Slashdot Mirror
Copiale Cipher Decoded
eldavojohn writes "The 18th century Copiale Cipher has finally been decoded after a few minor breakthroughs were made by linguists versed in machine translation analyzing the document. From the article, 'Kevin Knight, a computer scientist at the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California, collaborated with Beata Megyesi and Christiane Schaefer of Uppsala University in Sweden to decipher the first 16 pages. They turn out to be a detailed description of a ritual from a secret society that apparently had a fascination with eye surgery and ophthalmology.' The Roman characters and abstract symbols turned out to be a sort of encryption of the German language. The important clues they discovered were that the Roman characters were nulls (misleading junk) and the bogus looking symbols the actual text. Lastly, a colon would mean a duplication of the last consonant. A cipher falls to word-frequency analysis. Perhaps the researchers could start another 'weekend project' and tackle The Voynich Manuscript for us?" Update: 10/25 15:25 GMT by T : eldavojohn adds also a link to the final translation.
This link to the New York Times might work better for the article and since submitting it I have stumbled on the research page and its English translation.
My work here is dung.
a lone crusader in a cryptic world
From TFA: He also hopes to crack the last section of 'Kryptos' - an encrypted message carved into a sculpture at CIA headquarters - and the Voynich Manuscript, a mysterious medieval document.
Upon reading the translation, we've found the source of the kinghts who say *nee*!
We'll break your cyphers as a weekend project, then get back to the real work. ;)
Going by the translated text describing the apparently-ceremonial activity at the end of the summary's linked pdf, and given this is 1800's Germany, it seems much more likely it was produced by a rather more... well-known secret society of the timeframe than a mysterious band of rogue ophthalmologists...
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
I see that the page for this cipher was just created today. I also see that credit for cracking it goes to a retired soccer player...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
They turn out to be a detailed description of a ritual from a secret society that apparently had a fascination with eye surgery and ophthalmology.
Secret societies like this were relatively common in the late 1700's and most of the 1800's. But it's Freemason-like style, it's focus on sight, the timing, and the choice of German as the language suggests that it could be connected with the original Bavarian Illuminati.
Or not. That's the hard part about figuring out the history of this kind of thing - they're all secret.
I am officially gone from
Any chance of breaking the Indus valley script? It is probably 3000 years old. Or the word frequency analysis works only for familiar variants of European languages?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
...led in and to the table of the chief [Stargate Earth symbol], who asks him:
First, if he desires to become [mouth symbol].
Secondly, if he submits to the rules of the [dotted circle] and without rebelliousness suffer through the time of apprenticeship.
Thirdly, be silent about the [pentagram] of the [dotted circle] and furthermore be willing to offer himself to volunteer in the most committed way.
The candidate answers yes.
The chief [Stargate Earth symbol] then shall lead the candidate and the assembled [mouth symbol]s through a series of ordeals, then proclaim the candidate a fellow [mouth symbol]. He shall then remind the new [mouth symbol] of the ancient and secret traditions of the order, then urge the [mouth symbol]s to celebrate the new [mouth symbol]'s initiation with [beer stein symbol] and [ping-pong paddle symbol].
Come on, really? With so many old school gamers on Slashdot, you can't figure out the Voynich Manuscript?
Pages and pages in what could be a constructed language containing drawings of plants that don't exist, maps of stars and constellations that have no analog to our own Earthly observations, bullet point lists, recipes that reference the drawings in other sections of the book, and copious drawings of naked women...
Yeah, it's a source book, or perhaps a player's guide to some Medieval role playing game.
Me thinks that /. has been punked.
"Be sure to drink your Ovaltine."
Who controls the British Crown? Who keeps the metric system down?
We do. We do.
Who keeps Atlantis off the maps?
Who keeps the Martians under wraps?
We do. We do.
Who holds back the electric car?
Who makes Steve Guttenberg a star?
We do. We do.
Who robs cave fish of their sight?
Who rigs every Oscar night?
We do. We do.
So when are we going to see this up on wikileaks? I'm pretty sure that this is something that was supposed to remain hidden!
Should have gone to specsavers.
http://xkcd.com/593/
The translation seems very much like what Apple asks from it's users.
*ducks*
Not actually a ciphered text , but.
Any chance to use these techniques to finally be able to read the only written language of the Polynesia? (rongorongo from Rapa Nui)
The ability to read these "tables that speak" was lost due to the slavery of the Wise Elder that had the knowledge.
The content of the 105 pages is, well, sad. It is by all means like something out of Daniel Brown's or Umberto Eco's books
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Da_Vinci_Code or the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prague_Cemetery
Yet it contains no higher truths really, really interesting or useful for mankind. A secret society for divine powers? Hmm. How non-erudite isn't that?
Still, brilliant decipher work!
then get back to the real work. ;)
I hear that! Oh, and 10 gallons unleaded, please.
Encode your payload with Roman characters. Make up a ritual from a secret society, and interleave it using bogus looking symbols. Researchers will stop searching when they find the ritual, and your payload is safe.
I do believe is sounds like a masonic ritual or an appendant body thereto where a new candidate is entered and or raised to a degree. But only a traveling man would know. So mote it be.
I have to commend the authors for their deft handling of page layout - inserting those strange squiggly characters inline with the text and integrated into graphs and figures is pretty neat. LateX, do you think?
Look forward to the influx of crazies who think that this several hundred year old text brings new insight into the world of ophthalmology Too bad they won't be able to figure it all out before their world ends in 2012. .
This is clearly an early form of Free Masonry ritual. Many parallels and the same names used in the current (modern) masonic degrees.
that's what this is. Who REALLY cares about ancient eye surgery??? In general, history and historical artifacts are complete waste of time. We're bound to repeat it REGARDLESS of what lessons we were supposed to have learned.
I think I saw a a Stargate address in the translated text. I definitely saw the home symbol...
If there are systems which can help to analyze and decode a text or an ancient language, why are online translation services so horrible at their job?
Misguided people think good voice recognition is an AI, but a real AI would be able to do full semantic analysis, and turn your words into conceptual models. Translation systems would then output those conceptual models using the grammar templates for the target language.
Instead, current translation technology seems to be heavily based on word translation, not concept translation. They don't even reorganize the phrases to allow for the cadence and grammar rules of the target language.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
So long and thanks for all the fish
"For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
on page 99:
wie erging es dann diesem köstlicheN leichnam
I thought the Surrealists invented the cadavre exquis not earlier than 1918, and the expression was the product of a random word generator? Is there an esoteric backstory to cadavre exquis that I'm not aware of?
The cipher letter + [dagger] was still unknown,
appearing in partially deciphered words like
+AFLNER, +NUPFTUCHS, and GESELL+AFLT.
We tried substituting each of the letters A-Z for
+, but this did not yield valid German. However,
we found GESELLSCHAFLT in a German
dictionary, so we concluded that + stands for
SCH. This opened the door for other multi-
plaintext-letter substitutions.
Seriously? They could have just shown the three near-complete words to a German speaker. SCHNUPFTUCHS and GESELLSCHAF[F]T are immediately recognizable, no need for a brute-force attack plus the sheer luck of finding a word with a typo in a dictionary.
Apart from the technical feat of decoding the manuscript, I got the impression that the content had little esotericism and too much ritual - based on 18th century FreeMasonry.
In that way, it is very disappointing. Almost proving that the Masons had very little esoteric knowledge, the ultimate foundation of a hidden society.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Most of you need to get a life and stop playing dungeons and dragons...and role playing games...and join reality...secret societies....conspiracies...Illuminati...blah...blah blah...too funny...