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The Beale ciphers, also referred to as the ''Beale Papers'', are a set of three ciphertexts, one of which allegedly states the location of a buried treasure of gold, silver and jewels estimated to be worth over US$63 million . Comprising three ciphertexts, the first (unsolved) text describes the location, the second (solved) ciphertext 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 detailing treasure being buried by a man named Thomas J. Beale in a secret location in Bedford County, Virginia, in the 1820s. 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 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.〔 There are many arguments that the entire story is a hoax, including the 1980 article "A Dissenting Opinion" by cryptographer Jim Gillogly, and a 1982 scholarly analysis of the ''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 Freemasons; James B. Ward was a Mason himself. ==The story== ''It is important to note that all of the following information originates from one source — a single pamphlet published in 1885, entitled "The Beale Papers."'' The treasure was said to have been obtained by an American man named Thomas J. Beale in the early 1800s, from a mine to the north of Santa Fe, at that time part of a Spanish province, in an area that today would most likely be part of Colorado. According to the pamphlet, Beale was the chosen leader of a group of 30 gentlemen adventurers from Virginia, who stumbled upon the rich mine of gold and silver while hunting buffalo. They spent 18 months mining thousands of pounds of precious metals, which they then charged Beale with transporting back home to Virginia and burying in a secure location. Beale made multiple trips to stock the hiding place, and then encrypted three messages with the location of the treasure, a description of it, and the names of the owners and their relatives. Beale placed the ciphertexts and some other papers in an iron box, which he gave in 1822 to a reliable person, the Lynchburg innkeeper Robert Morriss. The treasure was supposed to be buried near Montvale in Bedford County, Virginia. Beale asked Morriss not to open the box unless Beale or one of his men failed to return from their journey within 10 years. Sending a letter from St. Louis a few months later, Beale promised Morriss that a friend in St. Louis would mail the key to the cryptograms, but it never arrived. 23 years later, in 1845, Morriss opened the box, finding two plaintext letters from Beale, and several pages of ciphertext separated into Papers "1", "2", and "3". Morriss had no luck in solving the ciphers, and decades later left the box and its contents to an unnamed friend. Using an edition of the United States Declaration of Independence as the key for a modified book cipher, the story tells how the friend successfully deciphered the second ciphertext, which gave a description of the buried treasure. Unable to solve the other two ciphertexts, the friend ultimately made the letters and ciphertexts public, in a pamphlet entitled ''The Beale Papers'', published by another friend, James B. Ward, in 1885. Ward is thus not "the friend." Ward himself is almost untraceable in local records except that a man with that name owned the home in which a Sarah Morriss, identified as the consort of Robert Morriss, died in at 77 (''Lynchburg Virginian'' newspaper, May 21, 1865). He also is recorded as becoming a Master Mason in 1863.〔 Image:Beale 1.svg|Beale's first cryptogram Image:Beale 2.svg|Beale's second cryptogram (the deciphered one) Image:Beale 3.svg|Beale's third cryptogram. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Beale ciphers」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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