A copy of Benedek Lang’s nice-looking book “The Rohonc Codex: Tracing a Historical Riddle” landed on my doormat this week, courtesy of The Penn State University Press (its publisher). Its back cover blurb promises that it “surveys the fascinating theories associated with the Codex“, and that it finishes up by “pointing to a possible solution to the enigma“.
Though I was already a fan of Benedek (his (2008) “Unlocked Books” sits on the bookshelf just behind me), it was clear within a few pages of this new book that his (formerly densely academic) writing style has opened out in the intervening decade and a half. So anyone with an interest in the mysterious Rohonc Codex’s strange writing and pointy-chinned Biblical chappies will quickly find themselves drawn in to his accessible and readable account.
Benedek also partially presents the book as a sort of ‘survivor’s account’ of the wave of obsession with the Rohonc Codex that washed over him for a few years (which he was also fortunate enough to get grants to pursue). Perhaps this is an inevitable consequence of diving deep into this kind of subject matter, a kind of cipher-y Locard’s Exchange Principle where a little bit of the object’s madness brushes off onto you, however hard you try to stay aloof from it.
Regardless, the book builds up and up in a long slow crescendo towards discussing Gabor Tokai and Levente Kiraly’s (claimed) solution of the Rohonc Codex, all the way to page 130 (where Lang mentions my 2018 blog post that remained somewhat skeptical about T&K’s 2018 Cryptologia article), where… the whole thing basically stops dead.
It should be no surprise that I found this unbelievably frustrating. In football terms, he played a perfect passing sequence to get in front of an open goal, but then chose to stand on the ball. I felt like a Brazilian commentator screaming at Lang to just knock it in, KNOCK IT IN: but instead he just stood there… and then the final whistle blew.
Whereas previously I described Tokai and Kiraly’s 2018 article as a game of two halves (i.e. their codicology and block analysis was exemplary, but everything they tried to build on top of that felt a bit like a house of cards), Lang’s book feels more like just a first half. He comes across as almost in awe of Tokai and Kiraly’s work (e.g. he mentions on p.125 that Tokai has all but memorized the Rohonc Codex’s 450 pages, memorized it, I tells ya); and yet seems oddly unable to explain in print exactly what it is about their work he is so convinced by.
For me, one really epic diagram (fig. 23, p.126) taken from Kiraly’s (2011/2012) paper in Theologiai Szemle 54 exemplifies both the best and the most frustrating aspects of Lang’s book. This is because it highlights the textual wrapper that Kiraly used to infer the presence of a number system; yet also demonstrates the shortcomings of that same inferred number system but in a tiny font that is just about at the print’s limit of readability.
Essentially, that was the point that I desperately hoped Benedek would unpack the Rohonc’s claimed number system (in many ways this is a key technical aspect of Tokai and Kiraly’s work, because numbers are often an exploitable weakness of cipher systems), to make it all more tangible and understandable to his own readers (including me).
However, I can’t shift the nagging suspicion that Lang shares many of the same reservations that I had back in 2018 (e.g. his discussion of problems with the text on p.129 is very much in the same vein), but that he didn’t want to rock the boat by being negative about such outstanding guys as Tokai and Kiraly. All the same, bracketing contentious issues doesn’t actually make them go away, and if anything doing so in a book does one’s readers a disservice.
As far as it goes, then, this is a great little book on the Rohonc Codex which I’m happy to recommend for every cipher bookshelf: but quite why Lang didn’t tap the ball over the goal line still remains a mystery to me.
Nick,
This isn’t really the place to ask, but I seem to have lost my link to Philip Neal’s web-pages and they’re not turning up in my browser on search. Would be glad to have your advice.
further to the previous … have now found it. thanks.
Is this what you are looking for?
http://philipneal.net/voynichsources/
Yes.
Thanks Ken for taking the trouble.
Hello Nick!
Since Brian removed access to his transcript, do you have a link to any transcript?
Ruby: sadly, I don’t have a link to (or a copy of) his transcript. However, if you can remember when you saw it, you might be able to find a cached snapshot on the Wayback Machine?
Hello Nick,
We (with Gábor Tokai) feel the same frustration on the other side about the delay of a clear description of the reading of the Rohonc codex. The publication of our materials goes very slowly, but is on the way. In fact, the most important part is already available online. It’s not “the solution” again, but an essential part of it – a dictionary of Rohonc words, here: http://rechnitzer-kodex.hu/
This webpage is a “minimum viable product”, you cannot type Rohonc-ese like you can Voynichese elsewhere, but at least you can copy it from the main text.
Presenting the whole solution is somewhat like describing Chinese writing by and to people who know neither the writing nor the language. But as I said above, there is more stuff to come. The nearest, hopefully, at the HistoCrypt conference this year.
Hello to all!
