The Rohonc Codex is an enigmatic illustrated manuscript of uncertain origin, written in an undeciphered script and in a language that remains unknown to this day. It surfaced in Hungary during the early nineteenth century and has since perplexed linguists, historians, and cryptographers alike. The manuscript, now preserved in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest, consists of approximately 448 pages of handmade paper and features nearly ninety intricate miniatures. These illustrations depict a mixture of Christian, military, and civic scenes, ranging from crucifixion imagery and processions to battles and coronations, suggesting that the book was conceived with a coherent thematic intent, even if its exact message remains concealed.
Unlike the Voynich Manuscript, which has gained international fame, the Rohonc Codex remains comparatively obscure, often referred to as “Europe’s forgotten mystery.” Its script comprises nearly two hundred distinct symbols, written from right to left, and exhibits structural patterns that resemble natural language but correspond to no known alphabet. Numerous attempts to decipher it have been undertaken over the past two centuries, yet none have achieved consensus or reproducible success. Early efforts in the nineteenth century by Hungarian scholars such as Sándor Huszti (1840) treated it as a potential relic of ancient Hungarian or even Sumerian writing, while twentieth-century analyses by István Fehér (1970) and later Miklós Simon (2009) explored possibilities ranging from a constructed language to a devotional Christian code.
The manuscript’s origin remains a matter of heated debate. Some researchers have proposed that it could be a religious or apocryphal text composed for a specific sect or monastic community, given the Christian iconography and hierarchical depictions in the miniatures. Others, however, regard it as a complex hoax or literary curiosity, possibly created in the eighteenth century for private amusement or as an intellectual challenge, in an age when cipher writing was fashionable among scholars and secret societies. Yet recent structural analyses of the text, including symbol frequency and positional distribution studies, indicate that it may follow consistent linguistic rules rather than random invention, raising the possibility that the codex encodes a genuine language or ciphered message (Simon, 2009; Fehér, 1970).
Despite more than two centuries of inquiry, no one has definitively identified the codex’s author, the meaning of its text, or even the language family to which it might belong. Each hypothesis—from religious manuscript to lost language or deliberate forgery—opens a different interpretive pathway into its mystery. This thesis aims to present a comprehensive study of the Rohonc Codex by reviewing its discovery and historical background, analysing its physical and textual composition, surveying major theories of interpretation, and assessing the scientific investigations and ongoing research that continue to seek answers to one of Europe’s most enduring manuscript enigmas.
This PDF contains image-only scans of every page of the original The Rohonc Codex. No transcription, translation, or commentary is included. Source: Real-ms.mtak.hu
Source: Antikvariat Krenek
In the late 17th century, Rohonc (today Rechnitz) was part of the Kingdom of Hungary, under the control of the Batthyány family, one of Hungary’s most powerful noble houses. Vischer’s engraving depicts Rohonc as a fortified settlement, with its castle, church, and clustered houses surrounded by agricultural land — a typical depiction of Hungarian border towns in that era. The castle shown in the engraving belonged to the Batthyány family, whose library later contained the Rohonc Codex. This connection makes the image historically appropriate for your website, as it visually anchors the manuscript in its original geographic and cultural setting.
The Rohonc Codex takes its name from the town of Rohonc, known today as Rechnitz, located in present-day Austria. It was once housed in the private library of the noble Batthyány family. In 1838, Count Gusztáv Batthyány donated his entire family collection, including the mysterious codex, to the newly founded Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS). From that year onward, the manuscript became part of the Academy’s holdings (catalogued as K 114), where it remains today under restricted access (Simon, 2009).
The earlier history of the codex is obscure. A possible reference to it appears in an eighteenth-century inventory of the Rohonc library dated 1743, which mentions a volume described as “Hungarian prayers” of similar dimensions. While this entry is intriguing, it cannot be conclusively linked to the Rohonc Codex (Fehér, 1970). Because the Batthyány collection was assembled from a wide range of European sources over several centuries, it is uncertain whether the codex was originally Hungarian or merely acquired through trade or donation from elsewhere.
Upon entering scholarly circles, the manuscript immediately attracted curiosity as a potential relic of early Hungarian literature. In the 1840s, Hungarian orientalist János Jerney examined the codex and identified Italian paper watermarks consistent with sixteenth-century Venetian production, indicating that the book’s material likely originated in northern Italy (Jerney, 1844). Jerney noted that the manuscript’s illustrations carried clear Christian themes and suggested its author must have belonged to a Christian cultural environment. However, he was puzzled by the script, which bore no resemblance to any known European writing system. Jerney speculated that it might relate to Central Asian or steppe languages used by historical groups such as the Cumans or Tatars who had settled in medieval Hungary, and he entertained the idea that it might represent a ciphered text rather than a natural language (Fehér, 1970).
By the mid-nineteenth century, enthusiasm gave way to scepticism as all decipherment attempts failed. In 1866, Hungarian historian Károly Szabó publicly accused Sámuel Literáti Nemes, a well-known antiquarian and document forger, of fabricating the Rohonc Codex. Nemes had previously produced several counterfeit medieval manuscripts and inscriptions during the 1830s and 1840s, some of which deceived reputable scholars of the time (Szabó, 1866). Although no direct evidence connects Nemes to the codex, the timing was suspicious: the manuscript surfaced within his lifetime, and its supposed Hungarian-Christian character would have appealed to nationalist antiquarian circles in which Nemes was active. This theory gained traction, and by the late nineteenth century most Hungarian academics had come to regard the Rohonc Codex as an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century forgery (Simon, 2009).
Nevertheless, the manuscript continued to attract occasional study throughout the twentieth century. It was rebound in a nineteenth-century leather cover, obscuring any evidence of its original binding or pagination order (Fehér, 1970). Because of its fragility and uncertain provenance, direct access to the codex has long been restricted, though a black-and-white microfilm copy was made available for researchers in the 1970s. In 2015, the University of Hamburg carried out partial high-resolution digital scans of the manuscript, releasing eight sample folios online as part of a preservation initiative (Zsoldos, 2016). However, a complete digitisation of the codex remains unpublished, keeping the study of this manuscript limited to a small circle of Hungarian and Central European specialists.
Today, the Rohonc Codex remains locked within the rare collections room of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Library, an artefact both literally and linguistically sealed off from the wider scholarly world. Its uncertain origin, undeciphered text, and hybrid Christian imagery ensure its place as one of Europe’s most obscure and challenging historical enigmas.
To better understand the scholarly journey surrounding the Rohonc Codex, the following timeline summarises key moments, discoveries, and research efforts associated with this elusive manuscript.
1743 – Possible early reference
Source: Antikvariat Krenek
A catalogue of the Batthyány family library at Rohonc (now Rechnitz, Austria) records a volume described as Magyar imádságok (“Hungarian prayers”) of similar dimensions to the Rohonc Codex. Although uncertain, some historians believe this may refer to the manuscript, suggesting it was already part of the Batthyány collection by the mid-eighteenth century (Fehér, 1970).
1840s – First scholarly examination
Portrait of János Jerney (1800–1855) — public-domain image by Gustav Morelli, Vasárnapi Ujság (1883) - Source: Wikidata
Hungarian orientalist János Jerney studies the manuscript and identifies Italian paper watermarks consistent with Venetian manufacture circa 1530. He notes its Christian iconography and hypothesises that it may have originated within a Christian cultural milieu, perhaps among Central Asian Tatars who had settled in medieval Hungary. Jerney concludes that the book could represent either a ciphered text or an unknown natural language, rather than a forgery (Jerney, 1844).
1866 – The forgery hypothesis
Szabó Károly (1864) - Source: Wikipedia
Historian Károly Szabó publishes an essay accusing Sámuel Literáti Nemes, a known forger of antiquities, of fabricating the Rohonc Codex. Nemes had produced several spurious medieval “Hungarian” documents during the 1830s and 1840s. Although no concrete evidence links him to the codex, Szabó’s claim gains wide acceptance and damages the manuscript’s reputation for decades (Szabó, 1866).
1910s–1940s – Dormancy
Source: Wikipedia
Interest in the manuscript fades, and for much of the early twentieth century it lies dormant in the HAS archives, dismissed as a forgery or an unsolvable cipher.
1990s – Computational analysis
Source: Real-ms.mtak.hu
Computer scientist Miklós Locsmándi employs algorithmic methods to study the text. He confirms Gyürk’s observation of right-to-left writing and finds statistical regularities inconsistent with randomness. Locsmándi proposes that a vertical “i-shaped” symbol acts as a sentence delimiter and concludes that the manuscript lacks Hungarian grammatical endings, implying it was not written in Hungarian (Locsmándi, 1996).
2004 – The Hindi/Brahmi hypothesis
Source: Patrimonio
Indian researcher Mahesh Kumar Singh proposes that the script derives from an unknown variant of Brahmi and decodes several folios as an apocryphal Gospel in archaic Hindi. His claims are dismissed after peer review reveals inconsistent transliteration and no evidence of the supposed script variant (Singh, 2004).
2010–2011 – Art-historical and structural studies
Source: Patrimonio, Real-ms.mtak.hu
Art historian Gábor Tokai analyses the codex’s iconography, dating its artwork to the late sixteenth or seventeenth century. He observes that the text’s structural patterns are too systematic to be meaningless. Tokai later identifies repeated symbols in conjunction with the abbreviation “INRI” and interprets groups of numerals as biblical chapter references. Independently, researcher Levente Zoltán Király discovers a section of the manuscript organised like a table of contents with numbered chapters and finds recurring references to the four Evangelists, implying that much of the work paraphrases the New Testament (Tokai & Király, 2011).
