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RE: VMs: decryption document

Hi GC,

At 23:58 15/02/03 -0600, GC wrote: 
All you can tell without a deeper understanding is that 1440-1455
is the earliest occurrence you can find for these symbols.
Barring anyone finding these symbols in use at an earlier date,
you are setting a "low-end" date for the VMS.  There is nothing
here that says someone 100 years later could not have copied some
of these symbols, or that some of these symbols had an early
origin that allowed them to be included in a document dated around
1450.  More analysis of symbols might be in order before we fall
into dating on the low end of the scale.

I suppose the core of my argument is this: that post-1475 (say), numbers in general use in Europe were expressed as Arabic numerals - and the VMS' cipherbet's use of "4" "8" and "9" would strongly appear to be located not so much within that (new) mindset, but rather within the scope of the few remaining Tironian notae still in use circa 1450, plus the (I think enigmatic) "4" character.

Among those ciphers recorded in Milan, 1460 seems to mark the point where ciphers containing Arabic numerals (or pairs of them) start to emerge - ie, the point where code-breakers started to use Arabic numeral thinking. But those few earlier ciphers that contain "4" (and especially "4o" as well) specifically seem to have been grounded in a Roman numeral tradition.

I completely agree with you that ideas get recycled endlessly, and by diverse routes: but the VMS appear not so much to be reusing earlier techniques, as to be grounded in that earlier mindset. That is, my dates are not so much based on its superficial glyphs, but in the underlying thinking which produced it.

AIUI, this goes right to the core of what art-historical proofs aim towards - an understanding of the mind behind an external set of significators, as opposed to merely an understanding of the expression of the relationships between those signs.

The symbol at the top of the second ring on 57v has only one
correlation that I have found, and that is not Italian, but
English, and about 130 years later than the 4o symbol dating.
This is the "Fear God" symbol, used in early English shorthand
systems.  An unusual percentage of the symbols on this page show
up in early English shorthand, but to date have not been
demonstrated to appear in Italian manuscripts or Italian
shorthand.  I don't know how this affects your theory, but to me
it goes to the high-end dating of the VMS.

As I suspect (but cannot currently prove) that the VMS' cipherbet was (with the exception of the "4" glyph) based on a now-lost early 15th Century humanist wax tablet shorthand's alphabet, I can't really help to move this question of causality any further forward. My strongest guess here is that one shorthand letter (reused as EVA "m") was probably "x", and was reused as the astrological glyph for Capricorn (AKA the tenth sign) - but as to any other shorthand glyphs, I honestly don't know, there's nothing out there to refer to that I can find.

I'm sure you're right about "Fear God" etc - but basically, finding the source of shorthand (I'm specifically referring to tachygraphy pre-Bright) is very much an unexplored area of research... perhaps in the future someone else will look in to this properly, perhaps by examining the (wooden) backs of surviving tablets for what I'd call "scrape-through lettering", to find wax tablets alphabets from around Europe. I hope they do!

> For me, this rules out (for example) polyalphabetic
> ciphers on likely provenance grounds alone.

What's your time-frame for the development of polyalphabetics?

To be honest, I'm not really feeling strong enough to battle polyalphabetics out in the street with you. :-o

The VMS is 99% certain not to be monoalphabetic, sure - but if it is a polyalphabetic cipher, I think it's fair to say that it's an unusual and sophisticated type, that would have been unlikely to have been devised until at least the kind of time frame you're describing (say 1550 or later).

But honestly, I'd feel uncomfortable reconciling a (roughly) 1460 art-history date with a tricksy polyalpha - and I guess you'd probably feel much the same. :-/

The existence of a clock gives a low-end date.

Ummm... personally, I don't think it's a clock. But there's plenty to read about the development of clocks in Jean Gimpel's "The Medieval Machine" - highly recommended. :-)

These things help to set the low-end date, but more effort is
needed to set the high-end date.  Once that is set, the VMS and
its genre will be well-established.

I think the pre-Arabic-numeral mindset points to (say) 1475 as a high-end date. But that's probably in a different category of proof to the one that you'd be happy with. So that's OK too. :-)

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

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