Almost 4,000 years ago, a scribe in the town of Menet Khufu drew out the story of his master’s life in hieroglyphics. At the same time, though, he also brought into the world the first documented use of Cryptography.

In the tomb Khnumhotep, a nobleman of about 1900 BC, the scribe used a simple code of hieroglyphic substitution, changing one symbol for another, less well-known one. However, this scribe did not use a comprehensive system of encryption; he just substituted hieroglyphs here and there, mostly at the end of his document.

As time went on, Egyptians continued to use transformed hieroglyphs in their writings, in fact they became more common as the civilization matured. The Egyptians had several letter which commonly changed around in written communications. However, the interesting thing about the Egyptians’ cryptography is that any viewer could figure out what the transcriptions read in a relatively short time, as compared to the millions of years needed to break modern cryptograms. But then, why encrypt?

There are several possibilities, but unfortunately we will never know the true answer.

First, it is possible that the Egyptians wanted to preserve the secrecy of certain religious rituals from the casual observer. By making the religious texts difficult for an outsider to read, they would make their religion mysterious, but not forbidden. Since the mysterious usually provokes curiosity, encrypting texts could have been a political move to promote their religion.

Another, more simple interpretation of Egyptian cryptography is that the scribes just wanted to give a formal appearance to their documents. To an observer 5000 years from now, a bill for consideration in the United States Senate or House could be considered an encrypted document. Using the complicated language of lawyers, any legal document appears to be in a different form of English, just as the Egyptians used a different form of Hieroglyphs.

Finally, it may have just been for the Scribe's personal pride. He may have wanted to impress the reader by showing that he could write at a different level. The scribe in this case would simply be showing off, but cryptography then was a far cry from the deadly serious science of today.