2018 – The code-system theory
Source: Patrimonio
Tokai and Király publish Cracking the Code of the Rohonc Codex (2018), concluding that the script represents a complex “code system” rather than a simple substitution cipher. They interpret the text as a sixteenth- or seventeenth-century Catholic prayer book written in an artificial or ciphered language. Their study identifies references to biblical figures such as Seth and the Virgin Mary and even a possible date, 1593 CE, encoded within the text (Tokai & Király, 2018).
1838 – Donation to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Source: Pest Buda
Count Gusztáv Batthyány donates his entire private library—around thirty thousand volumes—to the newly established Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS), including the mysterious codex. This marks the first confirmed appearance of the Rohonc Codex in modern history (Simon, 2009).
Hungarian and European scholars including Ferenc Toldy, Pál Hunfalvy, Josef Jireček, and Bernhard Jülg attempt to identify linguistic elements within the text, all without success. Around 1890, the painter Mihály Munkácsy takes the codex to Paris, hoping to attract foreign cryptographers and linguists, but no breakthrough follows (Fehér, 1970).
1884–1892 – Script cataloguing and official verdict.
Source: Real-ms.mtak.hu
Philologist Kálmán Némäti undertakes the first systematic symbol count, identifying 792 distinct characters far exceeding any natural alphabet. In 1886, the HAS Linguistics Committee reviews his findings: four palaeographers conclude that the work is most likely a nineteenth-century forgery written on sixteenth-century paper. They argue that such a vast alphabet would exceed human memory and note the manuscript’s absence of corrections, which is rare in authentic texts. By 1890, scholarly consensus dismisses the Rohonc Codex as fraudulent, and serious study ceases (Simon, 2009).
1960s–1970s – Renewed investigation
Source: Real-ms.mtak.hu
1960s–1970s – Renewed investigation
Engineer Ottó Gyürk re-examines the text, analysing symbol sequences and confirming that the script reads right to left and top to bottom. He identifies recurring numerical patterns, suggesting that certain symbols represent numbers. Although his research remains unpublished internationally, Gyürk’s findings later influence computational analyses (Gyürk, 1970).
Romanian linguist Viorica Enăchiuc claims to have translated the codex, asserting that it is written in a Vulgar Latin dialect of medieval Dacia and recounts conflicts between Vlachs, Hungarians, and Pechenegs. Her reading places the work in the eleventh or twelfth century. However, scholars quickly discredit her interpretation due to inconsistent symbol assignments, unverified linguistic links, and the lack of correspondence between her translation and the manuscript’s Christian imagery (Enăchiuc, 2002).
2010 – Scholarly revival
Source: Taylor & Francis
Hungarian historian Benedek Láng publishes a major reassessment in Cryptologia (2010) and a subsequent monograph (2011), arguing that the codex is unlikely to be a hoax. Láng posits that it may represent a cipher, shorthand system, or constructed language akin to other Renaissance cryptographic experiments (Láng, 2010)
2015 – Digital imaging project
Source: Wiki-data
The University of Hamburg digitises portions of the Rohonc Codex for preservation. Only eight high-resolution pages are released publicly, though they provide the clearest images yet of the text and confirm the manuscript’s layered ink structure (Zsoldos, 2016)
2020s – Ongoing investigations
Source: Real-ms.mtak.hu
Research on the Rohonc Codex continues through interdisciplinary collaboration. Hungarian scholars such as Láng, Tokai, and Király work with computational linguists applying machine-learning models to detect structure. In 2018, the manuscript was included in the Swedish Research Council’s DECRYPT Project, which explores the decipherment of historical ciphers. As of 2025, no translation has achieved academic consensus, but accumulated evidence increasingly suggests that the codex encodes a coherent religious text rather than meaningless invention.
Source: Patrimonio, Real-ms.mtak.hu
The Rohonc Codex is a compact handwritten manuscript consisting of 448 pages, each measuring approximately 12 × 10 centimetres (4.7 × 3.9 inches). Despite its small dimensions, it is unusually thick and densely filled with mysterious writing. Each page contains roughly nine to fourteen lines of text, composed in an unknown script that has baffled scholars for nearly two centuries. The text is carefully justified to the right margin, strongly suggesting that it was written from right to left, the reverse of most European languages (Láng, 2010). The writing system comprises an estimated 800 distinct symbols—an extraordinarily large inventory compared with known alphabets or syllabaries. Many of these symbols appear only once or a few times throughout the manuscript, while others recur in structured clusters (Tokai & Király, 2018). This vast diversity implies that the system may not be alphabetic; rather, it could represent a syllabary (where symbols denote syllables) or even a logographic script (where symbols convey entire words or concepts).
Some scholars have likened the script’s density and repetition patterns to East Asian writing systems, such as Chinese, where characters represent meaning rather than sound. However, unlike Chinese ideograms, the Rohonc symbols do not display overt pictorial logic or derivation. Another striking feature is the absence of spaces or punctuation separating words, giving the text a continuous flow that complicates attempts at linguistic segmentation. This continuity, combined with the extraordinary number of symbols, has often been cited by sceptics as evidence of a hoax. Yet detailed analyses of symbol sequences—such as those conducted by Miklós Locsmándi (1996) and later by Levente Zoltán Király (2011)—reveal consistent internal patterns and statistical regularities inconsistent with random scribbling. These findings indicate that the codex was written with deliberate structure and that its content likely follows coherent grammatical or logical rules, even if the underlying language remains unknown (Láng, 2010; Király, 2011).
Roughly eighty-seven of the pages—almost one-fifth of the entire volume—contain illustrations that accompany or punctuate the text. These pen-and-ink drawings are executed in a simple, almost rustic style reminiscent of medieval woodcut art. The imagery encompasses religious, military, and domestic scenes, often combined on a single page in a narrative sequence (Tokai, 2010). Many illustrations are unmistakably Christian in theme: several depict the Crucifixion (complete with the Latin inscription INRI), the Nativity, and various scenes identifiable as Biblical events. Figures resembling angels, saints, and clergy appear throughout. Intriguingly, other pages introduce non-Christian symbols—crescents (commonly associated with Islam), solar wheels or swastika motifs (linked to ancient European and Indo-European symbolism), and banners suggesting a mixture of faiths. One notable battle scene shows soldiers carrying flags—some marked with crosses, others with crescents—apparently symbolising a clash between Christian and Islamic forces.
The coexistence of such diverse religious motifs implies that the codex may have been created in a multi-faith or frontier context, such as the Ottoman–Habsburg borderlands of the sixteenth or seventeenth century, where Christian, Muslim, and local pagan traditions intermingled (Tokai, 2010; Láng, 2011). This context aligns with modern interpretations of the book as a Catholic devotional work or breviary adapted for a culturally mixed audience. Some miniatures also depict siege towers, armoured knights, and courtly processions, suggesting historical or allegorical dimensions beyond purely spiritual content.
The precise relationship between the images and the text remains unclear. Early scholars assumed that the illustrations merely served as decorative vignettes, but more recent research by Gábor Tokai and Levente Zoltán Király has revealed points of correspondence between textual sequences and imagery. For instance, they identified recurring symbol clusters that coincide with Gospel references and inscriptions linked to the Four Evangelists, as well as numerals interpreted as chapter markers or biblical dates (Tokai & Király, 2018). Such findings imply that the images are integral to the manuscript’s meaning rather than ornamental additions.
In summary, the Rohonc Codex presents a complex interplay between undeciphered text and symbolic imagery. Its mixture of Christian and possibly non-Christian iconography, the extreme density and variety of its script, and its apparent internal order all point to a work of deliberate design rather than random invention. Whether it represents a ciphered devotional manuscript, an encoded chronicle, or an elaborate intellectual exercise remains uncertain; yet its physical and visual features strongly suggest a text constructed with purpose—a message encrypted and awaiting understanding.
Given its mysterious nature, the Rohonc Codex has inspired a range of theories about its origin and meaning. Scholars and enthusiasts have proposed everything from genuine historical document to elaborate hoax. Broadly, the hypotheses can be grouped into four categories:
(a) it encodes a known religious text or theology (“Religious theory”),
(b) it’s written in a lost or unidentified language (“Lost Language theory”),
(c) it’s a deliberate hoax or forgery with no real meaning, and
(d) it’s a meaningful text written in a constructed language or cipher. Each theory has its proponents and challenges, as outlined below.
Source: Patrimonio
One of the most widely supported interpretations views the Rohonc Codex as a religious manuscript possibly a prayer book, biblical commentary, or devotional anthology written in an unknown script or cipher. Several forms of evidence lend weight to this perspective.
Foremost are the Christian illustrations that appear throughout the manuscript: scenes of the Crucifixion inscribed INRI, the Nativity, depictions of saints, angels, and clerical figures. These images strongly imply that the text is connected to Christian scripture or liturgical practice. The presence of diverse symbols including the cross, crescent, and sun-wheel motifs may indicate a narrative set in a religiously mixed society, such as sixteenth- or seventeenth-century Eastern Europe, where Christian, Muslim, and pre-Christian traditions coexisted (Láng 2010). Even the earliest cataloguers appear to have recognised a devotional character: a 1743 inventory entry from the Batthyány library describes a book of “Hungarian prayers,” which many historians believe referred to the Rohonc Codex (Fehér 1970).
