New Blog post: "Mysterious Steganography"- a Damning Observation

[MarcoP]

Yes, but my question is:
What in the VM would make Kircher assume it was a hidden text and not a foreign alphabet? He explicitly refers to a secret chest of a sort he is familiar with. 
multas huius scrinae scripturas variis occasionibus me dissolvisse memini, imo et iam circa hanc quoque molientur ingenii

André Szelp: opinions that “shrines” refers to the concealment of text by encryption which has to be cracked, i.e. opened like a shrine/cabinet? In particular, in Latin “scrinium (neuter)” means ‘case, chest for a book’, so has a connotation with knowledge and writing which I agree with. Kirchner uses a non-standard gender form (feminine) “scrina”. The idea here seems to be that there is a chest of knowledge – ie, plain text hiding a secret message.

Hi David,
the first character in the supposed "scrinae" is an "f". The difference from a long "s" is the presence of a dash across the ascender.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. gives the reading by Philip Neal "huius farinae" which appears to be a documented idiom; on the other hand, as Szelp more-or-less says, "scrinae" is not a Latin word, it should be "scrinii" or "scrini".

BTW, we are off topic and this discussion should probably be moved to a different thread.