Bobory Dóra, A rohonci kód [The Rohonc Code]. By Benedek Láng. Hungarian Historical Review, 2:(4), 938-943. (2013)
Bobory Dóra, A rohonci kód [The Rohonc Code]. By Benedek Láng. Hungarian Historical Review, 2:(4), 938-943. (2013)
Bobory Dóra, A rohonci kód [The Rohonc Code]. By Benedek Láng. Hungarian Historical Review, 2:(4), 938-943. (2013)
Hungarian Historical Review 2, no. 4 (2013): 929–964
A rohonci kód [The Rohonc Code]. By Benedek Láng. Budapest: Jaffa,
2011. 227 pp.
If there is anything that makes a scholar get out of his armchair and pace his
room like a man possessed, chewing on the stem of his glasses or pulling at his
beard, murmuring to himself and going through the whole gamut of emotions
from optimistic outbursts to utter despair, then it is one of the well-kept secrets
of history, an undecipherable text or unbreakable linguistic code. No historian
who believed these writing systems to be absolutely unbreakable would take his
chance and dedicate a huge amount of his time, money and energies into trying
to decipher them. He must have the itchy feeling that he might be the one who
finds the missing clue, puts the pieces of the jigsaw into a coherent whole and
either breaks the code or proves that it is, indeed, unbreakable.
There are a number of such long known but hitherto undeciphered puzzles
in historical research, from the Linear A writing system of ancient Crete and
the Rongorongo writing of Easter Island, through the pictorial codes of the
Voynich manuscript to the nineteenth-century Beale ciphers. People with
very different backgrounds, scholars with an interest in the codes’ historical
context, amateur code breakers, experts employed by intelligence agencies,
mathematicians, linguists, treasure-hunters and many more have attempted to
unveil their mysteries. While the efforts may be heroic, the rewards are often
meager. Many famous or ill-famed codes have turned out to be forgeries, (dirty)
tricks played on contemporaries and later generations for riches and fame, an
intellectual challenge taken a tiny bit too far.
While all of these cryptic writing systems have received intense scholarly
interest and been the subjects of large numbers of studies and monographs,
a similarly intriguing and undeciphered code had to wait a long time before
getting the attention it deserved. The Rohonc code is contained in a 450-page
codex, a richly illustrated book with long sequences of ciphers handwritten
on 10 × 12 cm paper sheets. It derives its name from the Castle of Rohonc
(now Rechnitz, Austria) one of the aristocratic residencies of the Batthyány
family, who accumulated an unmatched collection of over 30,000 books there,
many of which—the codex in question included—ended up in the library of
the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1838. The Batthyánys had always been
known for their bibliophilia, and their passion for collecting caused them to
acquire books from the most diverse sources. It is therefore almost impossible
to know where this particular codex came from.
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After the codex passed to the library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences,
a few enthusiasts saw in the code some form of ancient Hungarian writing and
attempted to decipher it accordingly. When they realized it was not, the codex
was discarded as a mere forgery unworthy of a gentleman’s attention. And so it
largely remained until a fatal encounter with historian Benedek Láng some time
in 2006. How much Láng paced his room rubbing his beard cannot be known
for sure, but it seems safe to conclude that the appeal of the Rohonc codex was
impossible for him to resist and prompted him to engage in years of research.
The result is a monograph that both educates and entertains.
Láng starts with an overview of the nineteenth century, which was undeniably
a golden age for forgers, particularly those specializing in documents of historical
interest. There were many ambitious attempts to fill awkward gaps in the big
narrative of small nations and produce examples of greatness of mind and
culture, testimonies promoting the cause of people who felt deprived of historical
justice. Hungary had a particularly rich pool of well-qualified and even well-known
historical and literary scholars who indulged in forays to the dark side and became
expert forgers. Such was their skill that some of their alleged products are still
sometimes thought to be authentic. Two notable examples are Kálmán Thaly
(1839–1909) and Sámuel Literáti Nemes (1794–1842): one because of his peculiar
duplicity, being a historian who took great pains to save original documents from
decay but at the same time a forger who created historical letters and “old military
songs” in the style of eighteenth-century anti-Habsburg movements; the other
because of his (possible) connection to the codex of Rohonc.1
Literáti Nemes was an antiquarian who worked for many of Hungary’s best-
known contemporary booklovers. He brought to light a great number of fantastic
items, but was not averse to supplying his clients with exquisite forgeries. Some
of these he made himself, others he probably only passed on to unsuspecting
enthusiasts. These forgeries, twenty-three altogether, are now kept in the National
Széchényi Library in Budapest.2 They include old maps, diplomas, Hungarian
language prayers from the eleventh century and many richly illustrated genealogies
and chronicles. Some are better than others, and interestingly, despite firm
evidence to the contrary, there still are a few amateur historians who believe in
1 Ágnes R. Várkonyi, Thaly Kálmán és történetírása [Kálmán Thaly and his History Writing] (Budapest:
Akadémiai, 1961); Ákos Kelecsényi, “Egy magyar régiségkereskedő a 19. században. Literáti Nemes Sámuel
(1794–1842)” [A Hungarian Nineteenth-Century Book Collector, Samuel Literati Nemes], Az Országos
Széchényi Könyvtár Évkönyve 1972 (Budapest: OSZK, 1975), 307–27.