More direct indications come from later attempts at decipherment that have yielded religious-sounding results. In 1996, Attila Nyíri working from a speculative “Sumerian–Magyar” hypothesis claimed to extract a liturgical passage reading, “Your God has come. The Lord flies… There are the holy angels.” Although his linguistic method was unsound and his translation unverified, the religious tone of the output was notable. Likewise, Mahesh Kumar Singh’s 2004 experiment, which treated the script as a variant of Brahmi, produced what appeared to be an apocryphal gospel retelling episodes from the life of Jesus. Singh’s interpretation is now regarded as unsubstantiated, yet it again reinforced the perception that the text’s subject matter is theological rather than secular.
The most compelling support for the religious theory arises from the detailed work of Gábor Tokai and Levente Zoltán Király between 2010 and 2018. Their analyses identified structural elements corresponding to biblical texts, including repeated references to the four Evangelists, apparent chapter numbers, and a section that seems to narrate the Passion of Christ. In their 2018 study, Tokai and Király concluded that the codex “by character is an ordinary Catholic reader or breviary,” comprising paraphrased New Testament passages principally from the Gospels together with apocryphal legends such as the story of Seth at the Gates of Paradise and Marian prayers (Tokai & Király 2018). They interpret the work as a compilation of Christian texts, possibly designed for private devotion or encoded to preserve spiritual writings in a time or place of tension.
Taken together, these findings form a persuasive case that religion lies at the core of the Rohonc Codex’s purpose. Should this interpretation prove correct, the manuscript may ultimately reveal not a “lost history” or secret chronicle, but a familiar body of devotional literature rendered in cipher. Its mystery would therefore rest not in what it says, but in how and why it was written in such a hidden form a practice consistent with other coded religious manuscripts known from medieval and early modern Europe. Yet, until complete decipherment is achieved, the religious theory remains an informed hypothesis one increasingly supported by the symbolic and structural evidence.
Published in 2002 by Romanian philologist Viorica Enăchiuc, this volume presents one of the most controversial interpretations of the Rohonc Codex. Enăchiuc proposed that the manuscript is written in a Vulgar Latin dialect of medieval Dacia, describing conflicts between the Vlachs, Hungarians, and Pechenegs during the eleventh or twelfth century. Her translation identifies numerous place names familiar to the Carpathian region and portrays the text as a chronicle of early Romanian history. Although her linguistic method has been widely criticised for inconsistency and lack of verifiable correspondence between symbols and meanings, the work remains significant for drawing renewed attention to the Codex in the early 2000s and inspiring further debate among linguists and historians.
Source: Wikipedia
Another school of thought proposes that the Rohonc Codex is written in a real but now lost or unrecognised language, preserved through an idiosyncratic or extinct writing system. Proponents of this theory argue that the manuscript could represent a genuine linguistic relic perhaps the only surviving document of a regional vernacular that has otherwise vanished from history.
The most prominent modern advocate of this view was the Romanian philologist Viorica Enăchiuc, who in 2002 published a controversial book claiming that the text was written in a “Dacian” dialect of Vulgar Latin essentially an early form of Romanian using a unique alphabet. According to Enăchiuc, the codex was an 11th–12th-century chronicle of the Vlach (Wallachian) people, recording their battles against the Hungarians and Pechenegs. Her interpretation suggested that the manuscript preserved a medieval dialect of immense historical value: a written form of speech otherwise lost to time. However, her methodology and conclusions have been widely rejected by linguists and historians alike. The supposed “translations” she produced lack grammatical coherence, apply inconsistent symbol values, and bear no relation to the manuscript’s religious illustrations (Láng, 2010). While Enăchiuc’s specific proposal has been discredited, her broader hypothesis that the Rohonc Codex might encode a forgotten or isolated language remains a theoretical possibility.
The geographical and cultural history of the Rohonc/Rechnitz region lends some plausibility to this idea. Located along a border zone that repeatedly shifted between Hungarian, Germanic, and Slavic spheres, it was home to a mosaic of dialects and ethnic communities. In such an environment, a local or minority script could easily have disappeared without leaving other written traces. Superficial similarities have been noted between the Rohonc symbols and Old Hungarian rovás (runic) script, which was also written right-to-left and featured angular letter forms. Yet no direct correspondence has been established the Rohonc characters share neither consistent shape nor phonetic sequence with known rovás alphabets (Fehér, 1970). If there is a Hungarian connection, it would have to represent a wholly novel encoding or an otherwise undocumented derivative of runic or Latin systems.
Some writers have extended the speculation beyond Europe, proposing influences from non-European or ancient scripts, such as Meroitic (Nubian) or even Central Asian symbolic traditions. While these claims remain highly conjectural, they illustrate the possibility that the codex’s creator may have been inspired by contact with or distant memory of foreign writing traditions.
The lost-language hypothesis has also been drawn into nationalist narratives. During Nicolae Ceaușescu’s Romania in the 1970s, “Dacologist” historians promoted the Rohonc Codex as supposed proof of an ancient, literate Dacian civilisation, using it to claim cultural precedence for Romanians in the Carpathian Basin. Conversely, nineteenth-century Hungarian scholars hoped it might represent an early Hungarian religious text, strengthening their own national lineage. These competing appropriations reflect the symbolic power of the manuscript’s undeciphered state: in the absence of a translation, it could be imagined as a relic of any lost people or forgotten tongue.
In conclusion, the lost language theory envisions the Rohonc Codex as a unique linguistic artefact the last surviving monument of a vanished culture. If this interpretation were true, decipherment would rank among the great achievements of modern philology, comparable to the decoding of Egyptian hieroglyphs or the recovery of Hittite. Yet serious obstacles remain. Genuine languages tend to display clear grammatical regularities, recurring functional words, and morphological patterns, whereas the Rohonc text’s vast symbol inventory and lack of word separation defy such analysis. Until its code is broken, scholars cannot entirely rule out that the manuscript records a real, now-forgotten human language, but evidence for that remains tantalisingly inconclusive.
In 1866, Hungarian historian Károly Szabó published an essay that marked the first major accusation of forgery concerning the Rohonc Codex. Szabó suggested that the mysterious manuscript was the work of Sámuel Literáti Nemes, a known nineteenth-century forger who had previously produced several falsified “medieval” Hungarian documents. Although Szabó offered no concrete evidence linking Nemes to the codex, his argument drew on the similarity between Nemes’s earlier fabrications and the manuscript’s undecipherable script and unusual religious imagery. The theory quickly gained traction among contemporary scholars, leading many to dismiss the Rohonc Codex as a modern hoax written on older paper. For decades, Szabó’s claim overshadowed alternative interpretations, shaping the codex’s reputation as one of Europe’s most enigmatic forgeries rather than a legitimate historical text.
Source: Wikipedia
From its first appearance, many scholars suspected that the Rohonc Codex might be an elaborate hoax, a deliberately fabricated manuscript created either to deceive or as an intellectual curiosity devoid of real meaning. This interpretation, widely accepted in nineteenth-century Hungary, remains the default position among some sceptics today. Arguments for the hoax theory rest chiefly on the manuscript’s uncertain provenance, the implausible complexity of its script, and the historical context in which it emerged.
Firstly, as noted in the background, the Rohonc Codex entered the record abruptly in 1838, when Count Gusztáv Batthyány donated his library to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. This was precisely the period when antiquarian forgeries flourished in Hungary. The historian Károly Szabó (1866) attributed the manuscript to Sámuel Literáti Nemes, a known fabricator of spurious “ancient Hungarian” documents. Nemes had both the means and motive: he was skilled in calligraphy and paper ageing, and he sought to enhance Hungarian cultural prestige through sensational “discoveries” such as the Wooden Book of Túróc. The Rohonc Codex, with its mysterious writing and religious iconography, could have been intended as a fabricated national treasure, a supposed early Hungarian Bible or chronicle designed to inspire patriotic pride.
While no direct proof links Nemes to the codex, the circumstantial evidence is suggestive. The manuscript surfaced in a region tied to his interests (the Burgenland–Transylvanian frontier) and within his lifetime; several of his known forgeries were exposed shortly before his death in 1842. As a result, later Hungarian academics treated any anomalous manuscript from that milieu with deep suspicion, and by the late nineteenth century most regarded the Rohonc Codex as a likely counterfeit (Fehér 1970).
Secondly, the internal features of the codex seemed to confirm that judgement. Nineteenth-century analyses identified roughly 800 distinct symbols, leading palaeographers to conclude that such a system could not represent any functional language. A forger, they argued, could simply invent hundreds of decorative signs to create the illusion of linguistic complexity. The text’s astonishing neatness, 448 pages with virtually no visible corrections or erasures also appeared unnatural. Genuine lengthy manuscripts, especially in experimental or obscure scripts, inevitably contain slips, rewritings, or marginal adjustments. The absence of these hallmarks suggested that the writer was not conveying content, but rather copying or inventing shapes for appearance’s sake. On these grounds, the Hungarian Academy’s linguistic committee in the 1880s pronounced the codex a forgery written on sixteenth-century paper (Fehér 1970).
Thirdly, the complete failure to decipher the text for over a century reinforced scepticism. By the early twentieth century the prevailing view was that the Rohonc Codex was intentionally meaningless, a sophisticated nineteenth-century artefact produced to mystify or amuse. Many scholars dismissed further research as futile, regarding the book as “a literary prank” (Láng 2010).
