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In 1896, the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia, received a bottle with a piece of paper inside. It was added to the collection. But until recently, the paper was left inside, unread. Curator Catherine Wright recently opened it, discovered that it was a coded message, and asked two professional crytologists to break it. The message was addressed to Confederate Gen. John Pemberton (left), the commander of forces defending Vicksburg, Mississippi:
“You can expect no help from this side of the river,” says the message, which was deciphered by codebreakers.
The text is dated 4 July 1863 – the day Vicksburg fell to Union forces.
At the link, you can view a photograph of the bottle and the message.
Link via Glenn Reynolds | Image: National Park Service
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Archaeologists in Jerusalem have found a 2,000-year-old stone cup. The leader of the excavation team Shimon Gibson of the University of North Carolina says this kind of cup was common in Jewish households of the time, but this particular cup is different.
What sets the newfound cup apart is its inscription, which is still sharply etched but so far impossible to understand.Similar to intentionally enigmatic writing in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the cup’s script appears to be a secret code, written in a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic, the two written languages used in Jerusalem at the time (see video of a village where the language of Jesus is still spoken).
“They wrote it intending it to be cryptic,” Gibson said.
The inscription will eventually be posted online. Link
(image credit: S. Pfann/UHL)
In 1988, artist James Sanborn was commissioned to create an outdoor sculpture to adorn the CIA’s facility in Langley, Virginia. So he created Kryptos, a 10-foot high scroll of copper filled with letters. Its 865 characters contain, the artist asserts, a coded message. But even the best CIA cryptologists have been unable to crack all of it. One of the four sections remains a complete mystery. At the link, you can read about Sanborn’s extensive study of cryptology while planning the sculpture and the passion that it has inspired among devoted codebreakers.
Link via Instapundit