2 National Széchényi Library, Fol. Hung. 1365/1 and 2.
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their authenticity, largely because they would support one or another airy theory,
such as the linguistic kinship between Hungarian and Sumeric.
It is important to note, however, that all these forgeries were short, a couple
of pages at best. Even though Literáti Nemes’ alleged involvement in the
appearance of the Rohonc codex certainly casts the shadow of suspicion over
its originality, Láng warns that the sheer size of this work sets it apart from the
other well-known forgeries associated with Literáti Nemes. Nonetheless, such
was the magnitude of the scandals and the wave of disappointment surrounding
the documents which Literáti Nemes sold to various clients that the Rohonc
codex was too easily assumed to be another of his mischiefs.
The Rohonc codex stands out from other hitherto undeciphered codices by
its plainness: it contains no rich, colorful illustrations, indeed its pictures are almost
primitive, as if radiating certain piety, and the codes are not especially decorative
(unlike those in the Voynich manuscript, for instance). If it is a forgery, it must
have been difficult to sell as something precious, and the immense efforts of the
forger (he wrote 446 pages, after all) may not have been financially rewarding. All
these aspects lend weight to the idea that the codex of Rohonc is not a forgery.
But before revealing any potentially conclusive evidence, Láng goes through
the fascinating and occasionally almost ludicrous theories which have been
associated with the code. From the Hungarian engineer who simply “read” the
characters of the two pages of the codex at his disposal as an Ancient Hungarian
prayer (he was not discouraged when it turned out that he held the pages
upside down), through the even more far-fetched “reading” of the Romanian
archaeologist who dedicated twenty years and a massive volume to deciphering
the codex (without realizing she had read the characters in the wrong direction),
to the Sanskrit kinship theory, one thing is common: they all serve different
ideologies, each heavily loaded with historical-political implications, desires,
grudges and ambitions. Other, less biased attempts at deciphering the code did
not reach a solution but developed a promising methodology and offered more
help for future attempts.
After this overview of his predecessors’ work, Láng tells his own story: how
he approached the problem, and what he discovered. From down-to-earth physical
examination methods, especially those directed at the watermarks, he found that
the paper of the Rohonc codex was made in Northern Italy—Vicenza or Udine—
in the mid-sixteenth century, although Láng is cautious about narrowing down the
time and place it was made. He further analyses the paper, the ink, the type of pen
used to write the codes, and the hand(s) which wrote the lines. With the help of an
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international expert, Joe Nickell, he draws the cautious conclusion that the writing
is probably not (much) later than the paper itself, and goes right to left. There is no
obvious indicator of the text being a forgery. Still, the possibility remains that the
sixteenth-century paper remained unused, unwritten for centuries, possibly lying
low in the Batthyánys’ enormous library, and so Láng determines the terminus ante
quem as 1838 and the terminus post quem as 1530.
A close examination puts the possible number of characters at between
120 and 150, but the final figure is still to be determined. The difficulty lies in
the fact that there is no punctuation, one does not know where one word or
sentence ends and where the next begins. Neither can the presence of a natural
or artificial language behind the codes be determined, and if it is a natural
language, which one it could be. One is left with more questions than answers,
but Láng reminds the reader that whatever the motivation for the making of the
codex, and whether or not it contains a natural, shorthand or perfect language,
the goal is clear: cryptoanalysis and code-breaking.
Finding little to go on in the codes, the author turns to the 84 peculiar
images in the codex. Some of these are relatively easy to recognize: they tell
stories from the life of Christ, among them the Annunciation, the Three Magi
with the Star of Bethlehem, Christ before Pilate, and so on. Others, however,
are less obvious. An art-history analysis of the images—based on the types of
churches and buildings, the distorted gothic shapes—suggests that they were
drawn in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries; they also have a marked East
European tinge. It may thus be possible to narrow down the potential languages
associated with the codes (assuming that we are dealing with a natural language)
to Latin, German, Hungarian, South Slavic and Romanian.
Láng then goes on to try and identify “cribs” in the text, starting from
the short inscriptions in the images. The frequent repetition of certain figures,
Christ included, under the same set of codes suggests some promise for this line
of attack, but the breakthrough is yet to come. Similar conclusions regarding
these inscriptions have recently been reached by other workers. Gábor Tokai and
Levente Zoltán Király seem to have produced the most convincing results thus
far, and their ongoing work is more than promising. It seems then that the codes
of Rohonc conceal notions rather than letters, character strings refer to words,
but single characters do not correspond to single sounds.3
3 Gábor Tokai, “Az első lépések a Rohonci-kódex megfejtéséhez” [The First Steps Toward an
Undeciphering of the Rohonc Codex], Élet és Tudomány 55–56, no. 52–53 (2010), no. 2 (2011): 1675–
78, 50–53; Levente Zoltán Király, “Struktúrák a Rohonci-kódex szövegében. Helyzetjelentés egy amatőr
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If the author’s partial conclusions are true, then we are dealing with a Biblical
text of some sorts. This throws up some very exciting possibilities, such as an
apocryphal text written for and by a sect like the Bogumils, but something like a
Book of Hours, a much more widespread form at the time, is more likely. The
fact that the text runs from right to left could indicate the influence of Hebrew
or Arabic/Turkish languages. But what is that text? Who encrypted it? Why and
for whom? So many are the possibilities in the colorful East European scenario
that the question remains open for the time being.
