Pigpen Cipher

Posted in General

Tagged with national treasure,pigen cipher

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The pigpen cipher (sometimes called the masonic cipher or Freemason’s cipher) is a simple substitution cipher exchanging letters for symbols based on a grid. The use of symbols is no impediment to cryptanalysis however, and cryptanalysis is identical to that of other simple substitution schemes. The example key shows one way the letters can be assigned to the grid.

The scheme was used by the Free and Accepted Masons who used the antique pigpen cipher to such an extent that it is often called the Freemason’s cipher. They began using it in the early 1700s to keep their records private and for correspondence (Kahn, 1967, p.~772; Newton, 1998, p. 113). Due to the simplicity of the cipher, it is still used by school children today.

Using the example key, the message “X marks the spot” is rendered in ciphertext as:

Another example of the pigpen cipher is the graveyard of New York’s Trinity Church (reminds of some movie doesn’t it ), on Broadway at the foot of Wall Street in the very heart of the financial district, where a tombstone stands with an epitaph partly in cipher. Under it lies James Leeson, who died September 28, 1794, aged 38. The cipher is in the ancient pigpen cipher, whose use goes back hundreds of years, and it reads Remember Death. Why Leeson had it carved there no one, perhaps, will ever know, but his motive may well have been that of the ancient Egyptians who first used cryptography in their sepulchral inscriptions: to stay passersby and bring the dead to life in their memory. [Quote from D.Kahn in "The Codebreakers"]

(1 votes, average: 2.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...