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+--- Thread: [split] Diplomatic ciphers (/thread-2732.html)
RE: Statement: IF Voynichese does not represent natural language... - MarcoP - 08-04-2019
While I have seen a number of manuscript tables defining different ciphers, I don't think I have seen many XV Century ciphered texts (but Fontana). Is there anything that is accessible online?
RE: Statement: IF Voynichese does not represent natural language... - Mark Knowles - 08-04-2019
JKP: I have described ways to address positionality in Nick's blog which could be the anagram approach or just how the true text is chopped up into words i.e. where spaces are placed, so this does not necessarily preclude advanced substitution ciphers. By working with glyph strings as opposed to individual glyphs you can greatly increase the number of true glyphs then you can also add rare characters which map to individual words and then you can have a large number of distinct mappings. So in this way your objections could still not remove the possibility of an "atypical" diplomatic cipher.
The real question to me is what do we see with labelese?
RE: Statement: IF Voynichese does not represent natural language... - Mark Knowles - 08-04-2019
MarcoP: I have a lot that I can share with you from my OneDrive of advanced diplomatic ciphers the kind we see in the 15th century, these are normally Northern Italian. I have done a lot of work in this area.
The keys examples of interest are books by:
Lydia Cerioni(which contains the Tranchedino cipher ledger and more), Aloys Meister
However I have much more than this from my research. I think is fair to say that I have spent more time researching 15th diplomatic ciphers than any other Voynich researcher now or in the past, which of course does not make my ideas correct, but does mean I have plenty to share.
Please email me at:
mark_r_knowles@hotmail.com
and I will then give you the links.
RE: Statement: IF Voynichese does not represent natural language... - Mark Knowles - 08-04-2019
MarcoP & JKP:
I can share with you my complete scans of the 2 volumes of "La diplomazia sforzesca nella seconda metà del Quattrocento e i suoi cifrari segreti" by Lydia Cerioni
I can give you links where you can download
"Die Anfänge der modernen diplomatischen Geheimschrift. Beiträge zur Geschichte der italienischen Kryptographie des XV. Jahrhunderts" by Aloys Meister
and
"Die Geheimschrift im Dienste der Päpstlichen Kurie von Ihren Anfängen bis zum Ende des XVI. Jahrhunderts" by Aloys Meister
I have more ontop of that, of course, but that is a pretty good place to start with diplomatic ciphers of the time.
RE: Statement: IF Voynichese does not represent natural language... - -JKP- - 08-04-2019
Mark, I know how the diplomatic ciphers are constructed. It's a completely different structure from the VMS text.
RE: Statement: IF Voynichese does not represent natural language... - MarcoP - 08-04-2019
(08-04-2019, 03:40 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.MarcoP & JKP:
I can share with you my complete scans of the 2 volumes of "La diplomazia sforzesca nella seconda metà del Quattrocento e i suoi cifrari segreti" by Lydia Cerioni
I can give you links where you can download
"Die Anfänge der modernen diplomatischen Geheimschrift. Beiträge zur Geschichte der italienischen Kryptographie des XV. Jahrhunderts" by Aloys Meister
and
"Die Geheimschrift im Dienste der Päpstlichen Kurie von Ihren Anfängen bis zum Ende des XVI. Jahrhunderts" by Aloys Meister
I have more ontop of that, of course, but that is a pretty good place to start with diplomatic ciphers of the time.
Thank you, Mark!
At the moment I don't intend to start with diplomatic ciphers: nothing as serious as that. I am just curious to see actual XV century ciphered texts. I can't read German, but I browsed through "Die Anfänge..." and I didn't see any actual ciphered texts (but I might have missed them).
In You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. I have just found this example, which is already closer to what I am interested in (but much too short and too simple).
I would like to see scans of manuscripts that use one of those ciphers in which a single plain-text symbol is mapped into multiple cipher-symbols. I am curious to see how scribes handled the different options. If you can point out to specific pages in Meister's books with examples of this kind that you found interesting, I will check them out.
If Cerioni's books reproduce actual ciphered documents and you feel like sharing them, her Italian certainly is more accessible to me than German
Thank you, again! Since I don't intend to actually study the whole books, if it's more convenient for you, you could just share a few pages here.
RE: Statement: IF Voynichese does not represent natural language... - Mark Knowles - 08-04-2019
JKP: Can you prove that?
RE: Statement: IF Voynichese does not represent natural language... - Mark Knowles - 08-04-2019
JKP: You say they have completely different structures, but that may well superficially appear so. You definitely can't say it is not an "atypical" diplomatic cipher as I have described. Imagine the scenario where each "voynich word" should be substituted by a letter of the alphabet and most spaces removed, then that would be a substitution cipher and you can't prove that is not the case. I am not saying that we have that form of extreme substitution cipher, but it would be a counterexample to your argument. I don't think this is the only possible counterexample.
RE: Statement: IF Voynichese does not represent natural language... - Mark Knowles - 08-04-2019
MarcoP: Look for ->
"Nicodemo Tranchedini’s Diplomatic Cipher:
New Evidence
Ekaterina Domnina
Department of Area Studies
Faculty of Foreign Languages and Area Studies
Moscow State Lomonosov University"
PDF online
If you can't find it I can send you a link.
RE: Statement: IF Voynichese does not represent natural language... - MarcoP - 08-04-2019
Thank you, Mark!
The paper was easy to find and it is exactly what I hoped. It includes an image and a transcription of a 1449 enciphered letter, together with a table describing the cipher system. Perfect!
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