Encrypt

The earliest known use of cryptography is found in non-standard hieroglyphs carved into monuments from Egypt’s Old Kingdom (ca 4500+ years ago). These are not thought to be serious attempts at secret communications, however, but rather to have been attempts at mystery, intrigue, or even amusement for literate onlookers. These are examples of still other uses of cryptography, or of something that looks (impressively if misleadingly) like it. Some clay tablets from Mesopotamia, somewhat later are clearly meant to protect information — they encrypt recipes, presumably commercially valuable. Later still, Hebrew scholars made use of simple monoalphabetic substitution ciphers (such as the Atbash cipher) beginning perhaps around 500 to 600 BCE.

Cryptography has a long tradition in religious writing likely to offend the dominant culture or political authorities. Perhaps the most famous is the ‘Number of the Beast’ from the Book of Revelations in the Christian New Testament. ‘666′ might be a cryptographic (i.e., encrypted) way of concealing a dangerous reference; many scholars believe it’s a concealed reference to the Roman Empire, or more likely to the Emperor Nero himself, (and so to Roman persecution policies) that would have been understood by the initiated (who ‘had the key to understanding’), and yet be safe or at least somewhat deniable (and so ‘less’ dangerous) if it came to the attention of the authorities. At least for orthodox Christian writing, most of the need for such concealment ended with Constantine’s conversion and the adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the Empire.

The Greeks of Classical times are said to have known of ciphers (e.g., the scytale transposition cipher claimed to have been used by the Spartan military). Herodotus tells us of secret messages physically concealed beneath wax on wooden tablets or as a tattoo on a slave’s head concealed by regrown hair, though these are not properly examples of cryptography per se as the message, once known, is directly readable; this is known as steganography. The Romans certainly did know something of cryptography (e.g., the Caesar cipher and its variations). There is ancient mention of a book about Roman military cryptography (especially Julius Caesar’s); it has been, unfortunately, lost.

In India, cryptography was also well known. It is recommended in the Kama Sutra as a technique by which lovers can communicate without being discovered.

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