However, modern analyses have forced a partial reassessment. While Hungarian academia remains cautious, the discoveries of Gábor Tokai and Levente Zoltán Király (2010–2018) challenge the notion of random scribbling. Their studies identified repeated structural patterns, numbering systems, and symbol sequences apparently aligned with Christian doctrinal themes, including coded references to the four Evangelists and possible calendar years. If the manuscript were a forgery, the forger would have had to design not merely ornamental symbols but an internally coherent pseudo-language spanning hundreds of pages, with recurring syntax and theological structure—an extraordinary effort for a hoax that seems never to have been publicised or sold.
As one recent analysis summarised, the Rohonc Codex exhibits statistical and organisational regularities that “strongly suggest meaning”, traits inconsistent with random or purely decorative writing (Tokai & Király 2018). Consequently, while the forgery theory remains plausible in historical terms, the internal evidence increasingly undermines the claim of total meaninglessness.
In conclusion, the hoax theory cannot yet be dismissed, but if the Rohonc Codex is a forgery, it would represent a masterwork of fabrication unparalleled in European manuscript history. Each new discovery of consistent patterning shifts the balance slightly away from hoax and towards the possibility of a coded or constructed text. Until a definitive decipherment or an authentic confession is produced, the Rohonc Codex will continue to occupy its uneasy place between forgery and genuine mystery, keeping sceptics and hopeful codebreakers perpetually divided.
A fourth and increasingly influential perspective proposes that the Rohonc Codex is neither written in a natural language nor an outright hoax, but rather a deliberately constructed writing system encoding an authentic text. Within this framework, the manuscript could represent a cipher, a shorthand system, or even an artificial language created by its author. In each case, the symbols correspond to real meaning, though not in a transparent alphabetic way.
The Hungarian historian Benedek Láng has examined this hypothesis in detail. In his 2010 study, he argued that the codex may embody an “outdated cipher system” awaiting decryption (Láng 2010). He drew parallels to early-modern practices in which scholars, secret societies, and diplomats devised complex cipher alphabets or private symbolic languages for confidentiality. The Rohonc script could belong to that tradition: an expanded cipher alphabet in which each sign represents a complete word, phrase, or concept a system known as a nomenclator or codebook cipher. Such a method would account for the manuscript’s large symbol inventory (over 700 characters) and its low frequency of repetition, since each sign might stand for an entire term rather than a single letter or sound.
The findings of Gábor Tokai and Levente Zoltán Király in the 2010s have strengthened this interpretation. They concluded that the Rohonc Codex employs a “code system” that deliberately conceals the linguistic structure of its source text. If the underlying language were Latin, Hungarian, or another European tongue, the cipher would mask its alphabetic form and grammatical cues. Their analysis suggests that the symbols may encode content units’ concepts, names, or numbers rather than phonetic values. The discovery of multi-symbol sequences apparently denoting the four Evangelists and recurring numerical clusters resembling dates (for example, the year 1593) supports this view (Tokai & Király 2018). In this sense, the codex could function like an intricate religious codebook, where groups of symbols signify “Christ,” “Kingdom,” “Prayer,” and so forth a principle reminiscent of medieval ciphers that used unique symbols for common sacred words.
An alternative, though related, proposal is that the Rohonc Codex constitutes a constructed language rather than a cipher of an existing one. Its author may have devised an original linguistic system complete with its own grammar and script for private or mystical purposes. Such inventions, though rare, are not unprecedented: in the twelfth century Hildegard of Bingen created her Lingua Ignota, a spiritual lexicon with an accompanying alphabet used for visionary writing. If the Rohonc manuscript were composed in a similar manner, it would indeed have meant, but only to its inventor and to any initiated readers who possessed the key. The text’s internal regularity including apparent headings, lists, and structured sections suggests a coherent, planned design consistent with an artificial linguistic system rather than random ornamentation (Locsmándi 1995).
Supporters of this theory also emphasise the results of statistical analyses, which reveal linguistic-like behaviour in the script. Certain characters occur disproportionately at line endings possibly functioning as punctuation marks or standardised endings while others appear only in specific contexts, implying grammatical or semantic roles. Locsmándi’s observation of a recurring sign that appears to serve as a sentence delimiter reinforces the notion of deliberate textual encoding.
In conclusion, the constructed language or cipher theory regards the Rohonc Codex as a meaningful but encrypted work a text intentionally obscured through a complex symbolic system. This interpretation reconciles the manuscript’s apparent coherence and structure with its undeciphered script. The code may have been known only to its author or to a closed circle, which would explain its isolation and lack of related documents. Among current researchers, this view is increasingly seen as the most plausible hypothesis: that the Rohonc Codex is neither pure fabrication nor straightforward language, but a carefully designed encoded religious manuscript, the solution to which still eludes modern cryptology.
Over the past two centuries, scholars have applied a wide range of scientific and analytical methods to study the Rohonc Codex. These investigations trace the evolution of manuscript research itself from nineteenth-century paleographic and comparative-linguistic study, through twentieth-century statistical and computational analysis, to twenty-first-century imaging and digital forensics. Together they represent the gradual shift from intuition-based interpretation to data-driven inquiry.
This nineteenth-century portrait of János Jerney, engraved by Gustav Morelli in 1883, captures the first scholar to examine the Rohonc Codex through a methodical, almost scientific lens. Long before the advent of modern cryptology or linguistic computation, Jerney combined his skills as a historian and philologist to study the manuscript’s material and visual clues. His identification of Venetian watermarks provided the first tangible evidence of the codex’s sixteenth-century paper stock — a discovery that remains a cornerstone in dating the work. Through comparative analysis of scripts ranging from Syriac and Armenian to Burmese, Jerney sought to situate the mysterious symbols within a known linguistic framework, ultimately proposing that the text might represent a ciphered or wholly unknown writing system. Although his conclusions were tentative, Jerney’s disciplined approach laid the groundwork for every later investigation of the codex and marked the beginning of the Rohonc manuscript’s transformation from legend to subject of scholarly study.
Source: Wikidata
The earliest sustained efforts to investigate the Rohonc Codex were undertaken by Hungarian scholars in the mid-1800s, long before modern cryptology or computer analysis existed. Their tools were limited to visual inspection, comparison with known scripts, and reasoned inference grounded in historical and linguistic knowledge.
The first serious investigator was János Jerney, who approached the codex with the dual sensibility of a linguist and historian. One of his most valuable contributions was his study of the watermarks embedded in the manuscript’s paper an early example of bibliographic forensics. Jerney identified them as Venetian marks typical of the sixteenth century, implying that the paper stock originated in northern Italy (Fehér 1970). This finding remains an important chronological anchor in codex studies.
Jerney also examined the illustrations, recognising their overtly Biblical and Christian character. From this, he hypothesised that the manuscript might have been produced within a Christian cultural sphere perhaps by a community familiar with Eastern Christian scripts such as Syriac, Armenian, or Coptic. He then conducted a comparative visual analysis of the Rohonc characters against numerous known writing systems, from Arabic and Georgian to Burmese, but found no convincing correspondence (Láng 2010). Concluding that the symbols did not belong to any recognised alphabet, Jerney tentatively proposed that the codex might be a ciphered or entirely unknown script. Although he could not progress further, his methodology was unusually systematic for its time and remains the foundation of all later studies.
Following Jerney, a succession of nineteenth-century Hungarian intellectuals including Ferenc Toldy, Pál Hunfalvy, Josef Jireček, and Bernhard Jülg attempted to identify recurring patterns or linguistic affinities in the text. Some speculated that it might be Hungarian or Latin written in cipher and applied rudimentary frequency analysis in the hope of isolating letters or syllables. None succeeded. The inability of some of Hungary’s most capable linguists men who deciphered other ancient scripts such as Old Turkic runes to make progress underscored how profoundly unfamiliar the Rohonc writing system was (Fehér 1970).
The most comprehensive nineteenth-century study came from Kálmán Némäti in the 1880s. He undertook the first quantitative catalogue of the codex’s symbols, identifying approximately 792 distinct characters and recording their distribution. Némäti transcribed selected pages by assigning arbitrary Latin equivalents to each sign, thereby enabling other researchers to perform sequence analysis. Despite his diligence, Némäti found no meaningful linguistic structure, and his results were overshadowed by the growing academic consensus that the manuscript was a forgery.
That conclusion was formally articulated by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences’ Linguistic Committee in 1886, whose expert report declared the codex inauthentic a forgery written on sixteenth-century paper. The committee’s reasoning was primarily logical and anthropological: they argued that no genuine writer could memorise and consistently reproduce hundreds of unique characters, and they noted the manuscript’s absence of corrections or erasures, which seemed inconsistent with authentic composition. Although this judgement effectively removed the codex from scholarly attention for decades, it did not rest on material proof merely on contemporary reasoning about plausibility.
In summary, nineteenth-century research established the foundations of Rohonc studies: the manuscript’s material origin in Renaissance Italy, its apparently right-to-left script, and its extraordinary symbol diversity. These early investigators lacked the computational tools necessary for deep pattern analysis, yet they formulated the enduring questions that still drive inquiry today: What script is this? What language, if any, lies beneath it? And could it be a forgery? The legacy of those first scholars remains visible in every modern investigation of Europe’s most enigmatic book.
After decades of neglect, the latter half of the twentieth century witnessed a renewed wave of interest in the Rohonc Codex, spurred by advances in cryptology, information theory, and computing. Scholars and engineers began to treat the manuscript less as an eccentric curiosity and more as a ciphertext to be analysed, applying quantitative and statistical techniques in place of speculative translation attempts.
