Secret Writing the Development and Methods of Early and Renaissance Ciphers.pdfVIP

Secret Writing: the Development and Methods of Early and Renaissance Ciphers Lady Cécile de Brétigny ladycecilia@ A man is crazy who writes a secret in any other way than one which will conceal it from the vulgar. th --Roger Bacon, 12 C. monk The first recorded attempts of secret writing are attributed to the ancient Egyptians, where non-standard hieroglyphics were used to conceal the meaning of the message outside a tomb. Many civilizations used cryptography. There is evidence of secret writing from Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome, India, China, Scandinavia, Persia and many others. (Kahn, 1967) The medieval examples of cryptography are very simple and did not improve much on systems developed by the Greeks and Romans. As literacy was relatively rare, the cryptography did not have to be advanced. According to David Kahn, “phrases were written vertically or backwards; dots were substituted for vowels; foreign alphabets were used; plaintext was replaced by the [letter] that follows it” (1967, p. 89). Notably, cipher was used by Geoffrey Chaucer in Treatise on the Astrolabe for six passages (Kahn, 1967). In many cases, the use of cryptography with symbols was considered black magic and used by alchemists and inventors to obscure their notes. The innovations and politics of the Renaissance affected the world of cryptography and the need for secret communication. It was very common for messages of nobility and diplomats to be intercepted and read. Cryptography spread rapidly in the Renaissance with an increase in literacy rates and the invention of polyalphabetic ciphers which are much more robust than ancient and medieval ciphers. Many decrypted letters are published in Secret Writing in the Public Records: H