On the trail of the secret: The mystical script

November 6, 2025, 2:10 PM |

Reading time: 3 min.

The images are still understandable, but the writing? Dots, circles, lines, squiggles, triangles - to this day, not even AI has recognized a system behind it. — The images are still understandable, but the writing? Dots, circles, lines, squiggles, triangles – to this day, not even AI has been able to discern any system behind it. (Photo: mauritius images / Magite Historic / Alamy)

Little is known about the Rohonc Codex. Does the manuscript, which remains undeciphered to this day, originate from the Dacian people? Or is it simply a forgery?

By Leon Frei

It's hard to believe that despite a well-connected community of codebreakers and ever-improving artificial intelligence, there are still texts that no one has been able to decipher. One of the most famous is the mysterious Rohonc Codex, also known as the "Codex Rohonczi." It is named after Rohonc, formerly in western Hungary and now Rechnitz, Austria, where the manuscript first appeared in the collection of the nobleman Gusztáv Batthyány at the beginning of the 19th century. In 1838, he bequeathed it to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest, where the original remains to this day.

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