STRANGE IMAGES of heavenly spheres, fantastic plants and nude women adorn the pages of the Voynich manuscript, which is written in an odd script that does not match that of any known language. The manuscript now resides at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.
Image: BEINECKE RARE BOOK AND MANUSCRIPT LIBRARY, YALE UNIVERSITY
In 1912 Wilfrid Voynich, an American rare-book dealer, made the find of a lifetime in the library of a Jesuit college near Rome: a manuscript some 230 pages long, written in an unusual script and richly illustrated with bizarre images of plants, heavenly spheres and bathing women. Voynich immediately recognized the importance of his new acquisition. Although it superficially resembled the handbook of a medieval alchemist or herbalist, the manuscript appeared to be written entirely in code. Features in the illustrations, such as hairstyles, suggested that the book was produced sometime between 1470 and 1500, and a 17th-century letter accompanying the manuscript stated that it had been purchased by Rudolph II, the Holy Roman Emperor, in 1586. During the 1600s, at least two scholars apparently tried to decipher the manuscript, and then it disappeared for nearly 250 years until Voynich unearthed it.
Voynich asked the leading cryptographers of his day to decode the odd script, which did not match that of any known language. But despite 90 years of effort by some of the world's best code breakers, no one has been able to decipher Voynichese, as the script has become known. The nature and origin of the manuscript remain a mystery. The failure of the code-breaking attempts has raised the suspicion that there may not be any cipher to crack. Voynichese may contain no message at all, and the manuscript may simply be an elaborate hoax.
The Queen's Conjuror: The Science and Magic of Dr Dee. Benjamin Woolley. Flamingo/HarperCollins, 2002.
4 Comments
Add CommentFour years on, and Gordon Rugg's work seems terribly vacuous. Yes, the Voynich Manuscript 'might'; be a 16th century hoax - but the 15th century handwriting used to number the quires (the page gatherings) is a bit of a giveaway that it very probably is not.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIntellectually, I think the fallacy of Rugg's paper lies in treating the transcription of the text as if it were the whole document: but his putative Renaissance hoaxer would have had to simulate both the text patterns and the many forensic layers of ownership above them. The map is not the territory.
Rugg may shrug, but trying to reduce a complex historical issue to an abstract CompSci problem is no more than digital prestidigitation.
Even the final defence (that all he was doing was demonstrating a historical possibility) rings hollow: the shallowest of web-searches would reveal a plethora of historical possibilities.
Really: for every tonne of 'might', give me a gram of 'is': and I'll surely have the better of the deal.
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Edited by nickpelling at 02/18/2008 6:40 AM
Voynich manuscript = Gold Mud.!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAutor manuscript = Jan z Lazu 1454.
Prelozil jsem mnoho stran rukopisu.
Info : http://zlatodej.blog.cz/
info : http://voynich.blog.cz/
Manusript je psan ceskym jazykem.Nelze desifrovat anglickym jazykem.Cesky alchymista Jan z Lazu pouzil pri zapisu alchym.slang a gematrii.
Zlatodej J.T.
Voynich Manuscript Dates Back to Early 15th Century !!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWatch Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChwJeG57Zog
It is just a feeling I have from looking at the pages of the text but I think the drawings have more to do with the text than just being illustrations.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMost of the plants are not actual plants. But seem to be some sort of combination of plants and even imagined plants.
This might be the key to the person or person writing this book as to what process they used to decipher their own code. Of course there is always the use of discarded characters and progressive codes. But the thing is that if more advance computer techniques haven't been found to understand it it may just be nothing but a work of art.
I have made my own alphabet and was able to right in it and read it quite well. If I was to add some sort of code to it it would make the text almost nonsense.
The word and character frequency seems rather odd in the pages I have been able to look at, which seems to indicate these words have progressive meaning or are spacers or placers for other characters in the text.
At best, I think it is a private journal used by two persons most likely. If the date of the manuscript is correct and the persons were alchemist then it very well could be their trade notes.
The nub of the matter is, that if and or when we ever find out what it is, I think we are in for a bit of the let down.