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Marie Antoinette used complicated ciphers to communicate escape plans during the bloody French Revolution.

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X-Ray Technology Reveals Marie Antoinette’s Censored Secret Correspondence

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A combination of the chemical analysis and advanced data processing used could reveal many more lost writings or drawings

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This article shows how we use “secret codes” all the time—like emojis, slang, and symbols. It also introduces different types of codes and how messages can be hidden or changed.

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This reading shows how Ancient Egyptians used pictures to write messages instead of letters. It also explains how to read the symbols and understand their meaning.

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This reading introduces constructed languages, which are made-up languages created for real or fictional use. It shows how people build new languages with their own rules, words, and meanings.

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This video explains Esperanto, a made-up language created to help people from different countries communicate more easily. It shows how simple rules can make a language easier to learn.

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What is Esperanto? Introduction to the International Language!

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This reading tells how Navajo soldiers used their language as a secret code in World War II. Their messages were so complex that enemy forces could not break them.

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A Caesar cipher hides a message by shifting each letter forward in the alphabet by the same number. It’s one of the simplest ways to turn plain text into a secret code.

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This playlist explains how secret codes and encryption work, from basic ideas to more complex systems. It’s a great way to see how cryptography is used beyond simple ciphers.

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Cryptography on Numberphile and Computerphile

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Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

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This page shows how Ancient Egyptians used pictures, called hieroglyphs, to write messages. It’s an example of how symbols can act as a kind of code.

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Origins of Egyptian Hieroglyphs

The ancient Egyptians believed that writing was invented by the god Thoth and called their hieroglyphic script " mdju netjer" ("words of the gods"). The word hieroglyph comes from the Greek hieros (sacred) plus glypho (inscriptions) and was first used by Clement of Alexandria.

The earliest known examples of writing in Egypt have been dated to 3,400 BC. The latest dated inscription in hieroglyphs was made on the gate post of a temple at Philae in 396 AD.

The hieroglyphic script was used mainly for formal inscriptions on the walls of temples and tombs. In some inscriptions the glyphs are very detailed and in full colour, in others they are simple outlines. For everyday writing the hieratic script was used.

After the Emperor Theodsius I ordered the closure of all pagan temples throughout the Roman empire in the late 4th century AD, knowledge of the hieroglyphic script was lost.

Decipherment

Many people have attempted to decipher the Egyptian scripts since the 5th century AD, when Horapollo provided explanations of nearly two hundred glyphs, some of which were correct. Other decipherment attempts were made in the 9th and 10th by Arab historians Dhul-Nun al-Misri and Ibn Wahshiyya, and in the 17th century by Athanasius Kircher. These attempts were all based on the mistaken assumption that the hieroglyphs represented ideas and not sounds of a particular language.

The discovery, in 1799, of the Rosetta Stone, a bilingual text in Greek and the Egyptian Hieroglyphic and Demotic scripts enabled scholars such as Silvestre de Sacy, Johan David Åkerblad and Thomas Young to make real progress with their decipherment efforts, and by the 1820s Jean-François Champollion had made the complete decipherment of the Hieroglyphic script. He reaslised that the Coptic language, a descendent of Ancient Egyptian used as a liturgical language in the Coptic Church in Egypt, could be used to help understand the language of the hieroglyphic inscriptions.

Notable features

Possibly pre-dates Sumerian Cuneiform writing - if this is true, the Ancient Egyptian script is the oldest known writing system. Another possibility is that the two scripts developed at more or less the same time.

The direction of writing in the hieroglyphic script varied - it could be written in horizontal lines running either from left to right or from right to left, or in vertical columns running from top to bottom. You can tell the direction of any piece of writing by looking at the way the animals and people are facing - they look towards the beginning of the line.

The arrangement of glyphs was based partly on artistic considerations.

A fairly consistent core of 700 glyphs was used to write Classical or Middle Egyptian (ca. 2000-1650 BC), though during the Greco-Roman eras (332 BC - ca. 400 AD) over 5,000 glyphs were in use.

The glyphs have both semantic and phonetic values. For example, the glyph for crocodile is a picture of a crocodile and also represents the sound "msh". When writing the word for crocodile, the Ancient Egyptians combined a picture of a crocodile with the glyphs which spell out "msh". Similarly the hieroglyphs for cat, miw, combine the glyphs for m, i and w with a picture of a cat.

Used to write:

Egyptian, an Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until about the 10th century AD. After that it continued to be used as a the liturgical language of Egyptian Christians, the Copts, in the form of Coptic.

