I give up!” Cody said to her mother as she entered the breakfast nook before school Monday morning. Cody bounded into the room dressed in a yellow short-sleeved T-shirt that set off her curly red ponytail. Well-worn jeans and a pair of red Converse Chucks completed her simple outfit. Lately the spring weather had been so sunny, all she’d need was her red hoodie and she’d be set for the short walk to Berkeley Cooperative Middle School.
“What’s the matter?” Mrs. Jones asked her thirteen-year-old daughter, before sipping from a mug of hot, steaming coffee. Already dressed in her uniform, Cody’s mother was ready for her job at the Berkeley Police Department. “Did you have trouble figuring out the puzzle Ms. Stadelhofer gave you for homework?”
“No,” Cody said and signed, so her deaf four-year-old sister, Tana, would be included in the conversation. “That was pretty easy.” She sat down on a stool, filled her bowl with Cheerios, her favorite cereal since she was little, and added milk. “We’ve been studying ancient Egypt in class, and Ms. Stad gave us these cool decoder cards that have the Egyptian hieroglyphic alphabet, so I knew that was the key.” She took a spoonful of cereal.
“What mean h-i-r-o …?” Tana tried to fingerspell the word.
Code Buster’s Key and Solution found on this page, this page.
Cody slowly respelled the word using the American Sign Language manual alphabet, then signed, “Hieroglyphs are like words and stories written in pictures.”
She turned to her mother. “We’re going to the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose on Friday to see some hieroglyphs and ancient artifacts, and even a mummy.” Cody had never seen a mummy before, except in movies, and they always looked fake. She wondered if she’d be creeped out by a real one.
“So what’s the problem?” her mother asked.
“I’m not sure what Ms. Stad’s word means.” Cody took out the assignment from her backpack and showed it to her mom. Written underneath the hieroglyphic symbols was Cody’s English translation.
Code Buster’s Key and Solution found on this page, this page.
Cody’s mom looked at the decoded word her daughter had written. “Did you look it up?”
“The dictionary says it means ‘concealed writing’—kind of like a hidden message. But that’s all I know.”
“Hmm,” her mom murmured. “It sounds like Ms. Stadelhofer has another mysterious puzzle for you to solve.”
“Seriously! I hope there are a bunch of hidden messages at the museum. Ms. Stad said the place is full of mysteries. She said to make sure we study our latest spelling words, because they’ll be part of our assignment. I have a feeling she’s making up some puzzles for us, too.”
“Sounds fun. Do you want me to quiz you?” Cody’s mother asked.
“Sure.” Cody handed the word list to her mother. Cody was a good speller. She’d taught herself tricks for remembering difficult words and almost always got 100 percent on her tests. But this time she might not do as well because these new words were so different. They were the names of Egyptian gods and goddesses.
As her mother read off each spelling word, Cody wrote it down on a piece of paper. Most of the names weren’t too hard—Amun, Anubis, Bastet, Horus, Isis, Osiris, Sekhmet, Sobek. She could sound them out. But Maat was tricky—two a’s instead of two t’s like Matt the Brat. And Thoth was pronounced toth, so she had to remember to add the silent h.
“How’d I do?” she asked her mother after she’d corrected the test.
“Perfect, as usual,” her mom said. “Do you have to know why all the gods and goddesses were worshipped? They each had their specific purposes.”
“Yep, I memorized them, and we picked our favorites as our Egyptian Code Buster names,” Cody replied. “Let’s see. Amun was the god of air and invisibility. That’s the one I chose, because I’d love to be invisible sometimes and just watch people. Anubis was the god of death. Bastet was the cat goddess. M.E. chose that one because she loves animals. Horus was the god of war and the sky. Isis was the goddess of magic. That’s Quinn’s favorite, since he’s been learning magic tricks. Maat was the goddess of truth and justice. Osiris was the god of the underworld and afterlife. Sekhmet was the goddess of lions and power. That’s Luke’s Egyptian code name, because he’s strong. Then there’s Sobek … Sobek … um …” Cody shook her head.
“I think he’s the god of crocodiles,” Mrs. Jones said.
“Right! Crocodiles,” Cody said. “And the last one is Thoth, the god of wisdom. I just have to remember Sobek. Then I’ll know them all!”
