Editing Beale ciphers (section)

{{Short description|Set of three ciphertexts}}
{{For|the geographic code classification system|beale code}}
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{{original research|date=April 2024}}
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[[File:Beale Papers.gif|thumb|250px|Cover of ''The Beale Papers'']]
The '''Beale ciphers''' are a set of three [[ciphertext]]s, one of which allegedly states the location of a buried [[treasure]] of gold, silver and jewels estimated to be worth over $43,000,000&nbsp;{{as of|2018|January|lc=y|post=.}} Comprising three ciphertexts, the first (unsolved) text describes the location, the second (solved) ciphertext accounts the content of the treasure, and the third (unsolved) lists the names of the treasure's owners and their [[next of kin]].

The story of the three ciphertexts originates from an 1885 pamphlet called '''''The Beale Papers''''', detailing treasure being buried by a man named Thomas J. Beale in a secret location in [[Bedford County, Virginia]], in about 1820. Beale entrusted a box containing the encrypted messages to a local innkeeper named Robert Morriss and then disappeared, never to be seen again. According to the story, the innkeeper opened the box 23&nbsp;years later, and then decades after that gave the three encrypted ciphertexts to a friend before he died. The friend then spent the next twenty years of his life trying to decode the messages, and was able to solve only one of them, which gave details of the treasure buried and the general location of the treasure. The unnamed friend then published all three ciphertexts in a pamphlet which was advertised for sale in the 1880s.

Since the publication of the pamphlet, a number of attempts have been made to decode the two remaining ciphertexts and to locate the treasure, but all efforts have resulted in failure.<ref name=nickell/><ref>{{cite news |title=The Beale Treasure Ciphers |newspaper=[[The Guardian]] |year=1999 |url=http://www.simonsingh.com/Beale_Treasure_Ciphers.html |access-date=2007-04-14 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061230080207/http://www.simonsingh.com/Beale_Treasure_Ciphers.html |archive-date=2006-12-30 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Famous Unsolved Codes and Ciphers |author-first=Elonka |author-last=Dunin |author-link=Elonka Dunin |date=2003-12-08 |url=http://www.elonka.com/UnsolvedCodes.html |access-date=2007-04-14 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070423224405/http://www.elonka.com/UnsolvedCodes.html |archive-date=23 April 2007 |url-status= live}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=http://fultonhistory.com/Newspapers%20Disk3/Watertown%20Times/Watertown%20NY%20Daily%20Timers%201972%20May%20Grayscale.pdf/Watertown%20NY%20Daily%20Timers%201972%20May%20Grayscale%20-%200137.pdf |date=5 May 1972 |newspaper=[[The Washington Post]] |title=Leading cryptanalysts seek to break secret code reported to tell of buried treasure in Virginia |author-last=Burchard |author-first=Hank}}</ref>

There are many arguments that the entire story is a hoax, including the 1980 article "A Dissenting Opinion" by cryptographer [[James Gillogly|Jim Gillogly]], and a 1982 scholarly analysis of the ''Beale Papers'' and their related story by [[Joe Nickell]], using historical records that cast doubt on the existence of Thomas J. Beale. Nickell also presents linguistic evidence demonstrating that the documents could not have been written at the time alleged (words such as "stampeding", for instance, are of later vintage). His analysis of the writing style showed that Beale was almost certainly James B. Ward, whose 1885 pamphlet brought the Beale Papers to light. Nickell argues that the tale is thus a work of fiction; specifically, a "secret vault" allegory of the [[Freemasonry|Freemasons]]; James B. Ward was a Mason himself.<ref name="nickell">{{cite journal |last=Nickell |first=Joe |title=Discovered: The secret of Beale's treasure |journal=The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography |date=July 1982 |volume=90 |issue=3 |pages=310–324 |jstor=4248566}}</ref>