types of signs have been distinguished, of which 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 the text as ritual. Others have suggested that the text is a list of soldiers, and lately it has suggested to be a document in the Hittic language in which a king discusses the erection of the Palace of Phaistos.
Sources: Listverse, wiki Media common,
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