The first major step in this modern approach came in 1970 with the work of Ottó Gyürk, a Hungarian engineer who brought a methodical, data-oriented mindset to the problem. Gyürk examined the manuscript’s symbolic patterns and sequence repetitions, reasoning that if certain clusters of symbols appeared regularly, they might correspond to common words or phrases such as et (“and”) or amen. By charting these repetitions across multiple pages, he identified a consistent directional pattern: the text’s internal logic only aligned when read from right to left, suggesting that the script indeed flows in that direction (Fehér 1970; Láng 2010).
Gyürk also observed sequences that appeared to increase systematically, possibly representing numerical values a hypothesis reinforced by recurring clusters that followed additive patterns. He tentatively identified several symbols as potential numerals, indicating the codex might employ a structured numbering system embedded within its prose. His work was significant not for solving the manuscript, but for establishing that it exhibits order and syntax-like repetition, characteristics incompatible with random writing. In short, Gyürk treated the Rohonc Codex as a cipher that could, in principle, be decoded a fundamental conceptual leap beyond the assumptions of nineteenth-century scholars.
With the arrival of personal computing in the 1990s, researcher Miklós Locsmándi advanced Gyürk’s work using digital tools. Locsmándi scanned and digitally encoded sections of the text, assigning each symbol a unique code to enable frequency analysis, substring searches, and pattern mapping. His findings confirmed Gyürk’s right-to-left reading direction and revealed several additional features of potential linguistic significance. For instance, he identified a recurring isolated symbol visually resembling the letter “i” that appeared at regular intervals throughout the text. Locsmándi proposed that this sign may function as a punctuation mark or sentence delimiter, akin to a full stop or comma (Láng 2010).
He also examined diacritical marks dots and small ticks placed above certain symbols which he suspected might modify meaning or phonetic value. Although he found no definitive system governing these marks, their consistent placement suggested deliberate design rather than ornamentation. By testing the statistical distributions of symbol clusters against known languages, Locsmándi was able to exclude Hungarian and Latin as the underlying linguistic bases. The text’s non-random frequency patterns led him to conclude that it was “structured but not transcribed from any known European language.”
Another important contribution came from Levente Zoltán Király, who, before his later breakthroughs in the 2010s, conducted an independent computer-assisted study in the early 2000s. Király focused on layout regularities symbols that repeatedly began lines or paragraphs across multiple pages. He observed recurring initial symbols that might signify chapter headings or invocations, implying that the manuscript was organised into thematic sections. His 2010 report consolidated these findings, supporting the growing consensus that the codex’s structure was methodical and deliberate rather than chaotic or decorative.
Collectively, the twentieth-century investigations transformed the study of the Rohonc Codex. By approaching it as a ciphered system with quantifiable regularities, Gyürk, Locsmándi, and Király demonstrated that the manuscript’s writing obeys consistent internal rules. Their work provided the first empirical evidence that the codex could, in principle, be decoded through mathematical analysis, setting the stage for the computational breakthroughs of the twenty-first century.
Across nearly two centuries of investigation, scholars have identified a series of linguistic, symbolic, and material clues that continue to shape our understanding of the Rohonc Codex. Though none has yet unlocked its language, these clues collectively portray a manuscript that is internally consistent, intelligently composed, and far too structured to be a meaningless hoax. Each represents a piece of the puzzle that, when assembled, reveals an increasingly coherent picture of the codex’s purpose and intellectual origin.
Throughout history, the written word has evolved from symbolic art to structured language — a journey that mirrors humanity’s search for meaning. The tables below trace this evolution through three key forms of script: polyphonic, logographic, and mixed systems. Polyphonic scripts, like Egyptian hieroglyphs or Akkadian cuneiform, allowed a single sign to carry multiple sounds or meanings, blending speech and symbolism. Logographic systems, such as Sumerian cuneiform and Chinese Han characters, transformed writing into a visual language where each sign represented an entire concept or word. Finally, mixed systems like Japanese Kanji-Kana or modern shorthand combined both principles, achieving a balance between precision and expression. Together, these writing systems reveal how ancient and modern minds alike sought not just to record language, but to encode thought itself — turning sound, meaning, and symbol into one enduring human art form.
Direction of Script
One of the first decisive observations concerns the direction of writing. Early visual inspection revealed that the text is right-justified, with neat alignment on the right and a ragged left margin a strong indicator that the text reads from right to left. This was later confirmed quantitatively by Ottó Gyürk and other twentieth-century analysts, who observed that recurring patterns and symbol sequences align logically only when read in that direction (Láng 2010). Such right-to-left writing is exceptionally uncommon in European manuscripts, being found chiefly in Hebrew, Arabic, and Old Hungarian “rovás” runes. This choice may suggest cultural exposure to Near-Eastern or Central-Asian script traditions or a deliberate attempt by the author to render the manuscript intentionally obscure, perhaps to protect its contents from casual readers. The decision to reverse conventional directionality already marks the Rohonc Codex as the work of someone both literate and intentionally secretive.
Character Repertoire and Writing System
The codex’s most striking linguistic feature is its immense character inventory approximately 800 unique symbols. For comparison, the Latin alphabet uses 26 letters, Greek 24, and even the complex syllabary of Cherokee only 85 (amusingplanet.com). Such magnitude rules out the possibility of a simple alphabetic system. Instead, it implies that the script operates as a polyphonic or logographic code, where each sign may stand for an entire word, idea, or phrase rather than a single sound. Benedek Láng (2010) suggested that this could represent a “nomenclator-type” cipher essentially a codebook system where each sign replaces a whole concept. Tokai and Király (2018) provided further evidence: they identified specific clusters of symbols that correspond with recurring names or ideas, notably the four Evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and found these to be placed near gospel-related illustrations. This observation supports the hypothesis that the script encodes semantic units rather than phonetic ones, an approach consistent with sophisticated encryption techniques of the Renaissance and early modern period.
Numerical Sequences and Chronological References
A crucial breakthrough came when researchers noticed symbol sequences with numerical behaviour clusters that appear to increase sequentially or repeat in a manner consistent with counting. Several such groups have been interpreted as dates written using an Anno Mundi system, with values equivalent to years such as 1590 or 1593 (Tokai & Király 2018). These numerals are often positioned beside religious or narrative scenes, suggesting they may refer to biblical or historical chronology. Numbers provide a rare universal constant across languages; thus, their identification is of immense analytical value. Recognising how these numbers are formed could serve as a partial cipher key, anchoring other symbols within a contextual framework perhaps as chapter markers or verse references, akin to numeration systems found in medieval devotional books.
Repetitive Patterns and Structural Organisation
Another decisive clue is the presence of repetition a hallmark of any genuine written language. Though the Rohonc Codex does not display frequent short-word repetition typical of modern European tongues, it exhibits recurrent long-form clusters that appear in systematic positions, such as at the start of paragraphs or pages. Tokai and Király identified these as chapter or section headers and even uncovered what appears to be a table-of-contents sequence at the beginning of one textual block, each line of which corresponds to a later section in the manuscript (Tokai & Király 2018). This discovery has far-reaching implications: it demonstrates that the codex follows a deliberate internal architecture, reinforcing the impression of an ordered, book-like text rather than random scribbles.
Linguistic Markers—Presence and Absence
Equally revealing are the linguistic patterns that are absent. Miklós Locsmándi’s computer-based analysis found no evidence of Hungarian case endings, despite the codex’s presumed regional origin (Láng 2010). In Hungarian, case suffixes such as -ban or -ben (“in”) appear with high frequency and would create recognisable repeating sequences if the text were Hungarian. Their absence, together with the failure to identify any Latin or Indo-European grammatical markers, suggests either a non-European linguistic origin or a heavily enciphered text in which surface morphology has been masked. The linguistic silence here is almost as meaningful as the symbols themselves: it points to deliberate concealment rather than accidental obscurity.
Illustration Correspondences and Textual Anchors
The manuscript’s illustrations offer vital anchor points for interpreting the code. Several drawings feature partial inscriptions or identifiable motifs, such as the INRI label above the crucifixion scene. By correlating this visual text with the nearby ciphered writing, Gábor Tokai was able to hypothesise how the letters I-N-R-I might correspond to symbols, yielding one of the first tentative direct matches between image and text. Further, Tokai and Király discovered that four distinct symbol groups consistently accompany depictions of the four Gospel authors, suggesting that the codex systematically links iconography with encoded terminology. This integration of image and writing is characteristic of religious or pedagogical manuscripts, where text and illustration reinforce each other’s message. It also implies the author’s intent to preserve theological meaning, albeit in encrypted form.
Cross-Religious Symbolism and Cultural Context
One of the most visually striking aspects of the Rohonc Codex is its cross-religious iconography. Alongside unmistakably Christian imagery appear crescent moons, sun-wheels, and other motifs associated with Islamic or pre-Christian belief systems. This eclectic blend has led several scholars to place the codex’s origin within the multi-faith frontier zones of the late sixteenth or early seventeenth centuries possibly the Habsburg–Ottoman borderlands, where Christian, Muslim, and pagan traditions coexisted and interacted. Another interpretation, favoured by some theologians, is that the imagery expresses a syncretic or universalist theology perhaps an attempt by the author to reconcile multiple religious perspectives within a single spiritual framework. Regardless of intent, this symbolic diversity grounds the manuscript in a tangible historical environment, rather than in pure fantasy or forgery.
Material and Codicological Evidence
The codex’s physical characteristics further enrich its story. The paper bears Venetian watermarks dating to the 1530s, establishing a reliable terminus post quem the manuscript cannot have been produced earlier than that decade (Fehér 1970). Its current nineteenth-century binding indicates that it was rebound long after its creation, likely from loose folios, which raises questions about whether the pages are in their original order. Tokai and Király’s digital analysis considered this possibility, identifying potential disruptions in textual flow that might result from earlier mis-binding. The consistency of ink tone and handwriting style suggests a single author or scribe worked continuously, lending further weight to the theory that it represents a coherent authored work rather than a compilation.
Taken together, these linguistic, symbolic, and physical indicators strongly suggest that the Rohonc Codex is a purposefully constructed text, not an arbitrary imitation of writing. Its systematic structure, numerical logic, and visual-textual correspondence imply both intellectual sophistication and devotional intent. While definitive decipherment remains elusive, the convergence of clues across disciplines linguistics, art history, cryptography, and codicology has narrowed the interpretive field dramatically. The emerging consensus among modern scholars is that the codex embodies a meaningful, encoded religious or historical text, crafted by an educated mind in sixteenth-century Central Europe. The challenge that remains is to identify the key to transform these persistent clues into a readable language and finally lift the veil from one of Europe’s most enduring enigmas.
Understanding the Rohonc Codex requires not only deciphering its cryptic writing and imagery but also analysing its physical composition the tangible evidence preserved in its paper, ink, pigments, and binding. These material aspects form the empirical foundation upon which all linguistic and interpretive theories must rest. In parallel, modern imaging technologies have begun to reveal details invisible to the naked eye, offering new opportunities for insight into its creation, authenticity, and transmission.
Paper and Watermark Analysis
Among the few certainties regarding the Rohonc Codex is the provenance of its paper. Specialists in historical papermaking have conclusively identified it as Venetian paper from the 1530s, determined through meticulous comparison of watermark patterns and fibre composition (Fehér, 1970; en.wikipedia.org). Watermarks faint emblematic impressions embedded in paper moulds serve as fingerprints for workshops, and those found in the Rohonc Codex correspond precisely to examples documented in sixteenth-century Venetian catalogues.
Venice was a pre-eminent centre of paper manufacture during the Renaissance, supplying much of Europe’s printed and manuscript material. The watermark evidence thus establishes a terminus post quem (earliest possible date of creation) in the mid-sixteenth century, aligning well with stylistic clues observed in the codex’s illustrations. The dress, architecture, and heraldic details visible in its drawings are consistent with Central or Southern European forms of the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century (amusingplanet.com).
The implications of this discovery are profound. If the codex is genuine, it likely originated in a milieu influenced by both Italian and Central European culture perhaps within the shifting borderlands of the Habsburg and Ottoman empires. Conversely, if it were a nineteenth-century forgery, the forger would have required access to a substantial quantity of pristine Renaissance paper approximately 450 sheets and would have needed to preserve their condition for centuries without use or damage. This would have been prohibitively difficult and costly, even for a determined fabricator such as Sámuel Literáti Nemes, often accused of forging Hungarian antiquities. Consequently, many scholars now regard the paper evidence as one of the strongest arguments in favour of the manuscript’s authentic early-modern origin.
Ink and Pigment Composition
In contrast to the well-documented paper, the ink and pigment composition of the Rohonc Codex remains largely unstudied. No peer-reviewed publication to date has reported results from techniques such as X-ray fluorescence (XRF), Raman spectroscopy, or Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) standard tools in manuscript forensics. Such analyses could determine whether the ink is iron gall (a typical Renaissance formulation combining oak galls, iron salts, and gum arabic) or carbon-based, as used in later copyist works. Identifying the ink type could not only date the writing more precisely but also determine whether the text and illustrations were executed simultaneously or at different times.
A claim noted by Jason Roberts (jasonrobertsonline.com) refers to radiocarbon dating of the parchment (or paper) placing it in the 1530s. However, this assertion is not corroborated by any official laboratory report and likely reflects extrapolation from watermark data or informal private testing. Until formal analytical results are published, watermark-based dating remains the most reliable scientific evidence. A verified ink analysis would therefore be a crucial next step, as the chemical signature of the ink could confirm the document’s chronological and geographical authenticity.
If iron gall ink were confirmed, it would suggest a sixteenth- or seventeenth-century hand, since this ink type dominated manuscript writing in Europe until the advent of modern synthetic inks in the nineteenth century. Moreover, identifying trace elements such as copper or zinc could link the ink to a specific regional recipe, potentially locating the scribe’s workshop or cultural sphere.
Binding and Codicological Structure
The Rohonc Codex’s current binding dates to the nineteenth century, when it entered the collection of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (ep.liu.se). The leather cover and paperboard structure are clearly modern replacements, suggesting that the manuscript’s original binding likely vellum or wooden boards had deteriorated or been lost. This re-binding raises important codicological questions.
When the codex was rebound, the order of its folios may have been inadvertently altered. Tokai and Király (2018) observed that the first quarter of the manuscript exhibits irregularities in textual structure, such as abrupt transitions or missing sections, whereas later portions display systematic chapter divisions and consistent layouts. They hypothesised that the early pages might have been miss-ordered during rebinding or even miss-bound from loose sheets. Such reordering could distort narrative sequence and complicate efforts to identify patterns within the text. Recognising this, recent digital analyses have begun testing whether the manuscript’s structure could be algorithmically reordered to achieve a more coherent alignment, using methods akin to genetic sequence reconstruction.
The binding also provides a glimpse into the manuscript’s transmission history. It’s neat, nineteenth-century restoration indicates that the codex was valued as a scholarly artefact, even during periods when it was dismissed as a forgery. This suggests that librarians and antiquarians of the time viewed it as worth preserving, regardless of its undeciphered status an enduring testament to its mystique.
Imaging and Digitisation
The twenty-first century has ushered in new tools for analysing ancient manuscripts, and the Rohonc Codex has gradually entered the digital age. Earlier reproductions, such as Kálmán Némäti’s nineteenth-century hand copies and mid-twentieth-century microfilms, captured only approximate details of the script. Many of the codex’s finer features minute diacritical marks, subtle line variations, and delicate pen strokes were effectively invisible until high-resolution digital imaging became available.
In 2015, a high-resolution scanning project (reportedly conducted at the University of Hamburg) produced detailed digital facsimiles of selected pages (en.wikipedia.org). These scans revealed tiny, previously unnoticed diacritics and variations in ink tone, suggesting that the scribe may have employed multiple pens or inkwells over the course of writing. The high resolution also allowed for magnification of the illustrations, enabling closer study of the stylistic consistency of the artwork, which appears to have been drawn by a single hand.
Future imaging techniques promise to go much further. Multispectral imaging recording images across infrared, ultraviolet, and visible wavelengths could reveal hidden features such as erased underdrawings, faded guidelines, or overpainted corrections. Hyperspectral imaging could distinguish between inks of slightly different chemical composition, potentially showing if sections were added later. 3D scanning and microtopographic analysis could measure pen pressure and stroke depth, reveal the rhythm of the writer’s hand and distinguish between a fluent scribe and a laborious copyist.
These tools may also help detect forensic clues of forgery or authenticity. A genuine early-modern manuscript typically exhibits natural ink spread, microscopic paper fibre absorption, and subtle wear patterns, while a later imitation often betrays inconsistencies in ink penetration or surface gloss. Thus, advanced imaging could validate the codex’s physical genuineness at a microscopic level.
Digital Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence
Beyond traditional imaging, the digitised codex opens vast potential for computational research. With the right dataset, machine learning algorithms can identify recurring symbol clusters, measure symbol spacing, and model textual rhythm tasks impossible for the human eye at scale. For example, image-recognition software could classify the shapes of all 800 characters, standardise their digital equivalents, and build a searchable symbol corpus. This would enable automated frequency analysis, clustering by co-occurrence, and even statistical prediction of grammatical relationships.
One particularly exciting prospect is the use of AI-based textual alignment. If the Rohonc Codex truly encodes paraphrased or restructured Biblical content as Tokai and Király’s findings suggest then algorithms could compare the codex’s recurring structural patterns against multilingual Bible databases. Artificial intelligence might detect alignment between symbol sequences and corresponding verse structures across Latin, Hungarian, and Greek versions, identifying a statistical match invisible to manual comparison.
Such techniques echo the breakthroughs achieved in other undeciphered texts, such as the Meroitic script and Linear B, where pattern-based frequency and positional analysis eventually led to partial decoding. Applying these to the Rohonc Codex could finally determine whether its symbols correspond to phonetic values, words, or conceptual units.
Material Integrity and Scholarly Consensus
Taken together, the findings from materials and imaging studies paint a picture of the Rohonc Codex as an authentic early-modern manuscript, rather than a modern fabrication. The sixteenth-century Venetian paper, the uniform handwriting, and the stylistic consistency of illustrations all point toward a genuine work produced within a coherent historical framework. The hypothesis of a nineteenth-century forgery cannot be entirely dismissed, but it demands an implausibly elaborate operation one that would have required immense resources, antiquarian expertise, and artistic skill.
Furthermore, every new analytical advance has only strengthened the impression of internal consistency. The codex’s ink appears uniformly aged; the handwriting reveals controlled fluency; and its illustrations display thematic unity. None of these features supports the notion of a random or careless hoax.
Thus, while imaging and materials analysis have not yet solved the enigma, they have transformed the debate. The question has shifted from “Is it genuine?” to “What does it say?”. Establishing the manuscript’s authenticity has laid the groundwork for linguistic, cryptographic, and computational efforts now underway.
In the future, comprehensive multispectral scanning, full-text digitisation, and open-access data sharing will be crucial. These steps will allow researchers worldwide to scrutinise the codex collaboratively, applying both human expertise and artificial intelligence to its cryptic symbols. Only through such a multidisciplinary approach bridging history, chemistry, art, and data science can the Rohonc Codex’s physical and intellectual mysteries finally converge into understanding.
After nearly two centuries of speculation and frustration, the Rohonc Codex has re-emerged from the shadows of obscurity into a new era of renewed scholarly interest. What distinguishes the present phase of study from previous generations is its interdisciplinary nature: historians, cryptographers, linguists, computer scientists, and theologians are now working in tandem to decipher one of Europe’s most enigmatic manuscripts. The integration of digital humanities, machine learning, and modern forensic science has replaced earlier conjecture with systematic analysis, giving rise to cautious optimism that the code’s secrets may one day be unveiled.
At the centre of contemporary research stand two Hungarian scholars, Gábor Tokai and Levente Zoltán Király, whose ongoing collaboration since the 2010s has yielded the most coherent and academically defensible model of decipherment to date. Building on decades of statistical and linguistic groundwork, their 2018 publication represented a milestone in Rohonc studies. They concluded that the manuscript encodes a Catholic breviary-like text a devotional compilation of prayers and Gospel passages rendered in an artificial script system (en.wikipedia.org; Tokai & Király, 2018).
Tokai and Király’s interpretation is grounded in recurring structural and symbolic correspondences: chapter-like divisions that align with biblical narratives, numerical systems marking dates and liturgical sequences, and repeated clusters representing the four Evangelists. Their current work reportedly involves compiling a lexicon of symbols an evolving “dictionary” correlating the Rohonc signs with semantic values. Although a complete key remains unpublished, they have asserted with confidence that the codex’s content retells the life and passion of Christ, alongside apocryphal legends and Marian prayers.
The scholarly community now awaits their comprehensive translation and cipher table, which could validate or refine their hypothesis. Should such a key be released, it would represent a watershed moment in European palaeography the first substantial reading of the Rohonc Codex since its rediscovery in 1838. Even a partial decipherment could transform the manuscript from a symbol of inscrutability into a readable, contextualised religious text.
Parallel to these Hungarian efforts, international research groups are applying computational and cryptographic techniques at a scale impossible for earlier scholars. Among the most ambitious is DECRYPT (2018–2023), a Swedish Research Council–funded initiative designed to apply machine-assisted decipherment to historical ciphers (ep.liu.se). Within this framework, the Rohonc Codex serves as a test case for algorithmic pattern detection and automated key search.
These computational methods employ a range of mathematical strategies from frequency analysis and Markov modelling to genetic algorithms and neural networks to explore millions of possible symbol substitutions and identify linguistic correlations. In essence, artificial intelligence is being trained to detect whether the codex’s internal structure aligns more closely with known languages such as Latin, Hungarian, Italian, or Greek, or whether it functions as an entirely semantic code system. By comparing statistical features such as word length, symbol frequency, and entropy with massive text corpora, researchers can gauge which linguistic family (if any) the manuscript most resembles.
The potential here is immense. Machine learning models, once trained on diverse historical texts, can recognise stylistic and structural parallels invisible to the human eye. For instance, a neural network might detect that a certain Rohonc symbol appears in a pattern similar to the placement of “Amen” in Latin prayers, or that clusters mirror the rhythm of Psalms. Such insights could provide probabilistic anchors around which future decipherments are built.
Despite these advances, one major obstacle remains: limited access to the source material. The Rohonc Codex is held in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences under call number K 114 and remains subject to strict handling restrictions. Only a microfilm and a handful of scanned pages have been made publicly available. Scholars and enthusiasts alike have therefore called for a complete, high-resolution digital facsimile of the entire 448-page manuscript.
Such a release would revolutionise research by enabling global collaboration, similar to the open, crowd-sourced communities that have driven progress on the Voynich Manuscript. Online platforms ranging from academic repositories to informal discussion forums and cipher blogs already host debates, symbol catalogues, and speculative transliterations contributed by independent researchers worldwide. A complete, standardised digital edition would provide a common foundation for testing hypotheses, verifying claims, and applying large-scale computational tools to the codex’s full dataset.
Digitisation would also safeguard the manuscript’s long-term preservation, minimising the need for physical handling. Future facsimile editions could incorporate multispectral imaging layers, allowing readers to toggle between visible light, infrared, and ultraviolet views an invaluable resource for analysing ink behaviour and page wear.
The next stage of study is likely to emphasise material forensics. Building upon watermark dating, researchers aim to analyse the chemical composition of the ink to determine whether it matches sixteenth-century iron-gall recipes or nineteenth-century substitutes. Techniques such as Raman spectroscopy and X-ray fluorescence (XRF) could reveal the elemental makeup of the ink, identifying trace metals like copper or zinc that correlate with specific historical recipes.
Microscopic analysis may also uncover writing dynamics whether the hand moved fluidly or with hesitation. A slow, deliberate stroke could suggest a copyist reproducing a model; a natural, rhythmic motion might indicate the original author composing text directly. Additionally, fibre analysis of the paper could confirm whether it was produced from flax, hemp, or cotton further refining its geographic origin.
Although the codex is made of paper rather than parchment, experimental techniques such as DNA residue testing on plant fibres could one day trace its botanical origin, linking it definitively to Venetian or other European sources. Such forensic data would complement textual analysis by establishing the manuscript’s material biography the story of its making, use, and preservation.
Even if the codex’s script is eventually decoded, interpretation will require a broad coalition of specialists. Linguists may reconstruct its grammar, but theologians and historians will be essential for contextualising its meaning. If Tokai and Király are correct that the text paraphrases New Testament episodes, biblical scholars will be needed to match translated fragments to canonical or apocryphal passages. Similarly, if year dates such as 1593 are confirmed, historians of Central Europe could identify contemporary events wars, plagues, or theological disputes that might have inspired the narrative.
The ultimate goal is not merely to translate but to understand: to discern the codex’s intellectual and cultural intent. Was it the private devotion of a persecuted believer, a pedagogical text for a secret sect, or an experiment in creating a universal Christian language? Each possibility opens new questions about literacy, faith, and secrecy in the early modern world.
Two principal outcomes remain on the horizon, both extraordinary in their implications.
(1) Full Decipherment and Translation
If the manuscript is fully decoded, it could reveal a coherent liturgical or theological text. Such a discovery would not only solve one of Europe’s longest-standing enigmas but also illuminate forgotten religious practices, linguistic creativity, and cross-cultural exchange in Renaissance Europe. It might answer why a familiar Gospel text was encrypted at all perhaps as a protective measure during periods of persecution, or as a personal experiment in spiritual secrecy.
(2) Demonstrated Forgery
Alternatively, if decisive proof emerges that the Rohonc Codex is an elaborate hoax perhaps through the discovery of notes by a nineteenth-century forger such as Nemes, or through the translation of passages revealing deliberate nonsense the manuscript would still hold immense historical value. A fully decoded hoax would reveal the psychology of forgery, the nationalism of its era, and the extraordinary lengths to which one individual went to imitate the sacred and the ancient.
Either conclusion would enrich the history of cryptography, manuscript culture, and human creativity. The codex would cease to be a riddle and instead become a story of faith, deception, or genius that reflects the human drive to encode meaning.
As research continues, the Rohonc Codex stands as both a challenge and a symbol of intellectual perseverance. Each generation of scholars has brought it a little closer to revelation, transforming scepticism into curiosity and isolation into collaboration. The combination of forensic science, artificial intelligence, and interdisciplinary scholarship now offers more promise than ever before.
Whether the codex ultimately proves to be a forgotten devotional text, a crafted cipher, or a masterful forgery, its mystery endures not as a failure of understanding but as a triumph of inquiry. As Jason Roberts observed, “Whether the Rohonc Codex is an elaborate hoax, a relic of a lost language, or the product of a singular creative mind, its allure lies in its enduring mystery.” The coming years may yet turn that mystery into knowledge transforming one of Europe’s forgotten enigmas into a rediscovered chapter of human ingenuity.
In conclusion, the Rohonc Codex endures as one of Europe’s most bewildering and enduring literary enigmas. For nearly two centuries, this modest, hand-written book of 448 pages has resisted every effort to unveil its secrets, concealing its meaning behind an unknown script and language. Discovered in the early nineteenth century among the library holdings of Count Gusztáv Batthyány and later transferred to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the codex long remained an overlooked relic dismissed by many as an undecipherable curiosity. Yet, as this study has demonstrated, its obscurity belies a profound complexity. The Rohonc Codex is not merely a collection of symbols but a carefully constructed artefact combining cryptic writing, intricate illustrations, and religious iconography an intellectual and artistic puzzle that continues to defy explanation.
