The Voynich Ninja

The idea would be to create a database and mapping for early ciphers, similar to the mapping of merlons.

Simple entries of date, location and cipher methodology would be sufficient, with substitution (simple vs. complex) most common. But there is also a potential of alternate methods being used, along with when and where that may have been - within relevant parameters.

Yes... Maybe there is something like this already in existence?

(07-01-2022, 09:17 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Yes... Maybe there is something like this already in existence?

Yes, there is or at least in development. I have shared my very large cipher collection with the DECODE database. You cannot make ciphers public without permission of the archives, however they seem to be developing a transcription system to get around it. Beata Megyesi who runs DECODE says they will be presenting it next summer.

I have worked a lot with DECODE since Michelle referred them to me. The truth is that so far I haven't got anything out of my involvement with them as I have been sharing my knowledge and ciphers with them and they haven't had any knowledge or ciphers to share with me that is from arpund the first half of the 15th century, as obviously ciphers from other eras are of little interest to me. However they have resources that I don't. And I hope my research will benefit from my involvement with them in the future.

Beata asked me if there any archives I would recommend they visit to take photos of ciphers and I suggested the Florence State Archives as they have well over 1000 cipher keys there. She checked it out and agreed it is an excellent idea and says they will go there in the springtime. I have requested some photoreproductions of enciphered letters from the Florence State Archives and hopefully they will have found them before Beata's visit if not I have asked Beata if she can locate them whilst she is there.

(07-01-2022, 09:33 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(07-01-2022, 09:17 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Yes... Maybe there is something like this already in existence?

Yes, there is or at least in development. I have shared my very large cipher collection with the DECODE database.

Hi, Mark -- Fantastic that you've been involved with them -- I'm sure they greatly appreciate the input and I do hope the Florence archives trip bears fruit for you and the DECODE group.

In the meantime, I do have this review paper that is organized geographically that could be helpful as a starting understanding.  Obviously, the 1400-1500 stuff is thin, but I think that is the realistic situation.

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., Strasser (I was able to get the full .pdf from this link).  This is now 15 years old -- so not sure how much has changed in the meantime.

And there's Nick's reviews on his blog of various developments and his paper:  
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(07-01-2022, 10:43 PM)MichelleL11 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm sure they greatly appreciate the input and I do hope the Florence archives trip bears fruit for you and the DECODE group.

Hi Michelle,

The text that was referred to me when I started researching ciphers which is most relevant is:

"Die anfänge der modern diplomatischen geheimschrift: Beiträge zur geschichte der italienischen kryptographie des xv jahrhunderts" by Aloys Meister.

This can be downloaded online for free.

I translated this using Google translate, so that I could get a idea of what it says.

It is the best starting point for learning about ciphers from the time of the Voynich. Of course there is plenty that isn't in this book and the book selects a small number of ciphers from each particular source archive, so you don't get a complete picture. Nevertheless it is by far the best text on the subject.

I will probably post a list here of all the ciphers I know of from the time of the Voynich when I find the time.

The DECODE people have the resources to go around different archives photographing ciphers, which I don't. However the time frame for ciphers that I am interested in much more limited than theirs.

Hopefully I will be able to persuade them to return to the Vatican archive after Florence to find more ciphers. On their first visit to the Vatican archive they took some photos from cipher ledgers. However what they didn't appear to do is search for enciphered letters.

I'm following this discussion with interest and am very curious what a "mapping" like this would reveal.

I can see wanting to disregard sources from after ~1438, particularly when they involve developments that seem to have been considered innovative at the time (like the Alberti Wheel).  But I wonder how far before ~1404 it's worthwhile to look.

Judging from the diplomatic ciphers more or less contemporaneous with the VM which I've seen so far, the "state of the art" seems to have entailed providing multiple, interchangeable glyphs for each plaintext character; nulls; and code symbols for specific words and names.  The favored strategy for increasing security was, I take it, to increase the number of different characters in the key.  The result always seems to be a much larger character set than we see in the bulk of the VM.

If we turn to Meister's Anfänge, it seems as though the only relevant ciphers cited there that involve a *reduced* character set fell out of diplomatic use long before the VM, such as the ones substituting different quantities of crosses or dots for vowels.  Of course there may be other, later examples I don't know about, which a "mapping" effort might helpfully turn up.

One *much* older cipher that involved a reduced character set was the Polybius Square, daring back to classical antiquity, with its fractioning of characters into pairs of coordinates.  But Polybius' work was apparently only "rediscovered" during the Renaissance, so the Polybius Square may not have been known in Western Europe continuously since ancient times.  I've seen Leonardo Bruni (ca. 1370-1444) characterized as "among the first in the West to read" Polybius --

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-- and Bruni was Chancellor of Florence, so if we'd expect any Italian diplomatic cipher of the era to have drawn inspiration from the Polybius Square, I guess it would be a Florentine one (even if Meister's descriptions of Florentine ciphers, at least, suggest they followed more or less the usual logic).  Indeed, it's hard to imagine any serious cipher-designer of that time reading the tenth book of Polybius and *not* trying to take advantage of the idea somehow.  So I'm not surprised to see Mark taking an interest specifically in Florentine diplomatic ciphers, though I don't know if it's for this reason or some other one.

