[tonybaloney]

I came across the following in the Letter-book of Dr. John Wallis in the British Library manuscripts department -

Sr.
Whitehall Oct. 22. 92 (1692)

     The enclosed is an intercepted paper of corrispondence between Germany & France, I cannot tell you ye persons from & to whom it is writt, nor it’s language, tho’ ti’s most likely to be French: This and the shortnefse of it will render its deciphering, I fear, very difficult. However I intreat you to consider of it & try whether you can explain it.

     I am
Your most humble fervent

Nottingham



I don't know if it was ever solved - it looks like simple substitution with word divisions & includes pattern words - should be a doddle whatever language its in - it's got me beat!

Tony

[Aaron]

Interesting symbols... it's a pity they aren't more uniform. And it looks like some of the lines are faded out. I would wager that the more lines in a  symbol, the farther along it is in the alphabet.

[tonybaloney]

That makes a lot of sense the more complicated the symbol the further along in the alphabet it is - I've just updated the image to a better quality one.

[Aaron]

Another option could be Japanese hiragana / katakana, as the markup seems very similar. However, the base shape is too square to match up one-to-one, suggesting that either they are traced outlines of the symbols (thus eliminating the stylish curves) or a similar language.

[tonybaloney]

Aaron - I think the composer would have just made the symbols up - the 'hiranga/katakana, that you give has only a few vague similarities - with all the old alphabets out there its highly improbable not to find one with some similar characters.

Despite what the accompanying letter says about it likely to be in French - I believe it could possibly be in Dutch?