Encrypted epigraphy - the case of a mysterious inscription in the Neapolitan church of Santa Maria La Nova

Abstract

This paper contains all steps regarded as necessary and relevant towards the decryption of the epigraph placed in the “Turbolo Chapel” of the Neapolitan Church of Santa Maria La Nova. The inscription has been processed by means of Python- written procedures in combination with the decryption software AZdecrypt, thus displaying linguistic features converging unequivocally to the hypothesis that its clear-text be encrypted by monoalphabetic substitution from a natural language, possibly alongside with transposition and polyalphabetism. A preliminary analysis on characters n-grams and vocals-consonants combinations has not succeeded yet in individuating any clear-text language among all the analysed corpora.