AI Unlocks 400-Year-Old Vatican Code, Revealing Hidden Knowledge

In one of the most exciting scientific and historical stories, researchers have successfully deciphered a mysterious manuscript that remained hidden in the Vatican Library archives for over 400 years. They achieved this with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies, after its meaning had eluded scholars for many decades.

The manuscript is known as the “Borg Cipher,” a handwritten book of 408 pages filled with strange symbols and incomprehensible signs, along with a limited number of Latin letters and a cover page written in Arabic. For centuries, the book's contents remained completely unknown because there was no known key to unlock the cipher, and some pages were also damaged by time.

According to what the researchers revealed, the manuscript contained medicinal recipes and practices related to healing and human body ailments. This information was believed to be kept highly secret in that era, out of fear of accusations related to practicing magic or sorcery.

Strange Cures Inside the Manuscript

After analyzing the symbols using AI technologies, the research team discovered thousands of unconventional therapeutic recipes. These included using high-quality red wine in some treatments, or fermenting nutmeg inside dough to combat dysentery.

Despite the significant advancements provided by AI tools, the process of finding the cipher key was not easy. It required years of linguistic analysis and comparing historical patterns and symbols.

Research Team Leads the Mission

This achievement was led by a research team including Beata Megyesi, a professor of computational linguistics at Stockholm University in Sweden. The team focuses on using AI technologies to decipher ancient historical ciphers, aiming to access knowledge treasures that have remained hidden within archives and libraries worldwide.

Estimates suggest that about 1% of documents preserved in global archives are still fully or partially encrypted, while some of the oldest known ciphers date back to ancient Greek and Roman civilizations.

Documents That Could Rewrite History

Researchers believe that encrypted historical documents may contain political and diplomatic information, medical secrets, rituals of secret societies, and even personal details and private relationships that their owners were keen to keep out of sight.

In some cases, deciphering these ciphers could lead to a complete reinterpretation of historical events or reveal new facts about prominent figures. A notable recent example is the encrypted letters of Mary Queen of Scots, which revealed her involvement in political conspiracies during her long imprisonment in England, as well as details of her strained relationship with her son, James VI.

How the Cipher Worked

The researchers explained that the “Borg Cipher” relied on a method known as a “substitution cipher,” where each symbol is replaced by a specific Latin letter to hide the true meaning of the text. This is one of the oldest encryption techniques used historically.

Scientists hope that the accelerating development of AI technologies will contribute in the future to deciphering more mysterious historical ciphers, opening the door to discoveries that could change the world's understanding of entire historical eras whose secrets have remained buried for centuries.