Computer scientist cracks mysterious 'Copiale Cipher'

Translation expert turning insights and computing power on other coded messages

The manuscript seems straight out of fiction: a strange handwritten message in abstract symbols and Roman letters meticulously covering 105 yellowing pages, hidden in the depths of an academic archive.

Now, more than three centuries after it was devised, the 75,000-character "Copiale Cipher" has finally been broken.

The mysterious cryptogram, bound in gold and green brocade paper, reveals the rituals and political leanings of a 18th-century secret society in Germany. The rituals detailed in the document indicate the secret society had a fascination with eye surgery and ophthalmology, though it seems members of the secret society were not themselves eye doctors.

"This opens up a window for people who study the history of ideas and the history of secret societies," said computer scientist Kevin Knight of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, part of the international team that finally cracked the Copiale Cipher. "Historians believe that secret societies have had a role in revolutions, but all that is yet to be worked out, and a big part of the reason is because so many documents are enciphered."

To break the Copiale Cipher, Knight and colleagues Beáta Megyesi and Christiane Schaefer of Uppsala University in Sweden tracked down the original manuscript, which was found in the East Berlin Academy after the Cold War and is now in a private collection. They then transcribed a machine-readable version of the text, using a computer program created by Knight to help quantify the co-occurrences of certain symbols and other patterns.

Thanks.

Copying that into Wordpad helps. Here’s the first part:

Copiale cipher. Translation from German (August 2011).

## PAGE 1
: of
the book of law of the venerable *lip* *o* secret part.
First paragraph
Secret lessons for the apprentices. First title.
Ceremonies of initiation.
If the security of the *tri* is ensured by a doorkeeper and the *tri* is opened by the conducting *nee* by putting his hat on, the candidate is taken from another room by a younger doorkeeper and lead by hand to the table of the conducting *nee*, he asks him:
first of all if he desires to be *lip*, secondly to subject himself to those regulations of *o*

## PAGE 2
and without any recalcitrance to endure the period of apprenticeship.
Thirdly, to conceal the *star* of the *o* and to pledge himself, to obligatory keep the secrecy.
The candidate answers yes. Fourthly: if he is already part of another secret *o*, for example amongst those *bigx* thieves or similar to this, in comparison to confessing to honor and reputation, he must answer: yes, so
the conducting *nee* asks him:
Fifth: if he has not promised his previous brothers to disclose the *lip* to them.
He may answer here whatever he pleases, so he must repeat the following which the conducting *nee* is saying
“however big the obedience and loyalty

## PAGE 3
“ is, which I promised to them ... “ so then shall this honorable *lip* cross “ I promise not to come to any disadvantage “ except the one *lip* I pledge commitment to “ I will not excess during the oath which I “ ... took for them, so that I will be equally faithful to the *lip* *o* “ as faithful, and it is possible, even more faithful than the ... is “ and to happen in such a way as all punishment according to ... “ the oath to be carried out “ if I will reveal in any way even the smallest part of the *lip* rey “ to the ... .
The conducting *nee* speaks thereupon to the ceremony *nee*: “ Hereby I pass to the brother the can

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