Alphabetum Kaldeorum
The Alphabetum Kaldeorum is one of the most famous secret scripts of the Middle Ages . Its name refers to the people of the Chaldeans , who stood for mysterious and magical knowledge in the medieval world of ideas.
It has survived in its complete version, together with other non-Latin alphabets , in a manuscript from 1428, which is now in the Munich University Library (Cod. 4º 810, fol. 41v); however, its origins are much earlier, as demonstrated by some surviving examples of practical use.
The Alphabetum Kaldeorum was primarily intended for the encryption of diplomatic correspondence ; its stock of characters indicates that mainly Latin texts were encrypted: u and v are equated; w was to be written as a double v ; j is missing. The Alphabetum Kaldeorum provides several different characters for frequently occurring letters, which were used in parallel and were intended to prevent decryption according to the classic frequency method . In addition, “nulla” were often inserted into the encrypted texts, meaningless characters that looked like letters and made decryption by unauthorized persons even more difficult.
Duke Rudolf IV of Austria (1339-1365) is considered to be the possible originator of the alphabetum Kaldeorum , who ascribed the characters themselves an Indian origin; in fact, the letters of the Alphabetum Kaldeorum are not related to any script used in India and in all probability are independent creations.
Even the grave slab from the cenotaph for Duke Rudolf IV. In St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna bears an inscription encrypted using the alphabet caldeorum, which only reproduces the name and title of the duke - it should possibly symbolize Rudolf's preference for the use of secret writing.
Web links
- Stephan Müller : Rudolf and "his" secret script , uni: view, January 13, 2015