Cryptography Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 1
From the Riddles of
Ancient Egypt to
Cryptography in the
Renaissance — 3500 Years
in the Making
It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn
.
Mary Shelly (1797-1851)
, English novelist
— from
Frankenstein
(1818), Chapter 4
1.1
Antiquity — From Phaistos
Imagine an inscription created some 3600 years ago that nobody, to this
day, has been able to decode! It exists and is carved on a clay disk, called
the
Phaistos
(pronounced
feye-stos
) disk, roughly 16 centimeters (6.3 inches) in
diameter, unearthed from the (old) palace of Phaistos, one of the most important
locations of Minoan culture on the island of Crete, now part of Greece.
The Messara Plain is the most sizable and fertile on Crete. Only five kilo-
meters (3.1 miles) from the coast, it ascends to form a chain of hills on the most
eastern of which sits Phaistos, which was, according to Greek mythology, the
residence of Rhadamanthys, one of Zeus' sons. Another son of Zeus was Minos,
from which the name for the Minoan civilization derives. This civilization flour-
ished from approximately 3000 BC to 1100 BC. Crete was the principal location
of Bronze Age culture and centre of the eminent civilization in the Aegean Sea.
When this author visited Crete on a lecture tour in August of 2003, the
first sight of Phaistos was a phenomenal experience, but perhaps more subdued
