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VMs: Re: VMS numbering systems hypotheses...

Hi GC,

> May I ask what you consider the weakness to be?

My primary consideration is the use of "17" in various images.
This particular artifact could go a long way in explaining the
astrological thinking of the author.  This number was very
prominent in astrological teachings on the continent during the
1500's, primarily among those schooled in Padua, Italy at the
time, though it seems to have migrated to Germany and beyond by
1560 (though not to England for some reason).  Its roots appear to
be cabalistic.

Interesting! Do you have a reference or starting point you could direct me to on this? More or less all of my astrological readings (for the period circa 1500) have focused on the Ficino-vs-fatalist debate - a political/heretical position, basically - and Padua has slipped beneath my radar, thanks. :-)

  There are other numbers of great interest, but
being positive of these requires that I do my absolute best to
discern the "unit" of text, as these numbers would fluxuate and be
rendered meaningless with errors.  This is primarily why I've
stayed with the less error-prone herbal section, as the characters
are generally much more readable and less ambiguous than the later
sections.

I'd agree that the herbal is very much clearer - though I'd vote the "poem" page (f81r) probably the most openly structured page in the VMS. :-)

Pre-polyalphabetic times would put it somewhere before 1450 IMHO.

Absolutely? Yes. Relatively? Probably not. The history of ideas is the history of the *flow* of ideas, which is far from c (in the Einsteinian sense). :-)

I was once trying to track the usage of a Knight's Tour cipher,
and up until my investigation all the literature seemed to be
silent on this type of steganography.  The only example I could
find was from 1760, but then I discovered one from 1623, and
further reading uncovered its usage in Arabic around the 11th
century!  Interestingly enough, the 11th century version used two
half tours, the 17th century version used a full closed tour, and
the 18th century version used two reversed closed tours and a
Vigenere tableau, demonstrating a clear effort to add
sophistication to this peculiar and very difficult steganographic
cipher.

Been there, seen all that (as a chess-player, it was one of the first ciphers I wanted to know about). :-) Besides, as part of the Rennes-le-Chateau mix, how could I resist? :-) [please don't respond about this on-list, it's far too boring now]. :-/

The same might be said to be true of the polyalphabetic ciphers.
<snip>  To rule out a more sophisticated form of
cipher based solely on the date of its first publication is to
underestimate the sophistication of the medieval mind, and to
misunderstand how deeply educated men sought to hide their
discoveries from the prying eyes of the church and other
"unworthy" individuals.

Far from it, as I agree with a lot of what you say: instead, I pretty much rule the possibility out on *statistical* grounds, not historical grounds: polyalpha (as was understood then and now) would give a very much flatter distribution than we see in the VMS.

If I could honestly see the possibility, I'd say. :-(

And while the English are without a doubt the worst cooks in the
world,

You obviously haven't had one of my pizzas! :-)

from around 1518 to about 1700 they were the leaders in
cipher sophistication and secrecy, primarily because of the
growing desire to exchange new information and keep it from the
Catholic Church, should the leadership change for the worse, which
it often did.

Yup, agreed. Though mainly it just changed for the different, which as you'd spent x years getting used to the old lot, normally meant for the worse. :-/

Kind of like government now. :-)

  The one art form the English excelled in  far
beyond any other nation was of course Steganography.  Necessity as
they say, is the mother of invention.

So many people talk about steganography - and as a Bacon enthusiast, with good reason :-) - yet I can find so little to read on it pre-1550. :-( Similarly for transposition ciphers. :-(

It is my belief that as more enthusiasts begin to understand that
such dating is not an accurate indicator, more people will be
looking for these types of cipher in older manuscripts, and more
examples will begin to emerge.  I doubt the earlier ciphers will
be very sophisticated as the simpler forms were considered secure,
but who knows, maybe we'll be pleasantly surprised.

As we've discussed elsewhere, a website of scans of unbroken ciphers would be a very nice thing indeed. :-)

BTW, both unbrokenciphers.com and unbrokencodes.com are free. :-)

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....