Finding no satisfying solution based on the content, Láng goes on to approach
his text from a more technical/practical angle. The following chapter offers
an exciting overview of the secret writing systems known in Western Europe
and Hungary: monoalphabetic and polyalphabetic methods and homophonic
writing, which was the predominant method until the end of the seventeenth
century. These code systems were first applied in diplomatic correspondence
and were also widespread in seventeenth-century Hungary: the codes used by
György Rákóczi II, Prince of Transylvania, Imre Thököly, Miklós Zrínyi and
even Archbishop Péter Pázmány are all examples of homophonic writing. These
were by no means easy to break—the code used by Pázmány, for instance, was
deciphered only through close collaboration between a historian and a code
breaker.4 The historian’s knowledge of historic facts and faces was crucial in
suggesting what names of persons and geographical places the nomenclators
could stand for, while the code breaker lent his expertise in cryptography and the
mathematical regularities in secret writing.
Cryptography was not the only technique. Stenography was also widely
used, and when the table matching characters to words or syllables is missing,
the text becomes hard or even impossible to read. The Rohonc code may even
be an example of shorthand writing, although its pool of characters seems too
complicated and unusual for that.
kutatásról” [Structures in the Text of the Rohonc Codex: A Status Report on an Amateur Research],
Theologiai Szemle 54, no. 2 (2011): 82–93.
4 Péter Tusor, “Pázmány bíboros olasz rejtjelkulcsa: C.H. Motmann ‘Residente d’Ungheria’: A római
magyar agenzia történetéhez” [Cardinal Pázmány’s Italian Codebook: C. H. Motmann ‘Residente
d’Ungheria’. On the History of the Hungarian Agenzia in Rome], Hadtörténelmi Közlemények 116 (2003):
535–81; Zoltán Révay, Titkosírások. Fejezetek a rejtjelezés történetéből [Ciphers. Chapters from the History of
Cryptology], (Budapest: Zrínyi Katonai Kiadó, 1978); idem, II. Rákóczi Ferenc és korának rejtjelezése, XVIII.
század [Cryptography of Ferenc Rákóczi II, Prince of Transylvania and His Age] (Budapest: Magyar
Néphadsereg Híradó Főnökség Kiadása, 1974).
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Returning to the problem of what actual language lies behind the codex
of Rohonc, Láng discusses the many efforts at creating (or finding a long-
lost) perfect single language, a key to all mysteries, a common ground between
cultures and religions, and ponders the possibility that the Rohonc code is one
of these. Artificial languages were especially popular at the time it was most
probably made, the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Still, the earliest
known example of an artificial language project from Hungary is the work or the
eighteenth-century Hungarian intellectual vagabond, György Kalmár.5
Benedek’s highly complex and intellectually challenging tour-de-force
concludes with a chapter which, rather than promising a grand breakthrough,
a final solution, a fantastic discovery, modestly offers the reader a summary of
“what we know for sure, what we are quite sure we know, and what we have no
idea about.” I will not spoil the pleasure of future readers by giving away the
author’s conclusions, but I would like to highlight some of the merits of this
monograph.
It is unusual for a book on the Hungarian market, combining high erudition
(and a digestible amount of endnotes after each chapter) as demanded by
academics with a down-to-earth, even entertaining narrative style accessible
to general readers. Láng revives a tradition of popularizing science, something
snug academics tend to frown on. Having proved enough times his knowledge
of sources and methods, he has now made use of them to cater for a much
wider audience. In the 1980s, the tradition of renowned academics reaching out
to a more general public through popular versions of their scholarly work still
flourished in Hungary.6
Nonetheless, the book is not for the faint hearted, delving deep into the
world of combinatorics, paleography and historical research, although the reader
may choose how far to follow the details. The appendices, one with a list of the
illustrations in the Rohonc codex and one with a summary of code breaking
methods, actually invites the reader to have a go and try for him/herself. And
this is one of the great strengths of the book: it does not state unquestionable
truths but invites us to think along. Who knows, maybe the final key to the code
of Rohonc lies with one of the future readers of Benedek Láng’s book.
Dóra Bobory
5 Praecepta grammatica atque specimina linguae philosophicae, sive universalis (Berlin: D. Iacobaeer, 1772).
6 Many such books were published in the Magyar História (Hungarian History) and the Labirintus
(Labyrinth) series.
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