ABSTRACT
The Polygraphia nova et universalis (New and Universal polygraphy) of Athanasius Kircher offers little that was new in the world of cryptography or language theory in 1663. What retains the attention is rather the packaging, the ways in which several kinds of concern are brought together and made to mirror one another around a central axis that would be the nature of language. The work’s table of contents promises the following:
Section I. The Reduction of All Languages to One. Section II. The Extension of One Language to All. Section III. A Techno-logia; or, a universal Steganographic Secret operating by
combinations of things; whereby, through a technique impenetrable to the human mind, one may transmit one’s secrets to another in nearly a thousand ways.1
