Mysterious Texts

(updated October 1, 2012)

These boxes were planted for Box ON! 2012 - Mystery Markham. 

Since ancient times, ciphers have been used to hide text and prevent information from being given to unintended recipients. However, the battle has been waged against those ciphers, revealing the text of all but the most cryptic of ciphers.  In this letterbox series, you must solve encrypted clues leading to boxes related to texts with mysterious scripts, two that have never been deciphered… and perhaps never will…    

The Rohonc Codex

One of the most baffling of the hidden texts is without doubt the Rohonc Codex. This most peculiar script is written from right to left, and seems to mix up runes, straight and rounded characters in the style of Old Hungarian – but it defies all attempts at translation. This bamboozling manuscript is believed to have been written in medieval times. Appearing to be hand-scripted, and illustrated with crude black and white sketches, the writing is simply not decipherable in any way The paper on which this maddening text was written carries a watermark from Venice of 1529-1540, though the writing itself is thought to be several centuries older than that. This utterly mysterious manuscript may never be translated. 

Clue:

The Voynich Manuscript

This is the Voynich, Manuscript, long dubbed the ‘Most mysterious Manuscript in the World’. Experts now feel that the style of calligraphy and drawing, as well as the parchment type and ink pigments, suggest strongly that this document was initially produced in the 13th century. The book is 235 pages long, full of colored images of strange astrological charts, prancing nude women, unknown plants, and even live cells that look as if they have observed through a microscopic lens. It is also written in an encoded script that nobody has ever managed to decipher. The alphabet used is thought to comprise either 19 or 28 letters, but has nothing whatever in common with any known language on Earth. With the strange zodiacal signs and the obvious recipes for herbal preparations, some think the Voynich could well be the definitive textbook of alchemy – but still, 800 years after it was written, not one person actually knows.

Clue (extra note: bookcase against the wall):

The Dresden Codex

One of the great mysteries of modern times is the Dresden Codex, one of the few surviving books from the ancient Mayan civilization that existed in Central and South America. Decoded by a German scholar in 1880, the book opened a door to discovery of the brilliant minds of the Mayans. The Codex is filled with numeric equations based upon the movement of the planets, the sun and the stars. Scholars are disturbed by the fact that the Mayan calendar stops at the conclusion of the thirteenth time period, which points to December 22, 2012.  Is the end of the world just around the corner?

Clue:

KX RXGM WIF LWVATL ZFWGFFM WIF BATLW VMR LFHXMR BPXXTL. XM WIF BATLW PVMRAMK HXQAMK RXGM, UXN GAPP BAMR WIF ZXO ZFWGFFM WIF KPVLL VMR WIF QFWVP VW LIXNPRFT IFAKIW XM WIF QFWVP ZTVHF CNLW NMRFT WIF ZTVHYFW IXPRAMK WIF KPVLL.