Hieroglyphs representing single consonants

These glyphs alone could be used to write Ancient Egyptian and represent the first alphabet ever divised. In practice, they were rarely used in the fashion.

Hieroglyphs representing two consonants

Hieroglyphs representing three consonants

Determinatives

Determinatives are non-phonetic glyphs which give extra information about the meanings of words, distinguish homophones and serve as word dividers.

Numerals

By combining the following glyphs, any number could be constructed. The higher value signs were always written in front of the lower value ones.

Sample texts

Transliteration: iw wnm msh nsw, this means "The crocodile eats the king".

Translation

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

Sample videos in and about the Ancient Egyptian language

Information about Ancient Egyptian

Ancient Egyptian language and Hieroglyphs | Hieratic script | Demotic script | Coptic alphabet | Links | Books about Ancient Egyptian

Egyptian languages

Ancient Egyptian, Coptic

Akkadian Cuneiform, Ancient Egyptian (Demotic), Ancient Egyptian (Hieratic), Ancient Egyptian (Hieroglyphs), Chinese, Chữ-nôm, Cuneiform, Japanese, Jurchen, Khitan, Linear B, Luwian, Mayan, Naxi, Sawndip (Old Zhuang), Sui, Sumerian Cuneiform, Tangut (Hsihsia)

Other writing systems

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The ancient Egyptians believed that writing was invented by the god Thoth and called their hieroglyphic script " mdju netjer" ("words of the gods"). The word hieroglyph comes from the Greek hieros (sacred) plus glypho (inscriptions) and was first used by Clement of Alexandria.

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This interactive site shows how Native American soldiers used their languages as secret codes during wartime. It also shares their stories and explains why their work was so important.

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Welcome! Meet the Code Talkers of World Wars I and II. Learn about their lives and military achievements.

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This guide from the Library of Congress shares real stories and documents from Navajo Code Talkers. It helps you learn about their experiences during World War II.

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Official U.S. Marine Corps photograph. The Marines land--Marines hit three feet of water as they leave their LST to take the beach at Cape Gloucester. December 26, 1943. Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division.

While a lack of official records has made it difficult to determine exact numbers, it is estimated that more than 400 Navajo men served as Code Talkers in the U.S. Marine Corps during the Second World War. Marine Corps officials and later historians have credited their work as a significant factor in the U.S. victory in the Pacific.

During World War I, Army units pioneered the use of Ho-Chunk, Choctaw, Cherokee, Comanche, Osage, and Sioux Code Talkers to send secure voice communications based on their Native languages. The Army again used Native American Code Talkers during World War II on an ad hoc basis, wherein different units formed Code Talker cadres when they had a sufficient number of Native speakers from the same tribe. This included a group of seventeen Comanche Code Talkers with the 4th Infantry Division, as well as a group of seventeen Chippewa and Oneida Code Talkers with the 32nd Infantry Division. A Congressional Gold Medal issued in 2013 recognized the contributions of Code Talkers from 33 different tribes. The Marine Corps' Navajo Code program was the most systematic and extensive of these programs, and by the end of the war all six Marine Divisions employed Navajo Code Talkers.

In the early weeks and months of the war in the Pacific, the Japanese had shown an aptitude for intercepting and decrypting radio messages. The existing encryption methods the Americans relied on were also painfully slow and tedious. The idea to use the Navajo language as the basis of a secure radio code was proposed to the Marine Corps by Philip Johnston, a veteran of World War I who had spent much of his childhood on the Navajo Reservation where his parents worked as missionaries. Though Johnston may have had the initial idea to create a Navajo code, the Code itself was designed and implemented by the first cadre of 29 Code Talkers. These "First Twenty-Nine"-with little formal cryptographic training-devised a code built on word substitution - common military terms were assigned a Navajo code word, and each letter of the English alphabet was also assigned at least one code word so that other terms could be spelled out using the Code.

The Navajo Code provided a huge boost in efficiency to the Marine Corps in an hour of need. A formal training school was established at Camp Elliott, California to train new Code Talkers. A three-line message that would have taken 30 minutes to send using the old encryption methods could be encoded, transmitted, and decoded by Navajo Code Talkers in 20 seconds. The Code consisted of designated Navajo terms for each letter in the Roman alphabet, as well as for many military terms. Becoming a Code Talker meant memorizing more than 400 terms, and trainees could not take notes or write anything down. Many of the Code Talkers would later reflect that the traditions of oral history and storytelling that they grew up with helped them with this massive memorization challenge.

