Shedding light on ancient secrets [cryptology of ancient documents

Abstract

Many ancient texts have kept their secrets for centuries. But a host of low-tech and high-tech tools are helping cryptologists to reveal the past.WHEN ALAN TURING developed the machine that helped to crack the Enigma code, his aim was to understand messages that the Nazis wanted to keep secret. When ancient writing expert Roger Tomlin came across wooden tablets found recently at an excavation site in central London, he knew the words - now mere scratches on wood but originally marked in beeswax with a metal stylus almost 2,000 years ago - were not meant to be a secret. However, it took him a year to decipher them. The tablets are the oldest handwritten documents found in the UK, detailing financial transactions and events in early London, starting a few years after the Roman invasion of Britain; they even mention events related to the revolt of Queen Boudica of the Celtic Iceni tribe in what is now East Anglia, who stood up against the occupying forces of the Roman Empire.