- 1900BCE - An Egyptian scribe used non-standard hieroglyphs in an inscription. The embellishment is intended to draw attention to the inscription and showcase the skill of the scribes. [1]
- 1500BCE - A Mesopotamian tablet contains an enciphered formula for the making of glazes for pottery. The tablet has several notable features. First, the use of encoding for the glaze recipe. Second, the use of alternate dialects within the 'colophon' (signature). This was most likely done to advertise the skill of the scribe. [2]
- 600BCE - Aneis dedicates chapter 31 of Poliorketika to the use of secret messages. [4]
- 550BCE - Hebrew scribes writing down the book of Jeremiah used a reversed-alphabet simple substitution cipher known as ATBASH. (Jeremiah started dictating to Baruch in 605 BC but the chapters containing these bits of cipher are attributed to a source labeled ``C (believed not to be Baruch) which could be an editor writing after the Babylonian exile in 587 BC, someone contemporaneous with Baruch or even Jeremiah himself.) ATBASH was one of a few Hebrew ciphers of the time.[3]
- 400BCE - Apollonius of Rhodes references the use of the scytale, an early transposition cipher tool. Plutrach later tells of its use by Lysander around 100CE. [5]
- 200BCE - Polybius describes the structure and use of the 'Polybius' square.
- 100BCE - Caesar employs the 'Caesar Cipher' a substitution cipher where the letters in a message are replaced by the letters three spaces forward from the original letter. A becomes D, for example.
- 1250CE - Roger Bacon writes extensively on the use of ciphers in communicating with divine entities.
- 1379CE - Gabriel de Lavinde of Parma writes the first known pamphlet on substitution ciphers where letters are substituted with various symbols.
- 1393CE - Chaucer includes ciphers in The Equatorie of the Planetis.
- 1467CE - Leon Battista Alberti (The father of western cryptography) publishes Di Cifers which includes extensive frequency analysis tables as well as the first known implementation of a polyalphabetic cipher and the cipher wheel device.
- 1474CE - Cicco Simonetta issues an instructional pamphlet on the practical use and decoding of ciphers 'Rules for Decrypting Enciphered Documents Without a Key'.
- 1518CE - Trithemius publishes Polygraphia, the first complete western work dedicated to the topic of cryptography.
- 1563CE - Porta publishes 'Firtivis Literarum' a comprehensive review of cryptography, cryptology, cryptoanalysis.
- 1605CE - Francis Bacon publishes The Advancement of Learning in which he discusses several ciphers including the 'Biliteral', using two alphabets, cipher which is the first known instance of a binary code.
- References
- Kahn, David. The Codebreakers: the Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet. New York: Scribners and Sons, 1997., 71
- Ibid., 75
- Ibid., 77
- Aeneas Tacticus. Accessed February 17, 2020. http://www.aeneastacticus.net/public_html/ab31.htm
- "The Skytale: An Early Greek Cryptographic Device Used in Warfare Circa 650 BCE." The Skytale: An Early Greek Cryptographic Device Used in Warfare : History of Information. Accessed February 17, 2020. http://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=4168.
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