Using the description of primitive cyclic codes in a modular algebra, the author characterizes the permutations of the support of a cyclic code which leaves the code globally invariant. Applying this result to the binary double-error-correcting BCH codes, the author proves that the automorphism group of such a code (of length 2/sup m/-1,m>4) is the semi-linear group of GF(2/sup m/) over GF(2/sup m/), and, in the special case m=4, the semi-linear group of GP(16) over GF(4).< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">></ETX>