The secrets contained in ancient coded documents have been the source of endless fascination to students of antiquity, history, and the occult. The Voynich Manuscript is perhaps one of the most famous of them all. Its combination of pictographs and cryptic text have baffled researchers for years. Also of interest to cryptographers is the document known as the "Devil's Letter", reportedly written by a possessed nun.
Now, modern technology is breaking the mysteries locked within the pages of these document by the use of computer science. By employing algorithms (which are said to be a form of artificial intelligence), we are getting closer to cracking the mysteries that have long puzzled the curious.
Voynich Manuscript Solved Via AI?
A computer scientist in Canada says that he has cracked the code of the mysterious Voynich Manuscript using artificial intelligence.
The infamous indecipherable text found in the book believed to be from the 1400's has baffled researchers since it was found in 1912.
In the ensuing years, countless researchers and cryptographers have exhaustively studied the book hoping to unravel the riddle that is the Voynich Manuscript.
And it seems that not a year goes by without someone declaring that they have finally done it, yet the mystery has endured as Voynich-ologists can never quite agree on a specific solution.
The latest entry into the fray is Greg Kondrak, a computer scientist specializing in artificial intelligence from the University of Alberta.
According to Kondrak, he and a colleague devised a method to apply their AI work to the coded text and the results were rather astounding.
They began by creating a massive data set comprised of the UN Bill of Rights translated into a whopping 380 languages.
The researchers then developed a way in which a computer could process the Voynich Manuscript and determine its core language.
Amazingly, they say, the project proved successful with the AI picking out Hebrew as the root language a jaw-dropping 97 percent of the time.
The program ultimately was able to reassemble the scrambled, vowel-less words into Hebrew text which seemed to fit together perfectly when put into a sentence with similarly-deciphered words.
For example, Kondrak claims, they were able to actually solve the first sentence of the notorious tome and say that it reads, "she made recommendations to the priest, man of the house and me and people."
A cursory look at some of the other words they've found in the book suggest that theories suggesting that it is some kind of health or medicine text appear to be on the right track.
But what may be even more remarkable is that the AI analysis is perfectly in line with a study of the book's illustrations that made headlines last year by indicating that the author was a Jewish doctor.
That these two studies coming from dramatically different perspectives could come to the same relative conclusion is particularly tantalizing.
Nonetheless, Kondrak's work is presumably now being parsed over by the fastidious Voynich research and, no doubt, adopted by those who see it fitting with their theories and discarded by those who don't.
Source: CBC News
Mysterious 'Devil's Letter' Decoded
An eerie 17th century letter that was written in code by a nun said to be possessed by the devil has allegedly been deciphered.
The creepy missive was purportedly composed by Sister Maria Crocifissa della Concezione in 1676 following a bizarre episode in which the nun awoke with a face covered in ink and possessing the cryptic letter.
The sisters at her convent were convinced that the note was the product of some kind of demonic influence, since the text was comprised of various letters from the alphabets of different languages and, therefore, could not be read.
Over the next 341 years, an array of academics, occultists, and cryptographers attempted to decode the letter, but no one could unlock the message contained in the notorious note.
However, a recent research project in Italy appears to have finally solved some of the mystery by determining the meaning of 15 lines from the text.
Remarkably, the team managed to decipher the message by using a computer algorithm used by intelligence services for just such an endeavor which the researchers obtained on the infamous 'dark web.'
As to what the 'Devil's Letter' says, the general theme of the missive appears to be some kind of musing on the nature of God's relationship to man and how Satan figures into the equation.
Although the researchers have not released the complete text at this time, they did share one particularly unnerving passage which states, "God thinks he can free mortals. This system works for no one."
Considering that it took centuries for the code to be broken, one can't help but wonder, based on the chilling 'insight' revealed so far, whether we were ever supposed to know what Satan had to say to the sister and what might happen know that we're poised to find out.
Source: IB Times
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