Rohonczi codex sample

Rohonczi Codex is a set of writings in an unknown writing system. Its official Hungarian name is Rohonci-kódex, in English Rohonc Codex. The name in the main title reflects the old Hungarian orthography which was replaced by the new in the first half of the 20th century. This widespread internet usage is probably due to the work of V. Enăchiuc. Please check contemporary scholarly literature before making references to the codex. This image has been released into the public domain by the copyright holder, its copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for copyright. ... This image has been released into the public domain by the copyright holder, its copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for copyright. ... First page of the Codex Argenteus A codex (Latin for block of wood, book; plural codices) is a handwritten book, in general, one produced from Late Antiquity through the Middle Ages. ... Writing systems of the world today. ...

History

The origin of the codex is uncertain, as it was donated in 1838 to the Hungarian Science Academy by Gusztáv Batthyány, a Hungarian count, together with his entire library. | Jöns Jakob Berzelius, discoverer of protein 1838 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... The central building of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences The Hungarian Academy of Sciences (in short: HAS, in Hungarian: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia) was founded in 1825, when Count István Széchenyi offered one years income of his estate for the purposes of a Learned Society at...

It was named after the city of Rohonc, in Western Hungary (now Rechnitz, Austria), where it was kept until 1907, when it was moved to Budapest. In the same year, it is mentioned in a work by Bela Toth, "Rare Hungarian Writings". The codex was sent to a German researcher, Bernhard Jülg, professor at the Innsbruck University, but he was not able to decipher it either. Rechnitz (Croatian Rohunac, Hungarian Rohonc) is a municipality in Burgenland in the Oberwart district in Austria with a population of 3,237. ... 1907 (MCMVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Wednesday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... Nickname: Paris of the East, Pearl of the Danubeor Queen of the Danube Location of Budapest in Hungary Country Hungary County Pest Mayor Gábor Demszky (SZDSZ) Area    - City 525,16 km²  - Land n/a km²  - Water n/a km² Population    - City (2006) 1,695,000  - Density 3570/km... Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck has been a university since 1669. ...

The majority of Hungarian scholars takes the codex to be a forgery of Sámuel Literáti Nemes (1796–1842), Transylvanian-Hungarian antiquarian, co-founder of the National Széchényi Library in Budapest, infamous for many forgeries which even deceived some of the most renowned Hungarian scholars of the time. This opinion goes back as far as 1866, to Károly Szabó (1824-1890), Hungarian historian. National Széchényi Library Országos Széchényi Könyvtár is the national library of Hungary Official data Országos Széchényi Könyvtár Abbreviation of library name OSZK English name: National Széchényi Library Street address Buda Royal Palace Wing F H-1827...

Location

Magyar Tudományos Akadémia (Hungarian Academy of Sciences). The Hungarian Academy of Sciences (in short: HAS, in Hungarian: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia) was founded in 1825, when Count István Széchenyi offered one years income of his estate for the purposes of a Learned Society at a district session of the Diet in Bratislava (seat...

• Call number: K 114
• Old call number: Magyar Codex 12^o 1.

A very special permission is needed for studying the codex. However, a microfilm copy is available:

• Call number: MF 1173/II.

Features

An illustration

The codex has 448 paper pages (12x10 cm), each one having between 9 and 14 rows of symbols, which may or may not be letters. Beside the text, there are 87 illustrations that include religious, laic, and military scenes. The crude illustrations seem to indicate an environment where Christian, pagan, and Muslim religions coexist, as the symbols of the cross, crescent, and sun/swastika are omnipresent. This image has been released into the public domain by the copyright holder, its copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for copyright. ... This image has been released into the public domain by the copyright holder, its copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for copyright. ... A centimetre (American spelling centimeter, symbol cm) is a unit of length that is equal to one hundredth of a metre, the current SI base unit of length. ... The traditional form of the Western Christian cross, known as the Latin cross. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... The swastika (from Sanskrit ) is an equilateral cross with its arms bent at right angles in either left-facing () or right-facing () direction. ...

