The Functions of the Cryptography in the Olonets Codex of Incantations of 17th Сentury. 1. Systematization of Data

In: Slavjanovedenie, Heft 6, S. 38

Abstract

The article presents the first part of a study devoted to the analysis of the functions of cryptographic fragments in the Olonets Codex of Incantations of the 17th century. The paper defines a corpus of cryptographic fragments in the Olonets Codex (55 fragments in Russian in 9 records, as well as the cryptography of the word "amen" in another 18 texts). It has been established that cryptography in the Olonets Codex gravitates towards texts of verbal magic, and among them - to incantations of social and interpersonal themes and "forbidden". The positions of the encrypted fragments in the structure of individual records (headers, instructions, incantations themselves) and within the incantations are revealed, fragments of texts with cryptograms are given, and a cryptographic vocabulary is compiled.