Re: VMs: Cicco Simonetta (for Jeff)...

[Dennis <tsalagi@xxxxxxxx>]

	I'm getting to like your emerging hypothesis, Nick...

	A few more strange ideas.

Nick Pelling wrote:
> 
> Keeping your mind perpetually open can get a bit draughty after a while,
> wouldn't you say? :-9

	Yes, you have to make enough assumptions to frame a
hypothesis.  Mine has come to a dead end, so I'll see
what the other folks do.
 
> Cicco Simonetta is typically hailed as the father of modern cryptology (ie,
> *code-breaking*), rather than cryptography (ie, *code-making*) - but this
> is perhaps only because he (famously) wrote about the former (and not the
> latter).

	I saw an interesting book, *The Man Who Broke
Napoleon's Codes* by Mark Urban.  It's about George
Scovell, Wellington's crippie.  Scovell used a little
book, *Cryptographia or the Art of Decyphering* by
David Arnold Conradus.  Have you heard of this?  Would
it be of significance?

> I suspect that Tristano Sforza's cipher (which appears near the start of
> the ledger) would have predated the Sforza's takeover of Milan (ie before
> Simonetta set up the Chancery) - and that the only person Sforza family
> insiders would have trusted to compose a cipher for them back then was
> Cicco Simonetta himself. This relatively simple cipher also has the
> ligatured "4o" character we've come to love so much in the VMs. :-)

<interesting discussion of EVA /qo/ snipped>

	Ah!  The one they showed in the BBC show, as having
the plaintext value of 
[s]  .  Does it have this value in Tironian notae,
Capelli, Vindolanda, or 
elsewhere?  Those are interesting questions also. 
Anyone? 

	On EVA /daiin daiin daiin/  ...  In English one cannot
have "the the the".  This most common word is a
determiner, and there can only be one at a time. 
However, "very very very" is acceptable slang to give
emphasis.  In early modern English and Romance
languages like Spanish or French double negatives
similarly give emphasis.  Just a thought.  

Dennis
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