The Voynich Manuscript
The Voynich Manuscript is one of the most mysterious documents in known
history. It is written in an unknown script and in an unknown language.
Till today, no one ever succeeded in deciphering it!
A short history of the manuscript
The manuscript is named after his founder, Wilfried M Voynich. He discovered
the manuscript in 1912 at the Jesuit College at the Villa Mondragone, Frascati
(Italy). Since 1969, the manuscript is owned by the Yale University (Beinecke
Rare Book Library, catalogue # MS 408).
From a letter written by J.M. Marci in 1665/66, we know that Emperor
Rudolph II of Germany (1552-1612) purchased the manuscript for 600 ducats,
a very high sum at that time. After 1608, the manuscript became the property
of Jacobus de Tepenecz (director von Rudoph's botanical gardens). After
his death in 1644, M. Marci got the manuscript. He sent it, accompanied
by the letter mentioned above, to Athanasius Kircher (a Jesuit priest and
famous scholar; one of the leading experts in cryptography at that time).
Kircher analyzed part of the manuscript, but obviously did not succeed
in "breaking the code". The exact way of the manuscript from Kircher to
the Villa Mondragone is unknown.
Content of the manuscript
The whole manuscript is written in both an unknown script and an
unknown language. Till today, there are no other documents known which
have been written in that script. Therefore, the exact content is still
a mystery.
But the manuscript is full of colorful illustrations, as shown on the
two example pages below:
By the illustrations, the book is split up into the following
sections (taken from The
European Voynich Manuscript Transcription Project Page ):
-
a Herbal section (mostly unidentified and fantastic
plants),
-
an Astronomical section (with most zodiac symbols),
-
a Biological section (with some "anatomical" drawings
and human figures),
-
a Cosmological section (with circles, stars and celestial
spheres),
-
a Pharmaceutical section (with vases and parts of plants)
and
-
a Recipes section (with many short paragraphs).
Since the exact content is still unknown, it is quite possible that the
sections have to be separated otherwise.
Actual results of cryptological research
One of the problems of the manuscript is that the script is still unknown.
Therefore, we don't know if one "letter" in the manuscript really stands
for a letter or a whole syllable. It is even possible that the whole manuscript
is a hoax (either from Rudolph's time or from the 20th century).
Statistical analysis of the occurences of the letters shows that the
occurences are the same as for "useful" text, therefore we can almost certainly
rule out the hoax hypothesis.
It is also of interest that there has been no obvious corrections made
in the manuscript, and that it has been written by at least two authors
(there are two different handwritings in the manuscript).
The exact meaning of the Voynich Manuscript is still unknown. Until
today, all attempts to decipher it are doubtful at best, because most of
them are based on some far-fetched hypothesis.
Links
The following links contain detailed additional information about the current
Voynich Manuscript research:
The European
Voynich Manuscript Transcription Project Page
Voynich
Manuscript Mini-FAQ
The
Voynich Gallery
Mik's
Voynich Manuscript Page
Two pages from the biological section
Here are two pages from the biological section:
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