CIPHER/ANTIQUITY CIPHERS
Antiquity ciphers
5From the Spartan staff to the Roman shorthand book — ciphers built for a world of messengers, torches and clay.
Atbash
Atbash folds the alphabet in half and glues A to Z, B to Y, C to X. There is no key at all — knowledge of the method is the whole…
ZMWGSVOLLNRHGSVPVB…
Antiquity · Substitution · StarterCaesar Shift
The oldest alphabet cipher most people meet first: every letter moves a fixed number of places down the alphabet. It takes about…
WKHROGORRPQHYHUVWRSV…
Antiquity · Substitution · StarterPolybius Square
Polybius did not invent a cipher. He invented a *notation*: a way to write any letter as two numbers between one and five. That…
32 35 35 33 34 15 52 15 43 44 45 35 41 44…
Antiquity · Transposition · StarterScytale
The scytale does not rename letters — it shuffles them. Wind a strip of leather around a wooden staff, write across the turns…
TOESP EHOAA AREMV LTNLW ELTS…
Antiquity · Substitution · StarterTironian Notes
Before ciphers abbreviated letters, they abbreviated *words*. Tironian notes were a Roman shorthand of several thousand signs…
[THE] (SCRIBE) (WROTE) [CON] [AND] [EST] (IN) …