Trisha Shetty (Editor)

Polygraphia (book)

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Original title
  
Polygraphia

Language
  
Latin

Published in English
  
N/A

Originally published
  
1518

Country
  
Germany

Publication date
  
1518

Media type
  
Printed book

Author
  
Johannes Trithemius

Polygraphia (book) httpsuploadwikimediaorgwikipediacommonsthu

Genres
  
Cryptography, Steganography

Similar
  
The Sworn Book of Honorius, Mercury or The Secret and Swift, Three Books of Occult Ph, The Magus, Oedipus Aegyptiacus

Polygraphia is a cryptographic work written by Johannes Trithemius published in 1518 dedicated to the art of steganography.

Contents

Review

It is composed of five books, the work consists of five books and a collarbone

  • Book I, contains no less than 376 alphabets (called "minutiae" by the author) of 24 letters (or "degrees"): each letter corresponds to a Latin word (noun, verb, adjective, etc.) being in total 9,024 different words.
  • Book II, presents 1,176 alphabets in three columns which are 3,528 dictions of a "universal language" where each letter is equivalent to an invented word (for example "a" could be farax, basacha, damalo, salec, etc..) but capable of expressing numbers (from 1 to 10 would be Abram, Abrem, Abrim, Abrom, abrum, abral, abrel, abril, abrol and abrul).
  • Book III shows 132 invented alphabet dictions, from which one must remove the second letter of each word to write coded messages.
  • Book IV reproduces two canonical hash tables, one direc with 80 alphabets and the other inverted with 98 alphabets, allowing infinite permutations, to which twelve "planispheric wheels" each comprising six categories of 24 numbers combined with the 24 letters and thus allowing elaborate a big amount of ciphered messages .
  • Book V is a collection of ancient alphabets, Ethiopian, Normands, Magical and Alchemical

    • The work ends with alphabets of his invention as the "tetragramaticus" formed by 4 characters that are diversified in 24 letters and the "enagramaticus" of 9 characters and 28 letters, from which he gives examples of writings that belongs to something it resembles a natural language.

    Relationship with steganography

    According to some scholars, both books, Steganographia and Polygraphia are but a single work presented in two parts: the first is metaphysical and quite theoretical (arriving to hide a full treaty "angelology," or study of angels with their names and hierarchies, between its pages), the second is more practical and is used for encoding messages.

    References

    Polygraphia (book) Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA