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Comment by pdw | Hacker News Reader

Crypto-hieroglyphic writing is a real thing: https://www.britannica.com/topic/hieroglyphic-writing/Crypto...

Such writing would give non-standard meanings to signs, or drawn them in non-standard ways, or use entirely invented signs. It would be a puzzle to work out the meaning, and I imagine most people who weren't very literate would be stumped. They certainly stumped egyptologists for a while when the first examples were discovered.

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I believe enciphered hieroglyphics were covered by David Kahn in The Codebreakers. If memory serves, literate people wouldn't have too much difficulty solving them. The idea was the the plaintext would seem more significant to the reader/codebreaker after they labored for a few hours or a few days working it out. The labor required would add emphasis to what was being communicated.

I am looking at the last image in the article, captioned "The encrypted message instructs the viewer to appease the gods with offerings". The picture shows ... a person kneeling in front of a throned figure, offering something with both hands. Is something about this message supposed to be hidden?

I imagine most people who weren't very literate would also be stumped by things written fairly plainly.

From the way they describe how the message is read, it doesn't seem written very plainly at all. It would be odd to assume that this knowledge was accessible to many people if the manner in which it's written is only found in certain circumstances.

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