“Good morning, students,” Ms. Stadelhofer said to her class of sixth graders after the students were settled in their seats. “As we discussed on Friday, the study of ancient Egypt has been steeped in mystery for centuries. Scholars tried to decode the hieroglyphs over the years, but it wasn’t until the Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1799 that they even had a clue how to crack the code. And it still took another twenty years for scholars to decipher all the writings on the stone.”
A student named Bradley raised his hand. “Twenty years? That’s a long time. It only took me about twenty seconds to decode the message you gave us for homework.”
“Excellent,” Ms. Stad said. “How about the rest of you?”
Several students raised their hands, including Cody. She loved how Ms. Stad always made her lessons fun. She often created puzzles for them to solve and made up games to help them learn. She even wore creative outfits, like college T-shirts, historical costumes, and arty jackets. Today she was dressed in safari pants and a khaki top with the words YOU CAN’T SCARE ME—I TEACH SIXTH GRADE! Around her neck she’d draped a long knitted scarf decorated with Egyptian characters. All she needed was a pith helmet to complete the outfit and she’d be ready for an archaeological dig.
The homework assignment had been fun, too. Cody thought it would be cool to send coded messages in hieroglyphs to her Code Busters Club friends. She and MariaElena—M.E.—Esperanto, Quinn Kee, and Luke LaVeau were always looking for new codes to crack. And hieroglyphs were awesome because they looked like pictures.
Cody pulled out her homework and read over her answers to make sure they were correct.
STEGANOGRAPHY
One of the pictographs—the letter s—looked like an upside-down hook. The t reminded her of a mountain. The e was represented by an arm. The g looked like a badge. And the letter a was some kind of bird. All the rest of the letters resembled something familiar—a zigzag for n, a lamp for o, a flying saucer for r, a shelf for p, a square curling in on itself for h, two feathers for y. The associations made them easier to remember.
“We can now understand the Egyptian alphabet,” said Ms. Stad, “primarily because a soldier named Pierre-François Bouchard found a stone in Rosetta, Egypt. That’s why it’s called the Rosetta Stone. Years later, a teenager named Jean-François Champollion began decoding the stone. It took him fourteen years! Can you imagine working on a puzzle that long?”
The students shook their heads. Cody was impressed.
Ms. Stad smiled. “The young man finally figured out that hieroglyphs were not really pictures but signs for sounds, just like we use in English. For example, the image of the upside-down hook is the sound for s. So, who can tell us what the homework message says?” asked Ms. Stad.
Most of the students raised their hands. Ms. Stad called on Cody.
“Steganography,” Cody said, hoping she pronounced it correctly.
“Right. Do you know what that means?” Ms. Stad asked her.
“I looked it up. It means ‘the practice of concealed writing’ or ‘creating hidden messages.’ ”
“Exactly,” Ms. Stad exclaimed. “Stegano comes from the Greek word for ‘covered’ or ‘hidden,’ and graphia or graphy is Latin for ‘writing.’ ” She glanced around at the students. “How many of you got it right?”
Most of the students put their hands up again. Cody noticed that Matt the Brat wasn’t one of them. She figured he probably didn’t even do the assignment—as usual. How was he ever going to make it to seventh grade?
“Good job, students!” Ms. Stad smiled. “As Cody said, steganography means ‘the art of hiding secret messages in plain sight.’ When you look at Egyptian drawings, they appear to be random pictures—at first. But if you study them, you’ll find they have hidden meanings. Does anyone know other ways of hiding a message in plain sight?”
M.E., Cody’s friend who sat in the back of the classroom, raised her hand. “You could write a message on an envelope and cover it with a postage stamp,” she said, “and then steam off the stamp to read the message.” The Code Busters were very familiar with that method of sending hidden messages. They often mailed each other notes in code, with the key hidden under a stamp on the envelope.
“Yes, M.E., that was a popular method for spies who wanted to send top secret information over long distances during wartime. Does anyone else know how to hide a message?”
Matt the Brat blurted out, “You could shave your head and write a secret message with a marker and then grow your hair back and it would be hidden.”
“True, Matthew,” Ms. Stad said. “Soldiers often did that. But they wouldn’t just write a secret message on the person’s head. They tattooed it.”
“No way!” Matt said, rubbing his head. “That would hurt!”
Ms. Stad smiled patiently. “There are lots of ways to hide messages. I could even be hiding one in the scarf I’m wearing today. While you’re looking at the Egyptian symbols on the scarf, the real message could be hidden by tying knots into the strands of yarn using Morse code. Spies used to knit the knotted yarn into a sweater or scarf, and the person who received the item simply unraveled it to decode the knotted message.”
