Pillar 7
Pillar 7 is the shortest pillar. It also explains the method it uses to encrypt the alphabetic text. It is presumably a pillar to introduce participants to the concepts of encryption.
It contains an unexplained numerical grid near the top of the pillar.
Numerical Grid
At the top of the pillar is a grid of numbers of 5 rows and 26 columns. A triangular glyph surrounds a number (rather than pointing as in other pillars).
35248614916353547101490974 24725391509414892533731941 14909573522681490367353636 41635353213194116435346709 81491040353180149092635377 |
Transposition (Caesar) cipher
The remainder of the pillar is filled with a simple cipher - the Caesar cipher.
At the top is a plaintext which makes an obvious reference to Caesar:
A LETTER SHIFT A CIPHER MAKES
A FAMOUS ROMANS NAME IT TAKES |
Then below that, it pictorially depicts a letter shift. In this example, A>B, B>C, C>D and so on, with Z>A.
Below this is a cipher text:
B MFUUFS TIJGU B DJQIFS NBLFT B GBNPVT SPNBOT OBNF JU UBLFT
DWV QVJGT OQXGU C EQFG ECP OCMG
D NXID PDQ FRXOG ILQG WKHP RXW
INGY PZBZIE XROZA OPK RNQV SA ENMPL XVZIZ GBHV ERIQIF |
This decrypts using a shift of 1 to read
Base
A string of numbers runs around the base.