A computer scientist and two Swedish researchers managed to decipher a centuries-old text found in East Berlin at the end of the cold war. The document, over 100 pages long, was found in the archives of a university. Until recently, the strange combination of alien symbols, Greek and Roman letters left cryptographers grasping at straws. The document was believed to be near impossible to decipher, until Kevin Knight, a computer scientist and expert in natural language processing, and two colleagues from Uppsala University, Beáta Megyesi and Christiane Schaefer, attempted the task. The team spent months trying different approaches, often to no avail. Progress was painstakingly slow, until the team deciphered the word ‘ceremonie,' which is a variation for the German word for ceremony. “You start to see patterns, then you reach the magic point where a word appears,” Knight said. “You no longer even care what the document's about.” Initially the team believed the roman letters may have been the source of the code, yet nothing was found when cross-analysing the letters with 80 different languages. The next step involved treating the letters as false leads, planted intentionally to misdirect outsiders. It was then that they discovered the letters were spaces. Focusing on the strange symbols, Knight and his team saw a correlation between many of the symbols. Symbols with similar shapes represented the same letter or same groups of letters. The first words translated to “Ceremony of Initiation,” followed by “Secret Section.” So far, the team has managed to translate 16 pages, and those pages document the rituals of a secret society with an interest in eye surgery and ophthalmology.The document, known as the Copiale Cipher, details the rituals and political observations of a secret German society from the 18th century. Some people believe the society is related to freemasonry. “This opens up a window for people who study the history of ideas and the history of secret societies,” said Knight. “This is very interesting to historians because they can start to date the development of political ideas.” Cryptographers are similarly excited, as the team's methods have opened new ways for cryptographers to analyse texts such as the Voynich Manuscript, the world's most mysterious and so far undecipherable material. Kryptos is another such mystery, which is comprised of four parts. Kryptos is a statue on the grounds of the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley. Since the sculpture's creation in 1990, only the first three parts have been decoded. Kryptos is the focus of thousands of CIA employees and enthusiasts, as well as professionals. BM
