Cryptographic imagination

The success of the cryptographic technique during World War II in decoding enemy ciphers holds an enduring impact on archaeologists working on decoding ancient scripts. The conviction to break open any code, in theory, employing scientific methods, mathematical formulae and computers, gives rise to a cryptographic imagination. This epistemological articulation apprehends the ancient script as a military cryptogram that could be cracked through scientific intervention. I examine cryptographic imagination within the decipherment of the Indus Script—the unknown script of the third millennium BCE Indus civilisation in South Asia. I specifically examine the decipherment attempts of the Finnish and the Russian teams during 1960s and 70s. By analysing the Finnish and Russian decipherment attempts, I argue that cryptographic imagination involves an epistemological shift of conceptualising unknown archaeological script from an epigraphic representation to a cryptographic code.