Official U.S. Marine Corps photograph. A wave of charging Fourth Division Marines begin an attack from the beach at Iwo Jima, on D-Day as another boatload of battle-tested veterans is disgorged on the beach by an invasion craft. February 19, 1945. Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division.

Once the concept of the Navajo Code had been proven, the Code Talkers were pushed through training and out to their units as fast as possible. Some of the original 29 Code Talkers would participate in the latter stages of the Guadalcanal campaign in late 1942. Code Talkers were usually assigned to the communications sections at the battalion, regimental, and division headquarters levels, and were employed to coordinate operations between friendly units and to call for fire support from artillery or aircraft. The Code Talkers were all trained as Marines and as general service communications specialists, so when not sending coded messages they often performed general communications work or served as riflemen. The Code Talkers were often performing other duties until they were notified that an "Arizona Message" or "New Mexico Message" needed to be sent - the coded terms used to indicate that a message needed to be sent in the Navajo Code.

After Guadalcanal, the Code Talkers would participate in all of the Marine Corps' major operations in the Pacific theater. By the Battle of Iwo Jima in February of 1945, the Code Talkers had proven themselves invaluable, to the point that Marine officers had become reliant on them to coordinate their operations. Major Howard Connor, who was the 5th Marine Division's communications officer during the fight for Iwo Jima, stated that, "the entire operation was directed by Navajo code.... During the first forty-eight hours, while we were landing and consolidating our shore positions, I had six Navajo radio nets operating around the clock. In that period alone they sent and received over eight hundred messages without an error."

The experiences of the Code Talkers are remarkable, in part due to the discrimination that Native Americans faced before, during, and after the war. Many of them were forced to attend government boarding schools as children, where they were required to speak only in English. Navajos were denied the right to vote in Arizona until 1948, in New Mexico until 1953, and in Utah until 1957-a form of discrimination which persisted despite the fact that the Snyder Act of 1924 granted U.S. citizenship to all Native Americans born in the U.S. They were frequently denied service at hotels and restaurants when traveling outside the Navajo reservation. After the war, there was initially no way for them to use many of their veterans' benefits on the reservation.

Official U.S. Marine Corps photograph. The Second Battalion, Twenty-Seventh Marines land on Iwo Jima. February 19, 1945. Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division.

For twenty-five years, the Code Talkers' heroics were hidden from public view. The program was classified as "top secret" upon creation, and when the war ended the Code Talkers were warned not to tell anyone the specifics of their work with the Code. It was not until 1968-when new technical encryption methods made the Navajo Code obsolete-that it was declassified.

Recognition then began to arrive for the role that the Code Talkers had played in World War II. In 1971, President Richard Nixon sent a letter of appreciation and congratulations to the Navajo Tribal Council. For the Bicentennial Parade in Washington, D.C. in 1976, Code Talker veterans walked at the front of the procession. President Ronald Reagan declared in 1982 that August 14th would henceforth be recognized as "National Navajo Code Talkers Day." Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico introduced the Honoring the Navajo Code Talkers Act in Congress in 2000, an Act that was signed into law by President Bill Clinton. The passage of this Act meant that in 2001, the surviving members of the "first twenty-nine" Code Talkers who created the code were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by President George W. Bush. The other Code Talker veterans who were not part of the first twenty-nine were awarded the Congressional Silver Medal.

The Code Talkers' achievements have made them an inspiration to people of all backgrounds, and many of them took on leadership roles after the war, where they have served as role models for younger Americans. Thomas H. Begay was a senior administrator for the Bureau of Indian Affairs who helped many Navajos find work and educational opportunities. Wilfred E. Billey served for more than 40 years as a teacher, guidance counselor, and high school principal who helped countless students to find their way in life. Teddy Draper, Sr., Albert Smith and John Kinsel also worked as educators, while Keith Little worked as an English teacher at the Intermountain Indian School in Utah while he was in college, before becoming an executive in the logging industry. Thomas Claw worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs as a water master - in this role he was responsible for the irrigation of 80,000 acres of farmland. Samuel Billison earned a PhD in education while working as a teacher, principal, and administrator, and also served on the Navajo Nation Council. Dan Akee and Roy O. Hawthorne both became spiritual leaders as Christian ministers, and Samuel Holiday became a traditional medicine man, all driven by a desire to assist others in finding healing and comfort. Roy Hawthorne, Samuel Holiday, Merril Sandoval, and Samuel "Jesse" Smith all also served as law enforcement officers after their time in the military.

