Re: Codex Serafinianus (sp?)

[reeds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Jim Reeds)]

On Jan 4, 18:11, Rene wrote:

> Subject: Re: Codex Serafinianus (sp?)
...
> In a 1991 post, a member called Ron Hale-Evans wrote: 
> 
> > Reading through the digests on rand.org, I notice that someone
> > mentioned the Codex Seraphinianus and asked if anyone had done
> > any work on it. I have managed to largely decode the numbering
> > system at the bottom of the pages. It is not a number-place system
> > like Arabic or binary. It works more like Roman numerals. I can
> > supply some more information if anyone wishes.
> 
> I did not immediately find the earlier reference, nor any follow-up.
> 
> Cheers, Rene
>-- End of excerpt from Rene

On 21 Sept 1998, Jim Gillogly wrote:

> I thought it was an almost-normal radix 21 system, wasn't it?
> So far as I know, those numbers are the only decrypted parts.

The next day Jacques Guy wrote 

> ...
> The page-numbering system is definitely base 21, and fairly easy
> to decode. The only thing that puts you off the track is that
> the Codex is in two parts, and the page numbering starts from 1 again
> in the second part.  The alphabet has uppercase and lowercase
> letters, and the correspondences are not obvious at all (no-one
> has worked them out so far). Chapter titles are all uppercase, and
> the repetitiveness of the letters is very Italian. It gives
> the impression that you ought to be able to decipher them. A false
> impression. I just had a quick look and saw a title with a word
> ending with the same letter repeated three times. Not Italian!
> But could be French: "crée" if we disregard the accents :-)
> The first word or the first letter of each paragraph is often in
> boldface. The text contains numbers, with are very different from
> the rest of the text.
> Each chapter is preceded by a table of contents. The page titles
> in the table of contents correspond to the titles on those pages,
> but not quite: they are "abbreviated". Usually to a median word,
> and often accents are left out. It is as if you had in the contents
...







-- 
Jim Reeds, AT&T Labs - Research
Shannon Laboratory, Room C229, Building 103
180 Park Avenue, Florham Park, NJ 07932-0971, USA

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