Research sessions
How the research on this mystery got where it is, one working session at a time: what each set out to do, what it found, what it got wrong, and what it left open.
The first four sessions made 19 claims from images alone. Tested against the transliterations in session 5: 11 refuted, 3 open, 2 not tested, 2 restated, 1 partly supported.
1
2026-03 · S-001 · draft
Initial analysis of a subset of folios
A first pass from a handful of folio images. Zodiac names were proposed for labels on the zodiac pages, four recurring word-beginnings were named as grammatical elements, a Mercury root was read in the pharmacy labels, the bathers were taken for decan figures and the rosette for an al-Idrisi world map. Working…
2
2026-03 · S-001 · draft
The whole manuscript, from images
The first session's readings extended to the whole book: four more zodiac names, a seven-planet pharmacy (Merc-, Satur-, Iupit-, Ven-, Sol-, Lun-), a three-part botanical entry formula, Currier's A and B as two registers, an almanac "prediction confirmed", index-of-coincidence figures, and two or three scribal hands.
3
2026-03 · S-001 · draft
Reading the published research
The draft met the literature: Davis's five scribes (2020) replaced "two or three hands"; Greshko's Naibbe cipher (2025) was weighed against the readings; Bowern and Lindemann's morphological measures moved the "Arabic grammar" idea to a structural analogy; Leiden conventions were adopted for transcribed readings; a…
4
2026-03-02 · S-001 · draft
Image mapping, project set-up and the Picatrix cross-check
242 folio images were mapped to folios; the repository was set up with a research log, a findings tracker and a collaboration note; the six planet roots were "cross-checked" against the Picatrix's planetary correspondences and rated exact or strong matches. The draft book (v0.1) was then written from these findings.
5
2026-10-22 · S-002 · describe
Re-analysis from the transliteration; book v1.0
The project was found to hold no machine-readable text: the spring findings were a language model's descriptions of images. Every claim was tested against the ZL3b, IT2a and CD2a transliterations, and none of the lexical readings exists in the manuscript. The earlier draft was archived. Structure, statistics, slot…
6
2026-10-22 · S-003 · test
Phase 2: registered tests, brute force, five surveys; book v1.1
A pre-registration framework with surrogates, a 103-language reference, planted-key controls and a held-out split; nineteen hypotheses tested, including substitution and homophonic searches over 187 language samples; five methods surveys (cryptanalysis, linguistics, bioinformatics and signal, imagery, emerging…
7
2026-10-22 · S-004 · test
Phase 3: procedures, fragments, lists, transliteration; book v1.2
A survey of fifteenth-century encoding procedures; per-scribe tests; six generators competing on held-out statistics; a fragmenting-cipher solver with controls; Latin list genres; the GC v101 transliteration check. Book v1.2 added Part VI.
8
2026-10-22 · S-005 · test
Phase 4: the chancery key; book v1.3
Tranchedino-type mixed keys, the cipher family of fifteenth-century Italian chanceries, registered with four predictions, then simulated over 216 configurations; collapse, choice and line-position tests; an element-vocabulary solver with a planted-key ladder; Simonetta's 1474 rules. Book v1.3 added Part VII.
9
2026-10-22 · S-006 · explore
The inquiry framework, the inductive battery, generated hypotheses and readings
Surveys of inquiry frameworks and inductive methods; the artifact-agnostic inquiry toolkit, with the whole project migrated into its ledger; a fourteen-method inductive battery against null texts; an exploration/confirmation split; generated hypotheses with readings, eight predictions tested on the held-back half;…