codes - the guide to secrecy from ancient to modern times

[...]... they spiral away from the center on the front and Figure 1.1: View of hills and valley to toward it on the back The problem the west from Phaistos with finding the meaning of the sym- Figures 1.1–1.4 were photographed by bols is that the disk is unique in that and courtesy of Bridget Mollin there are no other known texts written in the script of the Phaistos Disk, and the shortness of the existing text... back to the Phaistos Disk itself Sometime in the evening of July 3, 1908, an excavator was the first person to unearth and view the the Phaistos Disk At the center of the (so-called) A side or front side of the disk is an eight-petalled rosette, whereas on the B side there is a helmet sign On both sides are inscriptions, consisting of a total of 242 symbols, 123 on the front and 119 on the back, and they... number of times to signal the row, and the torch in the left hand the number of times to signal the column There is no evidence that these were actually used in this fashion or any other in ancient Greece However, there are many variations of his cipher that have been constructed The reader may even concoct one by pairing different letters than “ij”, and stringing the alphabet in a different way from the straightforward... by the Goths (a Germanic people) from the Etruscan alphabet of northern Italy The inscriptions on the R¨k stone are of o o secret formulas and epic tales The wealth of letters Figure 1.5: R¨k stone makes it a treasure chest for the cryptologist The R¨k stone (see Figure 1.5) is perhaps the best known of the Teutonic o runes and Celtic oghams (pronounced oy-hams) This writing dates somewhere from the. .. goal of cryptography is secrecy, which was not the intent of such scribes discussed above The scribe’s method of symbol substitution is one of the elements of cryptography that we recognize today The use of substitutions without the element of secrecy, however, is called protocryptography Other scribes in later years did add the element of secrecy to their hieroglyphic substitutions on various tombs Yet,... Susa is what it purports to be, it is the oldest code book in the known world There are not enough of these tablet pieces for the experts to make a definitive decision on the matter It makes great fodder for stories about antiquity, however Codes and the Rosetta Stone We digress here for a moment to discuss the important term codes At the outset of the chapter, we cavalierly used the term “decode” However,... longer the charming bearer of secrets and its potential solvers compete with one another, and who in the end will win, only the future will show Until then, I recommend to everyone to visit the archeological museum in Heraklion to enjoy the beauty and the (as yet) mysterious aura of the Phaistos Disk.” 1.1 Antiquity 3 Figure 1.2: Phaistos disk (In the above figure, the A side is on the left, and the B... about the cryptographic anecdotes in Greek mythology in Section 1.2 For now, this is a convenient juncture to introduce some terms related to cryptography, and discuss their origins Cryptanalysis is the study of methods for defeating cryptography The ety- Figure 1.3: Phaistos royal apartments 4 1 From the Riddles of Ancient Egypt mology of the word is from the Greek krypt´s, as above, and anal´ein, to. .. sign off the message with a date and signature, called colophons Again, the intent was not to disguise but to display the knowledge of cuneiform held by the individual scribe for future generations to admire (The etymology of cuneiform is from Latin and Middle French origin meaning wedge-shaped.) Now we turn to some other aspects of cryptographic finds from antiquity From ancient Mesopotamia, one of the. .. meaning (Coptic is an Afro-Asian language spoken in Egypt from about the second century AD, and is considered to be the final stage of ancient Egyptian language.) He died too young to see the full impact of his work, but lived long enough to appreciate the significance of his breakthrough As we proceed through the text, we will learn of other contributors to cryptology whose work was of the greatest benefit, . explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mollin, Richard A., 194 7- Codes: the guide to secrecy from ancient to modern times / Richard A. Mollin Number Theory Richard A. Mollin , Codes: The Guide to Secrecy from Ancient to Modern Times Richard A. Mollin, Fundamental Number Theory with Applications Richard A. Mollin, An Introduction to Cryptography Richard.