Historians and cryptologists are successfully employing artificial intelligence to unlock thousands of encrypted historical documents that have remained unreadable in global archives for centuries.
Approximately 1% of world’s archival material is estimated to be fully or partially coded, concealing a wealth of missing historical narratives ranging from diplomatic intelligence to private love affairs, reports BBC.
Unlocking Vatican’s mysteries
A significant breakthrough involves the Borg cipher, a 400-page manuscript stored in Vatican library for over four centuries.
Written with 34 unique symbols and featuring an Arabic front page, the text was long suspected to contain secret medical knowledge.
Using machine learning, researchers recently unpicked the code to reveal thousands of unconventional treatments, such as using fermented nutmeg in dough or consuming high-quality red wine to treat dysentery.
These remedies were likely hidden to avoid the risk of witchcraft accusations prevalent during the era.
Rewriting royal history
The application of AI to historic ciphers is already altering historical understandings of famous figures. Decoded letters from Mary Queen of Scots have provided fresh insight into her efforts to reclaim her throne during her English imprisonment.
Similarly, Cecile Pierrot, a cryptologist at French National Institute for Computer Science Research (INRIA), spent six months deciphering a 500-year-old letter from Roman Emperor Charles V.
The decrypted text revealed the monarch’s deep-seated fear of an assassination plot by an Italian mercenary.
Descrypt project
Under the multinational Descrypt project, experts such as Beáta Megyesi, a professor at Stockholm University, and University of Oslo Professor Michelle Waldispühl, are developing more efficient tools to automate the transcription and decryption process.
Traditionally, this work is laborious; transcribing just two pages of unfamiliar symbols can take an entire day.
However, AI is accelerating this timeline.
Professor Waldispühl recently used Transkribus platform to digitise a 1637 letter from nobleman Sigismund Heusner von Wandersleben, which contained warnings about conspiracies during the 30 Years’ War.
Megyesi’s team has further developed a chatbot-style AI tool that can transcribe and decode messages in a single step.
