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ABSTRACT

The Rohonc Codex is a small 448-page codex handwritten in a script that has resisted deciphering since the codex was discovered in 1839. The main cause of this failure may be the fact, as we reveal, that the writing is not a substitution cipher (or “ancient alphabet”) as most researchers presupposed but is in fact a code system with features that no codebreaker would expect, the breaking of which is an extremely heuristic task. This article is intended to be the first of three or four in which we summarize our findings made during our years-long research of the Rohonc Codex. In the present article we discuss general features of the text, our methodological criteria, and the story of cracking the code. To give weight to our argument we present several interlinear translations of passages from the codex’s text. This will be expanded by further articles in which we plan to describe some advanced features of the code such as its morphology, syntax, and peculiarities, as well as the possible language(s) of the author; we will also provide a detailed table of contents, further indices, and a glossary.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Miklós Vassányi for his kind advice and help in the correction of the text.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Levente Zoltán Király

Levente Zoltán Király was born in 1976. He earned a BSc in computer science at Eötvös Loránd University and an MA in divinites at Károli Gáspár University of the Hungarian Reformed Church. He is currently working as a software developer. Cracking the Rohonc Codex has been his hobby since 2005.

Gábor Tokai

Gábor Tokai, born in 1969, finished his studies in 2004 at the Faculties of Archaeology and History of Art, Eötvös Loránd University. He has worked at the Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest since 1999, as an art historian since 2004, first in the Department of Drawings and then in the Sculpture and Medal Department since 2008. He has dealt with undeciphered scripts from the age of sixteen.

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