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1. The Phaistos Disk is considered the most important example of hieroglyphic inscription from Crete. Discovered in 1903, both sides of the clay disc are covered with hieroglyphs arranged in a spiral zone, impressed on the clay when it was damp. Forty five different types of signs have been distinguished, of which a few can be identified with the hieroglyphs in use in the Proto- palatial period. [snip]

LANGLEY, Va. - Part of the new Dan Brown novel is based on a local mystery. In the introduction to his new best-selling novel, "The Lost Symbol," author Dan Brown lists the following: "In 1991, a document was locked in the safe of the director of the CIA. The document is still there today, its cryptic text includes references to an unknown location underground. The document ... includes the phrase, 'It's buried out there somewhere.'" Brown says the 20-year-old document contains the answers to a 20-year-old mystery. WTOP's National Security Correspondent J.J. Green investigated the claim, and found out it's...

It is one of the world's most baffling puzzles, the bane of professional cryptologists and amateur sleuths who have spent 15 years trying to solve it. But the race to find the secrets of Kryptos, a sculpture inside a courtyard at the CIA's heavily guarded headquarters in Langley, Virginia, may be reaching a climax. And interest has soared since Dan Brown hid references to Kryptos on the cover design for his bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code, and suggested it might play a role in his next novel, The Solomon Key. The Kryptos sculpture incorporates a coded message made up...

For 15 years, a sculpture known as Kryptos has stood in a courtyard inside the heavily guarded Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Its coded message, made up of thousands of letters on a copper scroll, has stumped code breakers for 15 years. And although it's been seven years since anyone has made any progress cracking it, there's been an explosion of renewed interest in Kryptos since writer Dan Brown hid references to it on the jacket of The Da Vinci Code -- one of the hottest books in North America. And that has made life interesting for Kryptos'...