Re: Re: VMs: Medieval Cryptography Info

["jan" <hurychj@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello  Jeff,

=======  You wrote:  


>These MSs are examples of a long standing tradition that was not just used
>in diplomatic or church correspondance. Don't take my word for it, as I 
know
>you won't, but keep digging. It is a fascinating subject.
>
=============
I would say that the first part there is rather alphabetical, while second part - 
diplomatic cipher - looks more like a rather complicated shorthand. 
Fascinating of course is the dating of the scripts - so old!

I was once toying with idea that VM may really use the shorthand, however 
there are only few characters there while the shorthand must use quite  a lot. Of 
course, EVA is using more than 25 letters, but is comfortably close enough to 
normal alphabet. Next I  noticed that the parts (segments) of some VM signs 
are used in  other signs as well, some of them even as an independent 
characters - that's why each character is separated from the other by space 
(connected script would cause a real confusion). On the other hand, there is a 
very low no. of segments, so  they themselves cannot create the full alphabet.  
However, there can be other reason for separation between characters - they 
may be simply codes by themselves. One suggestion was made - they may be 
Roman numerals which in turn would create numbers (i.e. words) with some 
coded meaning.  There is a lot of work  to be done there.

Now the desperate efforts of the linguists to  find the language of the VM 
(without considering the additional encoding) itself  proved -  I  think quite 
sufficiently  - that there is no such language.   The repetition  of certain 
characters, groups  of characters and even the "words" suggests there must be 
some encoding present.  The theory of suffixes and prefixes ( now cordially 
embraced by Gord Ruggs :-)  could not explain SO MANY of them and so 
many words with one  letter change only.  The idea of chopping the  "words" 
in segments and mixing  them on  his favorite grille has one big problem: it  is 
only a  transposition cipher and the frequency count will be same - we should 
be able then   to find the corresponding letters fitting some known language, right? 

The important question: is the VM encoded on the basis "one-to-one" ?
1)  Lets check the  words - true, the longer  "words" are missing, but  if the 
transposition cipher (including  the spaces) or additional nulls are used, the 
term "words" is meaningless.
2) The "sentences": they   are actually paragraphs - there are  no full stops, no 
commas -  and these paragraphs are long enough (and short enough) to be real 
sentences.

It does look like the encoding is really on the basis one-to-one, that  is  the number  
of characters is  probably same as in the plaintext. What are the other options, say 
each "word" represents one or say two  letters? Then the number of real 
words in the plaintext will be quite short and the VM would be to short for 
even an short essay.  Unless it is the sample of some novel approach to encoding (  
they surely were smart enough!) we may assume -   or at least start with -
one-to-one approach. Only then, if we fail, we may look for more complicated 
systems.

As I posted on my  page some time ago, I did the frequency chart - for  VM
characters,  not  words! -  and got a close approach to Latin. I used EVA - 
there is nothing better yet - and got some comparison alphabet. The result of 
course was not Latin text - so I believe there is an transposition cipher present 
which keeps the frequency intact. That does not eliminate the grille, on the  contrary, 
is   the smartest way to write the transposition cipher: it is easy to use, it 
almost eliminates the mistakes and it  is VERY DIFFICULT to solve. On  
top of it, there may be errors in transcript and in my "closest" frequency 
alphabetical equivalent as well, so trial and error may return more errors than 
we bargained for.  

Now we may get some help from pictures, tags and horoscopes. As for plant 
tags, it  is really puzzling: there are very  few really same and mostly are of one 
word only,  something irregular in botanic.  As for horoscopes, it is different: 
most stars and planets names consist of one word , there could be comparison possible. 
------------
I discovered something in the book THE SCIENTISTS,  by John Gribbin, 
Random House 2002, originally printed in UK, Penguin Books.  IN SHORT, IT 
SAYS THIS ((my comments are marked as such):

Leonard Digges, father of Thomas Digges, is the  author of several books, written  in 
English, rather unusual  in  his time( e.g. 1553,  General Prognostication, with 
perpetual calendar). He  invented theodolite around 1551, invented reflecting 
telescope and as the author  says "almost certainly the refracting telescope", but no 
publicity was given to it. The  reason was that he was rebelling 
against Queen Mary (the Wyatt rebellion), sentenced to death and got pardon, but 
lost all his  possessions). 

When  he died, his son Thomas was 13  years old and John Dee was his 
guardian. Thomas had access to all Dee's books (one thousand manuscripts)
( and I would guess to all work his father did but not yet published, comment j.h.)
Thomas published  his first mathematical work  in 1571 and  the 
same year he got posthumously published the book of  his father (Pantometria). 
1572 he observed Supernova   and his readings were  used by Tycho de Brahe  
in his  analysis  1576 he published  Prognostication Everlasting, his most
 important book, with detailed description of Copernican system. HE STATED 
IN  THIS BOOK THAT THE UNIVERSE IS INFINITE and shown picture 
with Sun in  center,  planets around and the stars in all directions and 
distances outside the Solar system.
(Note that it was the first time mnetioned the  infinity - as far as I know  - Copern ic us never went 
so far,  How did get Thomas this  notion? Apparently by some observation of 
the sky and maybe from some calculation  for the Supernova, comment j.h.). The author suggests 
he was looking at the Milky way and saw so many stars, so that's how, but Thomas does 
not give any reason or proof  of it. He was prominent protestant, suffered 
while Mary was the Queen, then all changed under Elisabeth  and he even became 
the member of Parliament.
He died 1595, when Galileo was stablished professor in  Padua.

About Bruno: author thinks he was burnt for heresy and hermetism, not for 
support of Copernicus, but he admits the records of his trial were lost.  
Strangely enough the author does not mention Bruno's idea that the  Universe 
is infinite, while Wikipedia says  that   in his book  In De l'Infinito, Universo e 
Mondi, he argued that the stars we see at night were just like our Sun and that the 
universe was infinite, with a "Plurality of Worlds".

 Regards,
Jan

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