The number of symbols used in the codex is about 10 times higher than any known alphabet, but some symbols are used rarely, so the symbols in the codex might not be an alphabet, but a syllabary, or something like Chinese characters. The justification of the right margin would seem to imply the symbols were transcribed from right to left. A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent (or approximate) syllables, which make up words. ... Technical note: Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ...

The study of the paper on which it is written shows that it is probably a Venetian paper made in the 1530s. However, it may be simply transcribed from an earlier source. Or, the paper could be used much later than produced. Venice, (Italian: Venezia, Venetian: Venexia) is the capital of the region of Veneto and the province of the same name in Italy. ... Centuries: 15th century - 16th century - 17th century Decades: 1480s 1490s 1500s 1510s 1520s - 1530s - 1540s 1550s 1560s 1570s 1580s Years: 1530 1531 1532 1533 1534 1535 1536 1537 1538 1539 Events and Trends Spanish conquest of Peru Beginning of colonization of Brazil Categories: 1530s ...

Language and script

The language in which it is written is unknown. Although Hungarian, Dacian, early Romanian or Cuman, even Hindi (Brahmi) have been proposed, there is nothing that could indicate what language it is. The Dacian language was an Indo-European language spoken by the ancient people of Dacia. ... Cumans, also called as Polovtsy, (Russian Половцы, from old Slavic for pale yellowish) was the European name for the Western Kipchaks, a nomadic West Turkic tribe living on the north of the Black Sea along the Volga. ... Hindi (Devanagari: हिन्दी or हिंदी; IPA: ), an Indo-European language spoken mainly in northern and central India, is the official language of the Union government of India [1][2]. It is part of a dialect continuum of the Indic family, bounded on the northwest and west by Punjabi, Sindhi, Urdu, and Gujarati... Brāhmī refers to the pre-modern members of the Brahmic family of scripts, attested from the 3rd century BC. The best known and earliest dated inscriptions in Brahmi are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka. ...

Those who claim the codex's Hungarian authenticity, either assume that it is a paleo-Hungarian script, or try to find resemblances to the Old Hungarian script, that is Hungarian (Székely) runes ("rovásírás"). According to others, in the Dobrogea region in Romania similar characters or symbols are engraved in Scythian monk caves. Still others tried to find resemblance to the letters of the Greek charter of the Veszprémvölgy Nunnery (Hungary). Another claims it to be a version of the Brahmi script. Hungarian Runes (Hungarian: , ( ) or simply ) is a type of runic writing system used by the Magyars (mainly by Székely Magyars) prior to AD 1000. ... The Scythian Monks is the name given to a community of monks from the region around the mouth of the Danube, who between the fourth and the sixth century played an influential role in the Christian life of the time, and by their works they had shaped the modern Christian... BrāhmÄ« refers to the pre-modern members of the Brahmic family of scripts, attested from the 3rd century BC. The best known and earliest dated inscriptions in Brahmi are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka. ...

An attempt to list the symbols of the codex was first made by Kálmán Némäti (Némäti, 1889 & 1892).

Systematic research of the symbols was first done by Ottó Gyürk, who identified numbers in the text (Gyürk, 1970). His later remarks (Gyürk, 1996) suggest that he also has many unpublished conjectures, based on a large amount of statistical data.

Miklós Locsmándy did some computer-based research on the text in the mid-90's. He confirmed the published findings of Gyürk, adding several others. He claimed the symbol "i" to be a sentence delimiter (but also the symbol of 11 (eleven), and possibly also a place value delimiter in numbers). He studied the diacriticals of the symbols (mostly dots), but found no order. As he could see no traces of case endings (which are typically characteristic to the Hungarian language), he assumed that the text was probably in a language different than Hungarian. He could not prove that the codex is not a forgery, however, seeing the regularities of the text, he denied that it was pure gibberish. (Locsmándy, 2004-2005) Hungarian (magyar nyelv  ) is a Finno-Ugric language, and more specifically a Ugric language, unrelated to the other languages of Central Europe. ...

