Cryptography Reference
In-Depth Information
to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphic writing on a scale not seen before. Ostensibly,
the inscriptions were written by the priests of Memphis in the ninth year of the
reign of Ptolemy V Epiphanes (205-180 BC), in his honour for the prosperity
engendered by his reign. To celebrate, they made golden statues of him in
Egyptian temples, and made copies of the decree that his birthday be made a
“festival day forever”. This edict was cut into basalt slabs in the three writings
and placed in the temples near the statues. Hence, the presumption by scholars
was that the three writings were of the same plaintext — a code book — what
a wonderful opportunity!
The first major breakthrough was made by a British physician, Thomas
Young, in 1814. For him the sciences were a hobby. Nevertheless, his knowledge
of modern and ancient languages served him well. He managed to decipher
(correctly, it turns out) several of the hieroglyphs, but stopped there, since he
could see no further progress possible with what he knew.
In 1821, Jean-Francois Champollion (1790-1832) took up where Young left
off, and by 1822, this Egyptologist deciphered nearly the entire hieroglyphic
list with Greek equivalents. He was the first to discover that the signs fell into
three categories: (1) alphabetic; (2) syllabic; and (3) determinative (meaning a
mute explanatory sign). A symbol might stand for the object or idea expressed
(such as the English verb
hear
represented by the picture of an
ear
, or the verb
whine
depicted by a bottle of
wine
). He also discovered the opposite of what
was expected, namely, he proved that the hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone
were a translation from the Greek, and not the converse. Thus, the work of
these two men, Young and Champollion, formed the seminal work upon which
all serious future work on deciphering hieroglyphic texts was based. The dis-
covery of the Rosetta Stone opened the door and let in the light to obliterate a
darkness that had held force for almost four millennia and unlocked the secrets
of the ancients. Even the very thoughts of Ramses II as he fought in battle,
inscribed on the walls of Luxor and Thebes, were revealed, theretofore having
only been meaningless ciphertext. It is an unfortunate end that young Cham-
pollion, the major contributor who truly saw the light, died in 1832, at the age
of forty-one. He was a brilliant young man, who at the age of seventeen, was
already reading papers on Egyptology. He later studied in Paris, learning Ara-
bic, Coptic, Hebrew, Persian, and Sanskrit, which served him well in his later
cryptanalysis of the hieroglyphs. In particular, his knowledge of Coptic allowed
him the final breakthrough that saw to the depths of the hieroglyphs with its
overlaid complexity of signs, sounds, and meaning. (Coptic is an Afro-Asian
language spoken in Egypt from about the second century AD, and is considered
to be the final stage of ancient Egyptian language.) He died too young to see
the full impact of his work, but lived long enough to appreciate the significance
of his breakthrough. As we proceed through the text, we will learn of other
contributors to cryptology whose work was of the greatest benefit, yet many
died in obscurity, their deeds mostly unnoticed. We will try to enlighten those
individuals' lives, contributions, and humanity. For now, we move on to other
civilizations from antiquity.
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