19-07-2021, 09:27 PM
(19-07-2021, 05:53 PM)Mark Knowles wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I should say that the Steno cipher key does a bit more than perform a letter substitution in the alphabet as it has substitutions for whole words as well as nulls.
Yes, and perhaps you could say more. The process of letter substitution is one method of cypher creation. The use of nulls is another method and so is the use of codewords another method of cypher trickery - with lot's of room for expansion and alteration.
So, in the example of Steno, this is not really a 'single' cypher method of great complexity. Instead it is a combination of three different methods, multiple layers, not that complex separately, but each has the capacity for idiosyncratic variations. Seriously, twelve nulls. If the nulls are known, scratch them out to start; and if not, what then? And this was in 1411.
The security of the cypher is achieved not through the difficulty of the methodology per se, rather through the combination of several methodologies, the choice of those methodologies used and the capacity for variation within each of the methods.
How could the VMs be read without a cypher key? See enclosed instructions (if still intact). Disguise is built through a combination of more basic methods. There is a visual code, a system of interpretation that is built into the illustrations. The nebuly line is a cosmic boundary as it is seen in the VMs cosmos according to the artist's usage, and to the investigator's provisional rediscovery. The VMs cosmos is a combination of an altered Oresme cosmos on the inside and a modified Shirakatsi diagram on the outside. Intentional disguise through combination. The VMs mermaid is the Luxembourg version of Melusine disguised in the sort of illustration seen in Harley 334 fig. 19 and more fully explained it certain illustrations from copies by Lauber. These posses a certain bestiary connection for sea-monsters and for fish, and the have no hint of individual personality or of their thighs, as the VMs mermaid clearly does.
Counting in Steno's system, there are 20 letters, two are not used (F and H). Two are duplicated (U and V). Seventeen letters are used. And the total number of glyph/symbols (I believe) is 43.
17 matches the 4 x 17 sequence
43 matches the undulations of the VMs and Oresme cosmic boundary
Sure, accidents happen, or perhaps trickery.