Pun Search

Expert pun search for the pun-encrypted ancient texts.

This searches for keywords in the ancient texts I’ve decrypted. Ancient rulers have encrypted their texts, by using words with similar consonants patterns (pun-encryption), so that the texts get a second, secret meaning. Typically, the secret meaning is about rulers deceiving their subjects.

You can search my data here to decrypt a text of your own, or just to get a feeling for how it works.

(Under the hood, the search constructs a regular expression, regex for short, which would be a pain to type in explicitly.)

Searching for Meanings

In the 1st textfield, you can input meanings, separated by blanks, e.g. hide cover conceal. Use an underscore to separate words within one meaning, e.g. go_out. An underscore before the word forces word wrap at the beginning, e.g. _out. An underscore at the end forces word wrap at the end, e.g. go_.

  • cover will find “cover” and “covering”, but also “discover” and “uncover” which have the opposite meaning.
  • _cover (underscore at the beginning) will only find words like “cover” and “covering”.
  • go out will find all entries with either “go” or “out” anywhere within the meanings, which is a lot.
  • go_out (underscore connecting the words) will only find the exact phrase “go out”.

Viewing the Results

Both vocabulary & translations are searched, and both official & secret ones. All found occurrences will be listed, highlighted in the official & secret translations for the whole paragraph, and then as an interlinear analysis block for just the word.

Here’s a sample match, where the search word cover was found in an Egyptian text:

Great Hymn to Aten 7.2 ⟵1. link to full text

Encrypted: The governor in the cloaking cover speaks from [within his] shell, [because] you grant to him [something] to wear [already] on his inside, to surround & envelope him. ⟵2. secret translation of paragraph, word highlighted

Official: The nestling in the egg chirps from [within its] shell, [because] you grant to it breath [already] on its inside, to make it live.                                 ⟵3. official translation of paragraph, word highlighted

the cloaking cover𓋴𓅱𓎛𓏏𓍱 swḥt: shroud; 𓋴𓅱𓎛𓋳 swḥ: cover, shroud, cloak𓋴𓅱𓎛𓏏𓆇 swḥt𓋴𓅱𓎛𓏏𓆇 swḥt: eggthe egg ⟵4. secret translation of word ⟵5. secret vocabulary ⟵6. original text ⟵7. official vocabulary ⟵8. official translation of word

As you can see, the word for “egg” in the official text is here used to encrypt the word “cover”, since both are very similar in Egyptian. An Egyptian insider would have read the word for “egg” here, and might have guessed that it stands for “cover”. The meaning of the whole paragraph is that of governors taking on a figurative disguise, to conceal their inside thinking and fool their subjects. The English text feels a bit garbled because the word order is that of the Egyptian text. You can take the blue link above the paragraph and read the whole text.

Searching Only One Language

Mostly, you’ll want to search only one language, not all of them. You can choose one from the language dropdown list, or choose “all” if you really want to search all languages.

  • Searching all languages for deceive will find Egyptian shȝ, Hebrew pth, Latin capio.
  • Choosing Latin and then searching for deceive will find only the Latin words.

Searching for Consonants

The secret of ancient texts is that they’re pun-encrypted: The words stand for secret words with the same consonants, or similar consonants.

So, in the 2nd text field, you can input consonants, separated by blanks, like l t n. The blanks will be filled with vowels. (You could also input vowels to search for vowel similarity, but they typically don’t count.)

  • l t n will find words like Latinus and latens.
  • l t n (1 blank at the beginning) will find words like Latinus and latens, but also ullatenus, i.e. words with and without vowels at the start.
  • l t n (2 blanks at the beginning) forces vowels, so it will only find words like illatinus, i.e. only words that start with a vowel.

Searching for Consonants Groups

Often, words encrypt others where the consonants are not the same, but similar, like B/F/P/V, D/T, S/Z, C/G/Q/X. To search for several possible consonants at once, write them directly after each other.

  • s bp l t (B or P) will find words like sepultus and also sublitus.
  • n cg r t r (C or G) will find words like necaretur and also nugaretur.

Consonant Quantifiers

You can put the regex quantifiers ? (none or one) or * (none or any number) after a consonant group. If you don’t, the + (once or more) will be applied by default. The asterisk * by itself also serves as a wildcard for any number of any letters. This can be important if strict similarity doesn’t yield any meaningful results.

  • m n t * (any ending) will find words like montem, but also mentitium.
  • c n f n? d (optional N) will find words like confodio, but also confundo.
  • f l s ms* (optional M/S) will find words like filius, but also falsus and falsum.

Combined Search

You can combine the 1st and 2nd text field, to search for words that have a certain meaning _and also_ a certain consonant pattern. This is useful if you want to decrypt a text of your own, have found a word that you suspect encrypts a certain meaning, and want to find words with that meaning plus matching consonants. For the most important meanings (like “ruler” or “deception”), you can use the shortcut dropdown to search for dozens of synonyms at once.

  • _hid secret and l t * will find latens for "hidden", latesco for "hide", latenter for "secret".
  • _king rule and r cgx * will find rex for "king", rego for "rule", regulus for "petty king".
  • Selecting synonyms for 'spy' from the shortcut dropdown will find all words connected to spying.