Thank you Nick, Wayback Machine is a very good idea, there is, indeed, the transcrption in txt format.
Lev, thanks for your dictionary of Rohonc words, I’ll try to understand how it works.
I did not notice for long that this blog entry has been written on my book, hence my late reaction.
First of all: thanks a lot for the kind words, Nick, and also for the critical remarks.
As a matter of fact, I strongly believe that Kiraly and Tokai’s reconstruction of the artificial language of the Rohonc codex is right (I hope, I made this clear in my book). This language fits into the context of the many artificial language schemes of the 17th century, most of which are not directly based on any natural language, and some of which do not go beyond word level. However, it seems rather early for the 16th century.
In the book, I wanted to share as few technical details, as it is satisfactory for a general understanding of the solution for two reasons. First, explaining the grammar, the exceptions, etc. is more the codebreakers’ task, and they are doing it gradually (first in a Cryptologia article, later in a webpage, and within a few weeks in a conference). Second, my aim was to write a book on an intellectual detective work and did not want to load it with very technical stuff. I understand, however, that this might be frustrating for those, who wanted to get into the details of the solution in order to test and evaluate it.
In any way, whoever wants to test the solution and the codebreakers’ knowledge, can use the occasion of the next online HistoCrypt conference. Anyone who wishes to register for the Rohonc codex workshop will get the technical details of the grammar of the codex (the vocabulary being already publicly available) a few weeks before the conference. The codebreakers’ will present their results, and there will be time for questions and answers.
Program and registration are available here: https://histocrypt.org/2021/
Please, join us in this event!
Benedek Lang: thanks very much for dropping by! I can’t help but feel that if you strongly believe their reconstruction is correct, it surely wouldn’t take a gigantic worked example on your part to demonstrate why you have come to that belief, rather than presenting it all as a black box that only the deeply initiated may peer inside. I hope you can also see why I think unpicking fig. 23 (on p.126) in a concrete kind of way would help get your readers properly on your side (which is essentially their Rosetta Stone, as far as I can see).
Fair question! Not so easy to answer it. My conviction that the reconstruction is correct has been the result of a gradual process. I received the details (both the grammar and the vocabulary) of the reconstruction in the early 2010-es and started to test them. In order to test them, one has to learn it to a certain extent. Testing and learning become a circular process as a result of which one gets more and more skeptical, or – as it happened in my case – more and more convinced about the solution. Previously, I myself spent a lot of working hours with the text of the Rohonc codex, so I knew quite well how the character strings behave, how many repetitions there are, and all the strangenesses of the text. The solution answered my previous questions. And wherever I had doubts, the codebreakers, Király and Tokai, gave me coherent answers.
But to give a very simple answer, let me just say that the experience which made me think this is the right way was when here and there such texts could be read on the basis of the reconstructions that were known to us from other sources: prayers and biblical passages. The numbers fit very well those biblical texts that are depicted on the images or described in the neighboring texts. Even though there are grammatical exceptions, curiosities, and even words with multiple meanings, the solution gives a coherent reading of the codex.
Hello everyone!
If I understood Benedek Lang’s comment correctly conference participants will have access to the grammar? It won’t be published for everyone?
I’m looking at the proposed glossary of the codex and I’m speechless: the work done is simply enormous! I hope that after the conference we will have some texts and videos with subtitles.
Ruby Novacna: my understanding is that the grammar won’t be made public before the conference. But it’s got to be a bit of a monster. =:-o
Sorry, but the problem here is that deciphering an unknown script using an unknown language doesn’t work like breaking a code for a known language. Words like ‘cracking’ or ‘codebreakers’ are therefore read flags to me. I must also say that I have no doubt that Király, Tokai and also Benedek Lang believe that they present the correct solution.
Király and Tokai assume that the Rohonc codex can be interpreted as biblical text. They also assume that a dictionary cipher was used and that a particular passage can be matched to a biblical passage. Then the words identified are used to cross-check them in a second and in a third passage. To find new words and to test them becomes a circular process. It seems as if every newly identified word would confirm all previous assumptions. But with every new word it also becomes a little bit harder to find a plausible interpretation. But maybe a word used in conflicting ways represents a certain category of words rather a specific definition. This way category-words sharing multiple meanings are introduced into the text as wildcard words. Since this way it is possible to interpret more and more text at some point the initial assumptions will become accepted. Finally some minor problems remain. But doesn’t text in every language can contain mistakes, exceptions and curiosities?
Unfortunately even with all this exceptions there is still a major problem. The text resembles some word-salad and doesn’t match to any known language. Therefore it is necessary to identify the language as early artificial language.
It is necessary to know a language to validate if a certain text is using grammar rules correctly. Without knowing the language it is not possible to validate any grammar rules. The problem is that we are trained to interpret meaning into text. Therefore it is only a question of time and imagination to use this skill to interpret some meaning even into a text using an unknown script and language.