Translation

Attila Nyíri of Hungary has come up with a solution. He only studied two pages of the codex. He simply turned the codex upside down, then took the letters (usually) most similar to the symbols. However, he sometimes transliterated the same symbol with different letters, and vice versa, the same letter was decoded from several symbols. He even had to rearrange the order of the letters to produce words. The text, if taken as meaningful, is of religious, perhaps liturgical character. His solution was published in Theologiai Szemle, 39 (1996), pp. 91-98.

Its beginning: Eljött az Istened. Száll az Úr. Ó. Vannak a szent angyalok. Azok. Ó. -- Your God has come. The Lord flies. Oh. There are the holy angels. Them. Oh.

A translation has been attempted by Romanian philologist Viorica Enăchiuc, but the language (that ought to be Vulgar Latin or some kind of early Romanian) does not resemble Romanian. The alleged translation indicates that it is a history of the Blaki (Vlachs) people in their fights against Cumans and Pechenegs. Vlachs (also called Wallachians, Wlachs, Wallachs, Olahs or Ulahs) is a blanket term covering several modern Latin peoples descending from the Latinised population in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe. ... Cumans, also called as Polovtsy, (Russian Половцы, from old Slavic for pale yellowish) was the European name for the Western Kipchaks, a nomadic West Turkic tribe living on the north of the Black Sea along the Volga. ... Pechenegs or Patzinaks, also known as Besenyők, were a semi-nomadic steppes people of Central Asia that spoke a Turkic language. ...

Solrgco zicjra naprzi olto co sesvil cas - O Sun of the live let write what span the time is the beginning chapter (p224) transligaturized in order RLBT. It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Ligature (typography). ...

Another alleged solution was made by the Indian Mahesh Kumar Singh, living in Hungary. His claim is that the codex is written LRTB with a regional variant of the Brahmi script which he can read. He transliterated the first 24 pages of the codex to get a Hindi text which was translated to Hungarian. His solution is mostly like the beginning of an apocryphal gospel (previously unknown), with a meditative prologue, then going on to the infancy narrative of Jesus. His results were published in Turán, 2004/6 = 2005/1, pages 12-58. BrāhmÄ« refers to the pre-modern members of the Brahmic family of scripts, attested from the 3rd century BC. The best known and earliest dated inscriptions in Brahmi are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka. ... Hindi (Devanagari: हिन्दी or हिंदी; IPA: ), an Indo-European language spoken mainly in northern and central India, is the official language of the Union government of India [1][2]. It is part of a dialect continuum of the Indic family, bounded on the northwest and west by Punjabi, Sindhi, Urdu, and Gujarati... Apocrypha (from the Greek word απόκρυφα meaning those having been hidden away[1]) are texts of uncertain authenticity or writings where the authorship is questioned. ...

According to Mahesh Kumar Singh, the upper two rows of page 1 go like: he bhagwan log bahoot garib yahan bimar aur bhookhe hai / inko itni sakti aur himmat do taki ye apne karmo ko pura kar sake (Hungarian: Óh, Istenem! Itt a nép nagyon szegény, beteg és szűkölködik, ezért adj nekik elegendő tehetséget és erőt, hogy kielégíthessék a szükségleteiket! -- English: Oh, my God! Here the people is very poor, ill and starving, therefore give them sufficient potency and power that they may satisfy their needs.)