Awesome, Cody thought. She would have to try that. As soon as she learned to knit. She glanced back at M.E. and finger-spelled:
Code Buster’s Key and Solution found on this page, this page.
“Now, I’ve got a surprise for you, class,” Ms. Stad announced, interrupting M.E.’s message back to Cody.
The buzzing students quieted down and waited for their teacher’s announcement.
“We have a special guest. I’ve invited the curator from the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum to come and tell you all about puzzles, codes, and messages that are hidden in art—another form of steganography.”
Ms. Stad turned to a woman who had just entered the classroom. She was tall and thin, with white-blonde hair twisted up at the back, vivid green eyes thickly outlined in black, and bright red lipstick. She wore a black turtleneck, black slacks, and black high-heeled shoes, but what caught Cody’s attention was the pendant she wore around her neck. It was a large golden “eye,” about the size of an Oreo cookie, heavily outlined in black, much like the woman’s eyes. Her hands were covered with large gold rings, one in the shape of an eye that nearly matched the one on her necklace.
Cody was intrigued by the woman’s exotic looks, clothes, and jewelry—especially the eye that hung from her neck. The woman played with her necklace nervously as she faced the class. Cody wondered if she wasn’t used to speaking to school students.
“Everyone, this is Ms. Mirabel Cassatt. Please welcome our special guest!”
The students greeted her in unison.
“Hello, students.” Ms. Cassatt stepped forward on her tall, spiked heels and spoke softly as she continued to fuss with her pendant.
Ms. Stad grinned at the class. “Do any of you know what a museum curator does?”
No one answered.
“Well,” Ms. Stad began, “a curator is generally in charge of the museum. She obtains art and antiquities, authenticates them to make sure they’re real, sets up the exhibits, and plans educational programs for students and the public.”
Ms. Cassatt nodded. “That’s right. Plus, there’s a lot of paperwork,” she added.
“Does anyone know what we call the object on Ms. Cassatt’s necklace?”
“A mutant cyclops?” Matt the Brat called out. The class laughed.
“No,” Ms. Stad said, after giving Matt a stern look. “Anyone else?”
A girl named Iman raised her hand. “It looks like an eye.”
“That’s right,” Ms. Cassatt said. “It’s a replica of an amulet called the Eye of Horus. The real ones were considered to be magic charms in ancient Egypt and symbolized the ability to see wisdom and truthfulness. The All-Seeing Eye was often buried with its owner to protect him or her in the afterlife. Mine is similar to one of the many artifacts you’ll see when you come to the Egyptian Museum later this week.”
“Is that really from ancient Egypt?” Matt blurted out.
Ms. Cassatt clutched the pendant. “No, as I said, this is a replica. The real ones are in museums. I’d have to have an armed guard with me if this one was authentic, or someone might steal it.”
“Is it worth a lot of money?” Matt asked, ignoring Ms. Stad’s glare.
Ms. Cassatt laughed. “Not this one. But the ones in the museum are priceless.”
Cody wondered whether she would get to see some really valuable artifacts when they visited the museum. And whether the artifacts would be under armed guard to protect them from thieves, like Matt the Brat. Last year, he’d stolen a kid’s bike and had been suspended from school for a whole week.
“Today, class, Ms. Cassatt is going to show you another reproduction—a famous painting,” Ms. Stad continued. “Look at it carefully. It contains a secret message.”
Ms. Stad pressed a button on her projector remote, and the large image of a painting appeared on the whiteboard. Cody recognized the work of art immediately. The painting was one of her favorites because of the woman’s mysterious smile.
“Does anyone know what this is?”
Several hands shot up, including Cody’s. Ms. Stad called on Miranda, who sat in the front row. Miranda was a good artist herself. Cody had seen her anime drawings in class and wished she were as talented. The best Cody could do was draw regular old stick figures.
“That’s the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci,” Miranda answered. “I saw it in person when my family went to the Louvre during our vacation in Paris last year.”
“Yeah?” said Matt the Brat. “Well, I saw it in a cartoon, and when she smiled, she didn’t have any teeth.” He laughed loudly at his own joke.
Ms. Stad eyed him. “Matthew, please raise your hand if you have something to say.” He quieted down under her glare.
