On 14/02/11 6:48 PM, Peter Gutmann wrote: > "David G. Koontz" <[email protected]> writes: > >> Personally I'd hold out for the author being John Ray > > I'd hold out for the author being a medieval monk who'd suffered a stroke. > >> Answers require successful cryptanalysis. > > If it's caused by expressive aphasia or something similar then there's nothing > to cryptanalyse. >
The penmanship seems clear for a stroke victim. I think the same might hold true for most wasting diseases. David Kahn wrote: Is it, then, just a gigantic hoax, like the Cardiff giant or the Piltdown man or the fossils of Professor Beringer? Nobody involved with it seems to think so - and this includes those who have been rebuffed by it. The work is too well organized, too extensive, too homogeneous. Nothing repeats larger than a group of five words, whereas in actual hoaxes, such as the fake hieroglyphic papyri sold to tourists in Egypt, much longer phrases are repeated. Moreover, the words in the text recur, but in different combinations, just as in ordinary writing. Even if it were a hoax, there seems to be no point to having made it so long. Most critically, the medieval quasi-science that was seeking the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life while the manuscript was being written was to credulous to entertain the concept of a hoax. - The bit about the language likely letting out someone talking in tongues or being syphilitic. The longer tome more in keeping with 'A Mid Summer Night's Dream'. The repetition would probably match Friedman's expectations for an artificial language. Now is someone going to doodle on parchment to that extent? Paper would have been cheaper unless parchment were necessary for a scam. The work seems intentional. Whether or not it has meaning may be a separate issue. _______________________________________________ cryptography mailing list [email protected] http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