Bibliography

In chronological order

• JERNEY, János: Némi világosítások az ismeretlen jellemű rohonczi írott könyvre [Some Enlightenments Concerning the Rohonc Manuscript Book of Unknown Character], Tudománytár, 8 (új f.), 1844. Vol 15., Book 1., 25–36.
• SZABÓ, Károly: A régi hun-székely írásról [Of the old Hun-Székely Writing System]. Budapesti Szemle 6 (1866), 123-124. (Hungarian)
• FEJÉRPATAKY, László: Irodalmunk az Árpádok korában [Our Literature in the Ages of the Árpáds (11-13th century)], Budapest, 1878. p. 3. (Hungarian)
• NÉMÄTI, Kálmán: A Rohonczi-Codex Ábécéje [The Alphabet of the Rohonc Codex]. Magyar Nevelő, 1889 (Hungarian)
• NÉMÄTI, Kálmán: A Rohonczi-Codex tantételei [Doctrines about the Rohonc Codex]. Budapest, 1892 (Hungarian)
• GYÜRK, Ottó: Megfejthető-e a Rohonci-kódex? [Can the Rohonc Codex Be Solved?], Élet és Tudomány 25 (1970), 1923-1924. (Hungarian)
• NYÍRI, Attila: Megszólal 150 év után a Rohonci-kódex? [After 150 Years, the Rohonc Codex Starts to Speak?], Theologiai Szemle, 39 (1996), 91-98. (Hungarian)
• GYÜRK, Ottó: Megszólal a Rohonci-kódex? [Does the Rohonc Codex Speak?], Theologiai Szemle, 39 (1996), 380-381. (Hungarian)
• ENĂCHIUC, Viorica: Rohonczi Codex: descifrare, transcriere si traducere (Déchiffrement, transcription et traduction), Editura Alcor, 2002 (Romanian-French)
• UNGUREANU, Dan: Nu trageti in ambulanta, Observator Cultural, 167 (May 6-12, 2003.) (Romanian; also on-line, see external link below)
• NYÍRI, Attila: A Rohonci-kódexről [About the Rohonc Codex], Turán, 2004/4, 85ff (Hungarian)
• BÁRDI, László: Rohonci Kódex -- Bevezető jegyzet [The Rohonc Codex: Introductory Notes], Turán, 2004/6 = 2005/1, 9-11. (Hungarian)
• Rohonci Kódex (Interlinear publication of folios 1-13 with Latin transliteration of Mahesh Kumar Singh's Hindi rendering, and Hungarian translation. Then followed by the polished literary Hungarian text of the translation), Turán, 2004/6 = 2005/1, 12-40. (transliterated Hindi, and Hungarian)
• LOCSMÁNDY, Miklós: A Rohonci Kódex. Egy rejtélyes középkori írás megfejtési kísérlete [The Rohonc Codex: An Attempt to Decipher a Mysterious Medieval Script], Turán, 2004/6 = 2005/1, 41-58.
• SINGH, Mahesh Kumar: Rövid ismertető a brahmi ABC-ről [A Short Introduction to the Brahmi Alphabet], Turán 2005/2-3, 133-138. (Hungarian)
• VARGA, Géza: A Rohonczi [sic!] Kódexről -- olvasói levél [About the Rohonc Codex. A letter to the editor], Turán 2005/2-3, 195-197. (Hungarian)
• VARGA, Csaba: A Rohonczi [sic!] Kódex Dr. Mahesh Kumar Singh-féle olvasatának ellenőrzése -- olvasói levél [A Criticism of Dr. Mahesh Kumar Singh's Rendering of the Rohonc Codex. A letter to the editor], Turán 2005/2-3, 198-202. (Hungarian)

See also

• Voynich manuscript
• Middle Bronze Age alphabets

The Voynich manuscript is written in an unknown script. ... The Middle Bronze Age alphabets are two similar but undeciphered scripts, dated to be from the Middle Bronze Age (2000-1500 BCE), and believed to be ancestral to nearly all modern alphabets: the Proto-Sinaitic script discovered in the winter of 1904-1905 by William Flinders Petrie, and dated to...

External links

• Scanned pictures of the Codex
• Introduction to the Codex (in Romanian)
• Ungureanu, Dan: Nu trageti in ambulanta, Observator Cultural, 167 (May 6-12, 2003.) A debunking of the book of Viorica Enăchiuc (in Romanian)
• Némäti Kálmán: Rohonczi-kódex tantételei. Scanned images of a Hungarian book claiming the Codex to be Hungarian. Also has table of symbols, and a drawing of the watermark of the paper of the codex