“You’re right, Miranda,” Ms. Cassatt said. “This work is known as the Mona Lisa and is probably the most famous painting in the world. There’s a lot of mystery about it. Who is the woman? And why is she smiling like that?”
Matt turned in his seat and whispered to Cody, “She has to fart!” Cody rolled her eyes.
Ms. Cassatt continued unaware of Matt’s latest interruption. “Did you know that the Mona Lisa was stolen about a hundred years ago from the Louvre? Someone who worked at the museum hid in a broom closet until after the exhibits closed, then walked out with the painting under his coat! But when he tried to sell it, he was caught and sent to jail. Now it’s kept under bulletproof glass.”
“Is it at your Egyptian Museum?” Avery asked.
“No, we only collect things from ancient Egypt,” Ms. Cassatt said.
Avery raised her hand again. “Have you ever had anything stolen from your museum?”
Ms. Cassatt frowned. “I certainly hope not. About a year ago, we hired a forgery expert named Malik Jordan, so I doubt we’ll have any problems like that, since security is strong.”
There were a few more oohs and aahs from the class. Then Ms. Cassatt said, “Now, back to the painting. I have a puzzle for you. Do any of you notice anything strange about Mona Lisa’s eyes?”
The students shook their heads. Cody stared at the dark, deep-set eyes in the reproduction but didn’t notice anything unusual.
Ms. Stad pushed a button on her device. An enlargement of one eye appeared on the whiteboard.
Ms. Cassatt pointed to the pupil, the darkest part of the eye. “This is Mona Lisa’s right eye, close-up. Experts believe there’s a message hidden in the eyes of the portrait. But you can only see it when the eyes are enlarged. Look closely. See if you can find anything in this eye.”
A few seconds later, Cody raised her hand. “Are they letters?”
“Yes,” Ms. Cassatt said. “Can you tell me which ones?”
“It looks like an L and a V.”
“Right again,” Ms. Cassatt said. “Now, do any of you know why Leonardo da Vinci might have painted those letters inside the pupil of Mona Lisa’s right eye?”
To Cody it was obvious. “Because they’re his initials?”
“Very good,” Ms. Cassatt said.
“Are there initials in the other eye?” a student named Ryan asked.
Another enlarged photograph of an eye appeared on the whiteboard. To Cody, it looked very similar to the first one, but this time, the letters weren’t as clear.
“Yes,” Ms. Cassatt said, “but no one has ever figured out what they are or what they mean. Does anyone here think they know?”
Hands went up. “The letters C and E?” Ryan offered.
Ms. Cassatt shook her head.
“The letter B,” guessed a boy named Ty.
“See, that’s the problem,” said Ms. Cassatt. “We don’t know, because the portrait is old and the paint has deteriorated over time. It remains a mystery.”
Cody wondered if she and the Code Busters could solve the puzzle of Mona Lisa’s left eye. But if experts had been trying for years, it was very unlikely.
Ms. Cassatt showed several more paintings and artifacts and explained the symbols in them.
“If you look around carefully, you can see alphabet letters in everyday objects, and you can use them to send hidden messages,” Ms. Cassatt said. “For example, a chair can look like the letter h, a pole can look like an i, and so on.” She showed the students drawings of a chair, a pole, two musical notes, a shelf, and a tunnel entrance. “Each one could be viewed as a letter if you looked at them just the right way. What do these letters spell out?” she asked the class.
It took a few seconds before the letters jumped out of the drawings. Once Cody saw them, she wondered why it had taken her so long. Before she could raise her hand, M.E. beat her to it and gave the answer.
Code Buster’s Solution found on this page.
“Right,” Ms. Cassatt said. She outlined the letters in each drawing with an electronic pointer so that the rest of the students could see the message. “Sometimes you have to look at something for a while to really see it!”
Clever, Cody thought. She glanced around the room and began to notice letters everywhere. She saw the letter C in the stand that held the world globe, an O in the clock on the wall, a D in the musical note on the whiteboard, and an E in the small bookshelf. Using her cell phone camera, she snapped a picture of each one so she could create a coded message for the Code Busters later.
Code Buster’s Solution found on this page.
“And now, students,” Ms. Stad said, “I’d like you all to create your own picture. Feel free to use the computer. Just remember to include a hidden message inside. Once you’re all finished, we’ll line them up along the whiteboard and try to decipher what they mean.”
Cody looked back at M.E. and smiled. This was going to be awesome!