Stockholm university

Research project Decipherment of Historical Manuscripts

Are you interested in breaking historical ciphers? Check out our project aiming at the automatic analysis and decipherment of historical secret writings.

We conduct fundamental research essential for assembling a valuable collection of resources and software tools for historical cryptology. These tools are applied to analyze and decrypt historical ciphers, spanning a wide range of ciphers used in early modern Europe.

Our contributions encompass the creation of the DECODE database with thousands of historical ciphertexts and keys, alongside tools for transcription and decipherment, all of which are accessible to the public. These accomplishments represent the results of two research projects, DECODE and its subsequent cross-disciplinary expansion, DECRYPT, both generously funded by the Swedish Research Council through grant E0067801 (2015-2017) and grant 2018-06074 (2019-2024).

Go to the DECRYPT website 

Some decoded ciphers: 

As part of our research efforts, we have initiated and established the HICRYPT network of professionals in historical cryptology. Additionally, we actively participate in the organization of the annual international conference on Historical Cryptology, HistoCrypt.

Read more about the conference here
 

Within the project, up to a hundred scientific publications have been produced. A selection of those that best describe the project can be found below.

For more publications, please visit the DECRYPT website.

Project members

Project managers

Beata Megyesi

Professor

Department of Linguistics
Beáta Megyesi

Members

Micaella Bruton

PhD Student

Department of Linguistics
Image of Micaella Bruton

Crina Madalina Tudor

PhD Student

Department of Linguistics
Crina Tudor

Publications

News