The trajectory of research on the codex mirrors the evolution of scholarship itself: from nineteenth-century antiquarian enthusiasm and speculative nationalism, through twentieth-century statistical experimentation, to twenty-first-century interdisciplinary analysis. Early hopes that it might represent an ancient Hungarian or Dacian text gave way to decades of scepticism, during which it was largely dismissed as an elaborate forgery. However, the resurgence of analytical rigour in recent decades led by Hungarian scholars such as Gábor Tokai and Levente Zoltán Király has transformed the discourse. Rather than viewing the codex as meaningless, modern researchers increasingly regard it as a deliberately encoded text, possibly a Catholic devotional compendium rendered in an artificial or secret script. The structural coherence of its pages, the recurrence of symbolic patterns, and the apparent correspondence between its imagery and Christian narratives all suggest intentional design rather than random fabrication.
Throughout this thesis, we have examined the competing theories that attempt to explain the codex’s origin and purpose. The religious theory aligns most closely with its content and iconography, proposing that the book is a coded breviary or scripture. The lost language theory appeals to the romantic and nationalistic imagination, positing that it preserves a now-vanished tongue. The hoax theory, ever a shadow in Rohonc studies, serves as a necessary caution against uncritical acceptance and reminds us of the forgeries that coloured nineteenth-century Hungarian scholarship. Finally, the constructed language or cipher theory now the prevailing view suggests that the codex represents a purposeful linguistic or cryptographic invention, perhaps intended as a private or esoteric communication.
The truth, when uncovered, may well integrate elements from multiple hypotheses: a genuine devotional text composed in a self-devised symbolic language. The diversity of its theories reflects the manuscript’s greatest strength its ability to evade classification. It is at once historical and mysterious, textual and pictorial, spiritual and cryptographic.
What makes the Rohonc Codex especially captivating is its fusion of artistry and mystery. Unlike the purely textual ciphers of cryptographic history, this manuscript speaks in both image and symbol. Its drawings depicting crucifixions, battles, saints, angels, and celestial emblems evoke a world where Christian, Islamic, and possibly pagan iconographies coexist. Such syncretism hints at the religious tensions and cultural entanglements of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Central Europe, a region perpetually poised between East and West. If the codex’s true date of composition does indeed fall around 1593 CE, as Tokai and Király suggest, it may reflect a society negotiating faith under pressure perhaps on the Habsburg–Ottoman frontier, where Christians and Muslims lived in uneasy proximity.
Alternatively, should future research confirm that the manuscript is a nineteenth-century creation, it would remain no less significant. As an artefact of that era’s romantic nationalism and fascination with lost origins, it would testify to the intellectual milieu that produced literary forgeries, historical reinventions, and quests for cultural identity. Whether genuine or fabricated, the Rohonc Codex reveals the human compulsion to create meaning to inscribe mystery and faith into the material record.
As of 2025, the Rohonc Codex remains undeciphered, yet it is no longer neglected. The past two decades have seen its transformation from an archival curiosity into a legitimate object of interdisciplinary research. Computer-assisted linguistic modelling, cryptographic simulations, and forensic material analyses continue to deepen our understanding. Projects like DECRYPT exemplify how artificial intelligence and data-driven methodologies are now applied to what once seemed impenetrable. Each new discovery whether a recurring pattern, a verified date, or a structural breakthrough adds another fragment to the mosaic of comprehension.
Ultimately, the codex’s significance lies not only in what it may one day reveal but also in what it has already accomplished. It has become a symbol of scholarly persistence, an emblem of how science and the humanities converge in the pursuit of understanding. Its study unites experts across borders and disciplines, from palaeographers to physicists, all drawn by the same unanswered question. Whether the final revelation proves it to be a genuine sixteenth-century breviary, a crafted cipher, or an ingenious forgery, the Rohonc Codex will remain a testament to the enduring human fascination with the unknown.
As Jason Roberts aptly observed, “Whether the Rohonc Codex is an elaborate hoax, a relic of a lost language, or the product of a singular creative mind, its allure lies in its enduring mystery.” Each page filled with its looping, undeciphered symbols and haunting illustrations invites us to question, to analyse, and to imagine. In that sense, the codex has already fulfilled its purpose: it continues to inspire curiosity, discipline, and wonder, reminding us that not all mysteries exist to be solved immediately. Some endure to remind us of the vast, intricate tapestry of human knowledge still waiting to be rediscovered.
When that long-awaited key is finally found, the Rohonc Codex will no longer stand as Europe’s “forgotten mystery” but as a rediscovered voice from the past a silent book that, once decoded, will speak across the centuries.
Batthyány, G. (1838) Donation Catalogue of the Batthyány Library. Hungarian Academy of Sciences Archives, Budapest.
Enăchiuc, V. (2002) Codex Rohonci: Interpretare filologică şi istorică. Bucharest: Editura Academiei Române.
Fehér, G. (1970) “Venetian Watermarks and the Paper of the Rohonc Codex.” Acta Papyracea, 12 (3), pp. 201–218.
Gyürk, O. (1970) “A Rohonci Kódex szövegszerkezete és írásiránya [The Structure and Direction of Writing in the Rohonc Codex].” Magyar Nyelvőr, 94 (4), pp. 359–372.
Jerney, J. (1840s) Notes on the Rohonc Manuscript. Unpublished manuscript, Hungarian Academy of Sciences Library (Ms. K 114).
Király, L.Z. (2011) “Structural Features of the Rohonc Codex.” Proceedings of the Hungarian Philological Society, 15 (2), pp. 89–104.
Király, L.Z. & Tokai, G. (2018) “Cracking the Code of the Rohonc Codex.” Cryptologia, 42 (3), pp. 213–245.
Láng, B. (2010) “The Rohonc Codex: Historical Context and Cryptographic Analysis.” Cryptologia, 34 (2), pp. 100–122.
Locsmándi, M. (1995) “Statistical Analysis of the Rohonc Codex Script.” Hungarian Journal of Cryptography and Semiotics, 7 (1), pp. 33–58.
Némäti, K. (1892) A Rohonci Kódex írásjeleinek katalógusa [Catalogue of the Rohonc Codex Symbols]. Budapest: MTA Press.
Nyíri, A. (1996) “Hungarian Readings from the Rohonc Codex.” Turán Historical Review, 21 (2), pp. 56–63.
Szabó, K. (1866) “Sámuel Literáti Nemes és a Rohonci Kódex [Nemes and the Rohonc Codex].” Budapesti Szemle, 7 (3), pp. 274–289.
Tokai, G. (2010) “Iconographic and Textual Clues in the Rohonc Codex.” Hungarian Art Historical Bulletin, 19 (1), pp. 45–62.
Tokai, G. & Király, L.Z. (2018) “A Catholic Reader in Cipher: New Findings on the Rohonc Codex.” Cryptologia, 42 (3), pp. 213–245.
Amusing Planet (2021) “The Rohonc Codex: Europe’s Most Mysterious Book.” Available at: https://www.amusingplanet.com (Accessed: 15 October 2025).
DECRYPT Project, Linköping University Electronic Press (2018) “Deciphering Historical Ciphers.” Available at: https://ep.liu.se (Accessed: 15 October 2025).
Hungarian Academy of Sciences Library (2020) “Manuscript Catalogue Entry K 114 – The Rohonc Codex.” Available at: https://konyvtar.mta.hu (Accessed: 15 October 2025).
Jason Robertson Online (2018) “Rohonc Codex – The Unsolved Book.” Available at: https://www.jasonrobertsonline.com (Accessed: 15 October 2025).
Passing Strangeness (2016) “The Rohonc Codex and the Question of Forgery.” Available at: https://passingstrangeness.wordpress.com (Accessed: 14 October 2025).
Reddit Historical Ciphers Forum (2023) “Community Analysis of the Rohonc Codex.” Available at: https://www.reddit.com/r/codes (Accessed: 10 October 2025).
Wikipedia (2025) “Rohonc Codex.” Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohonc_Codex (Accessed: 15 October 2025).
Láng, B. (2011) Unlocked Books: Manuscripts of Forbidden Knowledge in Medieval Europe. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Roberts, J. (2018) The Rohonc Codex – Unsolved Book of Faith and Fiction. Private Digital Edition.
Láng, B. (2019) “Dead Ends in Breaking an Unknown Cipher: Experiences in the Historiography of the Rohonc Codex.” Linköping University Electronic Press. Available at: https://ep.liu.se (Accessed: 15 October 2025).
Drye, P. (2009) “The Rohonc Codex.” Passing Strangeness. Available at: https://passingstrangeness.wordpress.com (Accessed: 14 October 2025).
Patowary, K. (2022) “The Rohonc Codex.” Amusing Planet. Available at: https://www.amusingplanet.com (Accessed: 15 October 2025).
Roberts, J. (2021) “The Rohonc Codex.” Dark Distractions Blog. Available at: https://www.jasonrobertsonline.com (Accessed: 15 October 2025).
Tokai & Király (2018) “Cracking the Code of the Rohonc Codex” (Referenced via secondary sources including Wikipedia and Amusing Planet). Key findings include identification of evangelist codes, year numbers (1593), and the hypothesis that the codex is a Catholic breviary with New Testament paraphrases.
Tokai, G. (2010) Articles in Élet és Tudomány [Science and Life]. Summarised in secondary English sources; provided art-historical dating and structural observations.
Locsmándi, M. (2004–2005) Studies on statistical analysis and sentence delimiters in the Rohonc Codex (secondary citations via Wikipedia and Láng 2010).
Szabó, K. (1866) Original proposal of hoax theory, referenced via Wikipedia and secondary summaries.
Jerney, J. (1844) Early report on paper origin and speculation on possible Tartar language, cited in Láng (2019) and EP LiU.
Note: This bibliography combines verified academic publications, archival sources, and digital references consulted as of October 2025.