This is the reason that in my eyes it would be more fruitful to discuss patterns typical for the codex than to search for inconsistencies in a dictionary and a grammar book for a ‘cracked’ artificial language.
Torsten Timm: from my perspective, the authors seem to oscillate between overstating what they’ve done (i.e. we’ve cracked the Rohonc Codex) and understating it (i.e. we’ve found what appears to us to be a system of correspondences that broadly work, but we need someone to come along and work out the real language all this stuff is wrapped around).
Me, I’m still stuck on unbelievably basic aspects, like how does the Rohonc’s number system work (e.g. is it really Base 6, as Király and Tokai seem to think? Is that some kind of polydactyly numbering system?).
Hi Nick,
I don’t think it’s so difficult to understand what we write. It’s not an overstatement that we have translated more than 0% of the text (in fact, it may be around 80-90% depending on the method of measurement), and it’s not an understatement that our work is not a mechanical work, but a creative linguistic project which is simlar to any code breaking in that a 100% solution is very unlikely. I don’t like to repeat myself, but maybe I haven’t said it here that our work is mostly similar to the interpretation of ancient texts in dead languages, except that we completely ignore phonology. You don’t need to go as far as cuneiform or Chinese to meet typical problems that we regularly face with the Rohonc codex. If you take e.g. Franz Rosenthal’s An Aramaic Handbook, you will see glossaries with words whose meaning can only be hinted (even though Aramaic pronunciation can be well estimated). Is Rosenthal’s reading of those texts a hoax? By no means. He presents the most he can get out of those texts, with the greatest possible accuracy. We are doing the same.
About the numbers. We have provided the following examples with direct references to the text:
– an ordered list on 22v-23r + 28r-v,
– a numerical expression allegedly meaning 6666 on 028v02,
– further numerical expressions on 21r and 58r which are interpreted as 5166 and 5199 (significant because they are located near images of the birth and the crucifixion of Christ, which are, according to tradition, 33 years apart),
– a number interpreted as 1560 on 223v,
– numbers that signify landmarks in the life of the Virgin Mary on ff 18-19,
– five passages that contain numbers both at the beginnings as locus markers and in the text at spercific points strictly parallel to biblical stories; in these we list more than twenty different numerical expressions,
– our fourth example for interlinear translation (ff 72-73) also contains numbers.
So already in our paper there are plenty of examples in which one can scrutinize the behaviour of numerical expressions and test the strength of our interpretation. I am ready to provide more examples that made us convinced that our interpretation is the best possible. On the September conference we will deal with the numbers as part of the grammar. I encourage everyone to take part in the discussion.
Lev Király: thank you very much for your comment. Given that I’m still struggling hard to be convinced by your number system reconstruction (I can’t help but feel that 6666, 5166, 5199, 1560, etc look cherry-picked, and the [apparently] base-6 system is a hard sell, unless you’re suggesting a Papua New Guinea origin?), I still have a fair way to go to catch you up. 🙂
Lev Király: You describe your work yourself as creative linguistic project. But you can’t fill knowledge gaps with some creative guesses and argue that the resulting interpretation is the best possible.
For any undeciphered writing systems numerous similar intuition-based interpretation attempts exists. Typical for this kind of attempts is the argument that the resulting interpretation would make some sense. But as long as you define the rules for accepting your interpretation yourself this is hardly a surprise.
For instance you assume an unknown artificial language as well as an unknown number system. You also assume a code book cipher and argue that multiple spelling variations for a word can exist. For instance for the word ‘gate’ you assume at least five spelling variants. Last but not least you argue that one word can stand for an idea and therefore can have multiple meanings. For instance the word ‘gate’ can not not only mean ‘gate’ but also ‘open’ as well as ‘close’.
Sorry, but such rules give you enough flexibility to interpret whatever you want into the codex.
Hello Nick!
Did you attend the conference or maybe read the publications, if they were done? I can’t seem to find anything to read.
Hi. I can write to you here that Benedek Lang will never be able to translate the Rohonczi Codex. Because the whole Rohonczi Codex is written in the Czech language. Second, the Rohonczi Codex is also written as a qviz.
Ruby Novacna: I don’t know, I’ll ask what the plan is.
Josef Zlatoděj, I am very sorry that I do not add the ending of prof. because I do not know your achievements in the scientific field and therefore I do not know what this abbreviation may mean – whether you have a scientific title confirmed by a non-forged document, or whether you include this abbreviation each time to emphasize your profanator’s inclinations.
As for your objection to Benedek Lang that he cannot translate the Rohonchi Codex because it is written in Czech, I assure you that this is in no way a hindrance to translation.
