19-02-2025, 05:48 PM
(This post was last modified: 19-02-2025, 05:50 PM by Mark Knowles.)
The attached image shows a page from the Codex Urbinate Cipher Ledger in the Vatican Library. This was dated by Luigi Pasini who wrote about ciphers to 1440. However the cipher is actually dated to 1450. The third digit of the year at the top of the page looks similar to a "4" but is in fact a "5". Paolo Bonavoglia, Pasini's grandson agrees with me that Pasini misread this year. I only realised this when I researched the correspondent Napoleone Orsini and realised that it was not possible that the key corresponded to 1440.
This is one example of a number of examples. And this mistake is made by specialists and archivists.
The cases that I have noticed are partly because I know the dating that some modern person has given a document in an inventory or elsewhere does not fit with facts known to me and so is wrong.
I am, of course, not claiming every document is wrongly dated, but rather that this mistake is far too common for my liking and if I hadn't learnt to spot it would have caused me lots of confusion.
This is one example of a number of examples. And this mistake is made by specialists and archivists.
The cases that I have noticed are partly because I know the dating that some modern person has given a document in an inventory or elsewhere does not fit with facts known to me and so is wrong.
I am, of course, not claiming every document is wrongly dated, but rather that this mistake is far too common for my liking and if I hadn't learnt to spot it would have caused me lots of confusion.