In general, I can't help but think that the VM script doesn't seem to resemble the mainstream ciphers of its own era very closely, but that it might have built on some older model that was known only to a few (e.g., Polybius) or would have been considered obsolete (e.g., those dot-and-cross ciphers).  So I hope we won't disregard sources from the fourteenth century and before as "out of scope."

(08-01-2022, 07:43 PM)pfeaster Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I can see wanting to disregard sources from after ~1438, particularly when they involve developments that seem to have been considered innovative at the time (like the Alberti Wheel).  But I wonder how far before ~1404 it's worthwhile to look.

In practice I tend to be interested in ciphers from the years 1379 to 1449.

1379 is the year of the cipher ledger of Gabriel de Lavinde of Parma on behalf of Antipope Benedict XIII which is held in the Vatican Archives. Ciphers from before 1379 might have some small interest to me, but I think probably have very limited value for Voynich research.

I have limited interest in finding ciphers from 1450 onwards. 1450 is the year in which Francesco Sforza became Duke of Milan and the period from which the Tranchedino cipher ledger dates. This is certainly of interest as background, however there is a wealth of material which survives from the 2nd half of the 15th century, so any new examples unless very unusual are unlikely to interest me when it comes to my Voynich research.

(08-01-2022, 07:43 PM)pfeaster Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In general, I can't help but think that the VM script doesn't seem to resemble the mainstream ciphers of its own era very closely.

I would be inclined to disagree as there do appear to be quite a few symbols in common when one looks overall across the ciphers of that period.

(08-01-2022, 07:43 PM)pfeaster Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.So I'm not surprised to see Mark taking an interest specifically in Florentine diplomatic ciphers, though I don't know if it's for this reason or some other one.

What you have written about the Polybius square is definitely interesting.

In Meister's book we can see that by 1424 the Florentine ciphers had advanced some way. 1424 was the year of the 1st war in Lombardy between the Republic of Florence and the Duchy of Milan. This cipher key was generated from enciphered letters by the 19th Florentine Archivist Abbot Pietro Gabrielli. He deciphered over 1000 historic ciphers and the keys he generated from those ciphers can be found in the Florence State Archives.

There is a very interesting cipher key, I think, also from 1424 that Gabrielli generated from enciphered letters. He labels this key Zaninus & Conradinus. (And a second identical key labelled Johannes) I am surely this refers to the secretary to the Duke of Milan, Zanino Riccio and to Conradino Vicecomes. I am very keen to see the original enciphered letters from which Gabrielli in the 19th century generated the key. I see no reason why these letters should not have survived the last 150 years. Meister isn't alive to answer why he did not include that key in his book; I suspect as it is a bit unusual and he was not sure what to make of it or who produced it.

(09-01-2022, 12:40 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(08-01-2022, 07:43 PM)pfeaster Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In general, I can't help but think that the VM script doesn't seem to resemble the mainstream ciphers of its own era very closely.

I would be inclined to disagree as there do appear to be quite a few symbols in common when one looks overall across the ciphers of that period.

I should have been more specific -- I agree that there are resemblances in the forms of the individual symbols (and you have surely seen more keys and enciphered documents from the period than I have).  What seems different is the sheer quantity of types.  My impression is that if there was a "typical" advanced diplomatic cipher at the time, it would have had two glyph choices for each consonant, three for each vowel, some other symbols for names and words, and some nulls.  Does that seem like a fair assessment?  If so, the result -- without some additional strategy thrown into the mix -- should be around sixty distinct symbols (or more) which a reader would need to be reliably able to tell apart.

However we decompose Voynichese into graphemes, there aren't anywhere near sixty of them -- or at least not sixty in frequent enough use to be part of a system based on the usual scheme.

Of the two Florentine cipher keys Meister reproduces, the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. from 1414 has 36 characters (but doesn't cover the whole alphabet and provides only one option for some plaintext letters), and the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. from 1424 has 90 characters.  The less elaborate key assigns values to a few "bigrams" and one "trigram" (ff, bz, ut, 33, 13, dum), but except for the overlap between [33] and [13], the symbols involved appear only in these specific combinations, so this does nothing to reduce the size of the character set.

Meister also You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (but doesn't show) Florentine ciphers with additional glyphs for plaintext CV combinations such as [ba] and [fu], which would seemingly represent greater sophistication, but in the "wrong" direction relative to the VM, towards an even greater number of discrete character types.

That's all limited to considerations of the character sets, but the "typical" diplomatic cipher strategies of the early 1400s would seemingly also tend to increase entropy and conceal apparent word structure: again, a move in the "wrong" direction.
 
Now contrast all this with the entropy and character set size of Meister's You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.:

pr××××sb×××t×××× r×××××m ×ac×××× b ××××× mpl××××b×n×××××m s×nct××× J××××an×××s d××××c×××ll×t×××.

That's still not much like Voynichese, but this time it at least seems like a step in the "right" direction.  (I believe JKP has mentioned having more examples like this one, and I'm just citing Meister here because it's handy.)

This is the sense in which I meant Voynichese doesn't "resemble" the mainstream diplomatic ciphers of the early 1400s -- the same sense in which it doesn't "resemble" typical linguistic plaintexts with which it's been compared, even though many of its individual symbols are familiar from ordinary handwritten Latin and so forth.