Rohoncodex from <Qocheedy Daiin> by The Far Stairs

The Rohonc Codex has 448 paper pages, each one having between 9 and 14 rows of symbols which may or may not be letters. Besides the text, there are 87 illustrations that include religious, laic, and military scenes. The crude illustrations seem to indicate an environment where Christian, pagan, and Muslim religions coexist, as the symbols of the cross, crescent, and sun/swastika are all present.

The number of symbols used in the codex is about ten times higher than any known alphabet (Némäti counted 792), but most symbols are used rarely, so the symbols in the codex might not be an alphabet. They may instead be a syllabary or logographs like Chinese characters.

The justification of the right margin would seem to imply the symbols were transcribed from right to left. Study of the paper on which the codex is written shows that it is most probably a Venetian paper made in the 1530s. However, it may simply have been transcribed from an earlier source, or the paper could have been used long after it was produced.

Concerning the language of the codex, although Hungarian, Dacian, early Romanian or Cuman, and even Hindi have been proposed, none of the hypotheses have been backed with scientific proof so far. Those who claim the codex's Hungarian authenticity either assume that it is a paleo-Hungarian script or try to find resemblances to the Old Hungarian script. According to others, in the Dobruja region in Romania, similar characters or symbols are engraved in Scythian monk caves.

Attila Nyíri of Hungary proposed a solution after studying two pages of the codex. He simply turned the pages upside down, identified a Sumerian ligature, then he associated Latin letters to the rest of the symbols by resemblance. However, he sometimes transliterated the same symbol with different letters, and vice versa; the same letter was decoded from several symbols. He even had to rearrange the order of the letters to produce meaningful words. The text, if taken as meaningful, is of religious, perhaps liturgical character:

"Eljött az Istened. Száll az Úr. Ó. Vannak a szent angyalok. Azok. Ó."

"Your God has come. The Lord flies. Oh. There are the holy angels. Them. Oh."

Nyíri's proposition was immediately criticised by Ottó Gyürk, pointing to the fact that with such a permissive deciphering method one can get anything out of the code. Also, the mere fact that Nyíri makes an uncritical allusion to the fringe theory that the Hungarian language descended from Sumerian discredits his enterprise.

A translation has been published by Romanian philologist Viorica Enăchiuc. She claims that the text is written in the Vulgar Latin dialect of Dacia and that the direction of writing is right-to-left, bottom-to-top:

"Solrgco zicjra naprzi olto co sesvil cas..."

"O Sun of the live let write what span the time..."

"Deteti lis vivit neglivlu iti iti itia niteren titius suonares imi urast ucen..."

"In great numbers, in the fierce battle, without fear go, go as a hero. Break ahead with great noise..."

Just your average nightmare pop band.

thefarstairs.com
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