Slashdot Mirror


Star Charts From A Strange Book From The Past

serutan writes: "Today there is a really unusual Astronomy Picture of the Day that talks about a centuries-old book, written in an unknown language that is undeciphered to this date. The 265-page book, with its curly script and weird illustrations, reminds me a lot of a bizarre modern book called the Codex Seraphinus, but for real. Any crypto experts care to take a whack at this?" Update: The image was transitioned and the entry can be found Here - cd

4 of 89 comments (clear)

  1. Centuries old? by devphil · · Score: 5, Funny
    written in an unknown language that is undeciphered to this date. The 265-page book, with its curly script and weird illustrations

    Wow. They have been working on Perl 6 for a long time.

    --
    You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
  2. If HP Lovecraft has taught us ANYTHING by immanis · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's that strange books in dead languages with lots of Astronomy illustrations are best left UNDECIPHERED!

    I can see it, three weeks from now, a new article:

    Well Meaning Hackers Awaken The Great Cthulhu

  3. IANAL(inguist), but... by J'raxis · · Score: 4, Funny

    "It is written in a language of which no other example is known to exist. It is an alphabetic script, but of an alphabet variously reckoned to have from nineteen to twenty-eight letters, none of which bear any relationship to any English or European letter system."

    The alphabet looks rather obviously European-based. First off, much of what I can make out, looks vaguely reminiscent of letters like g, d, m, n, w, and a.

    Secondly, that 3-like character near the end of the first line that sticks out like a sore thumb. Around the time this book was written, that character was a part of many northern European languages, including old English. I believe it stood for a /th/ sound, although I may be confusing that with the eth and thorn characters (other archaic northern European characters which still survive in Icelandic and a few other places).

    The very first character (which you can see in several places throughout) also caught my eye. It looks like a slightly-modified version of the "feature key" you see on Apple keyboards, which is a symbol of Viking origin.

  4. Just old J.R.R. up to his old tricks by foobar104 · · Score: 4, Funny
    This looks an awful lot like tengwar to me. Has anybody done a rule-out for Tolkien involvement on this?

    ;-)