By the way, do you think the Voynich Manuscript is also written in Czech? Thus, Czech seems to be a very universal language. I just wonder on what basis he bases his claims about the linguistic relatedness of the Codex and the Manuscript? Say hello to the ants and termites from me.
Greg. Ost. could it be that Josef’s Prof. stands for Profanity, as in fucking ants?
Gragorz Ostrowski. Certainly MS 408 is written in the Czech language. As is of course written on his pages. Do you think Gregor can translate any manuscript is any scientist who has a lot of titles ? Otherwise, I can write to you here Gregor that you have a chance to translate a word from the voynich manuscript as well. Because, for example, the Czech word / DCERA / was written by Eliška in Polish language. And se / CORA / or i / CORKA /. Eliška also knew Polish, because she was after Anna Hlohovská mother – Polka. ( Piastovna ). Otherwise, the entire manuscript is written in the Czech language. As for the Rohoncz Kodex, I have already translated some of the pages, so I know how it is coded and what it is written about. Everything seems to revolte around the Luxembourg family. Starting with the Czech King Charles IV. ( KAREL IV. ) and ending with his son Venceslav IV. ( VACLAV IV. ). According to all indications, the author is the Czech King Venceslav IV. himself.
Hello and Happy New Year to everybody!
I decided to make my own attempt at breaking Rohonc Codex.
And I believe I have something 🙂
I made some pseudo-article describing my results.
You can see it here:
https://smallpdf.com/result#r=7c4f8656d905840ab346cc87df8ada44&t=share-document
Please have a look and tell me what you think of it. Any comments are welcomed.
Rafal: unfortunately your link seems to have expired. Can you please post a working link?
Hi Nick, sorry for the expired link. I don’t have a blog or a website so I had to place it somewhere.
Hope this one works better. Don’t be afraid to download, it’s just a pdf file:
https://www.sendspace.com/file/bo307c
A base 6 might be an arbitrary reduction of a base 60 system – why not?
Nick, I’ve seen a paper ( a chapter) by Lang entitled, ‘Theory and practice of cryptography in early modern Europe’ in which he writes,
“We have only recently recognized the real impetus of the achievements of the Arabs, more precisely since historians have started publishing the *Arabic Origins of Cryptology*, a series containing the most crucial documents: sources that were found in the manuscript collections of Istanbul.
In light of these we can argue that cryptology, by origin, is a truly Arabic discipline”.
Since he speaks of ‘Istanbul’ I suppose a majority of those documents will post-date the fall of Constantinople to the Turks but since Lang seems greatly to over-estimate the amount of e.g. astronomy which western Europe gained from the Arabic-speaking world (at least according to King, and Langermann, who should know), I’m not sure Lang mayn’t be over-enthusing in this case, too.
care to share any thoughts on this?
Apparently the title from which that chapter comes was published in 2018 by Amsterdam University Press under the title: Real Life Cryptology.
Chapter is free-access on the De Gruyter site.
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9789048536696-007/html
Guys dont bother listening/replying to “Josef Zlatoděj Prof.”, I have seen him around the internet, and he thinks literally everything from Rohonc codex to Rongorongo to Zodiac (which has been already decoded) is Czech, usually some genius Jewish cipher of Czech.
Arnold. I’ll have to fix you hologram.
Rimmer. Why do you think genius cipher? This is not at all a genius cipher. This is a simple substitution cipher. When every letter has its numerical value.
Qabalistic Numerology System Gematria.
A widely used notation system in the Middle Ages. As for MS 408, the author shows it at the beginning of the manuscript. Specifically on page 2r.
At the beginning of the manuscript, the author shows this for one very simple reason. Anyone who uses their brain should be able to understand it well.
1. The root is made of the letters C,G,S,L. The root is the base of the plant. No plant can grow without a root.
2. A letter is the basis of every word. no word can be formed without a letter.
That is why the author shows it at the beginning of the manuscript. And for the reason that some scientist does not fumble for a hundred years. And therefore it shows the substitution of number 3.
( Jewish substitution . number 3 = C,G,S,L ).
Is it difficult to understand? The one who cannot understand what I wrote here. So he can write just like you. That means nothing specific.
Arnold and Holly,
Thank you both.
Nick’s post about the AI chess match had me thinking of Red Dwarf too. “That’s mine.. and that’s mine .. and mine…’ 🙂
Hello again Nick,
I’ve been working on Rohonc Codex again and got some really interesting results, at least I believe so. I’ve read longer fragments of text and made a hypothesis about the language. And I have a quite long scientific style text written about it.
Now I wonder what should be my next step. Maybe you could have some advice for me?
I would like to reach with my text most people possible, including the competent ones. I’m not a scientist and I’m not interested in publishing in proper scientific journals, just would like to reach proper people.
In case of Voynich manuscripts there are forums like Voynich Ninja. But what about the Rohonc Codex?