The majority of the Code Talkers featured in this research guide became involved with the Navajo Code Talkers Association, an organization dedicated to educating the public on the role the Code Talkers played in World War II and preserving their legacy. They have traveled around the country and around the world to share their experiences and inform people about the history of the Code Talkers.

Their stories are noteworthy not only for their courage as Marines during America's bloodiest war, but also for the compassion, leadership, and dedication to continued service to others that so many of them displayed after the war. Their success is an example of how American society's diversity is a source of strength - a language that government- and church-run boarding schools had tried to eliminate ended up saving countless American lives on the blood-soaked battlefields of the Pacific.

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Research Guides: Navajo Code Talkers: A Guide to First-Person Narratives in the Veterans History Project: Introduction

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Navajo language speakers were recruited by the Marine Corps during World War II to send secret communications. This guide features a selection of oral histories available online that document the experiences of these veterans.

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This tool shows how music notes can be used to hide a message. Each note stands for a letter, turning sheet music into a secret code.

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Music Sheet Cipher - Online Notes Decoder, Encoder, Translator

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Tool to decrypt/encrypt a music sheet paper notation. Each item/notes/symbol of a music sheet can be associated with a letter or a digit.

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A substitution cipher replaces letters, words, or symbols with something else. For instance, the letter "A" could be encoded as 1 for the first letter of the alphabet, "B" as 2, "C" as 3, and so on. Encoding the phrase "LOL" in this manner would be transcribed as 12-15-12.

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Letter Number (A1Z26) A=1, B=2, C=3

Tag(s) : Substitution Cipher

dCode is free and its tools are a valuable help in games, maths, geocaching, puzzles and problems to solve every day!
A suggestion ? a feedback ? a bug ? an idea ? Write to dCode!

How to encrypt using Letter-to-Number/A1Z26 cipher?

A1Z26 encryption requires to count the positions/ranks of letters in the alphabet. If it is the Latin alphabet of 26 characters here is the correspondence table letter ↔ number/value:

Replace each letter with its position in the alphabet (A = 1, B = 2, ... Z = 26)

Example: DCODE is encrypted 4-3-15-4-5 by alphanumeric substitution

Often the space character is also encoded with the number 0

How to decrypt Number-to-Letter cipher?

Decryption requires taking each number and replace it with the letter of same position in the alphabet: 1 = A, 2 = B, ... 26 = Z

Example: 1.12.16.8.1.2.5.20 gives ALPHABET

How to recognize Letter-to-Number ciphertext?

The crypted message is made of numbers between 1 and 26, sometimes the number 0 is used to code a space.

The digit 5 for E is supposed to appear regularly for an english text.

This encryption is sometimes called alphanumeric code.

What are the variants of the Letter-to-Number cipher?

Shift of numbers: the alphabet can start with A = 0 or A = 1, but also A = 65 or A = 97 ( ASCII code).

Use of a supplementary character for space (usually 0 or 27)

Use of a custom alphabet, or reversed alphabet (A=26, Z=1)

Use of modulo 26 in order to get 1=A,2=B,...26=Z then 27=A, 28=B etc.

Ask a new question

position,rank,alphabet,number,26,letter,substitution,alphanumeric,a1,z26,a1z26,bach

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A1Z26 Cipher - Letter Number A=1 B=2 C=3 - Online Alphabet Converter

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Letter Number (A1Z26) A=1, B=2, C=3 Tag(s) : Substitution Cipher dCode is free and its tools are a valuable help in games, maths, geocaching, puzzles and problems to solve every day!A suggestion ? a feedback ? a bug ? an idea ? Write to dCode!

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A transposition cipher keeps the same letters, but changes the order in which they appear. A simple example could be the message "SECRET", in which the letters are scrambled to SRETEC. A more complicated example includes the use of patterns, such as a zig-zag or a rail.

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Transposition Cipher - Online Decoder, Encoder, Solver

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Tool to decrypt/encrypt with a transposition. A transposition cipher, also called columns permutation, is a technique to change the order of the letters in a text by placing it in a grid.

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This video shows how languages from movies and books are created, like Elvish and Klingon. It explains how these made-up languages follow real rules, just like spoken languages.

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Are Elvish, Klingon, Dothraki and Na'vi real languages? - John McWhorter