With page that would n’t seem out of place in a J. R. R. Tolkien novel , theVoynich manuscriptis a close to 500 - yr - old Word occupy with amaze illustration and writing in a seemingly undecipherable language .
Named after Wilfrid Voynich , an antique bookseller who purchase the manuscript in 1912 , the meaning behind theapproximately 240pages stay a enigma to this Clarence Shepard Day Jr. , despite many claiming to have unlock its secret .
Deciphering the manuscript
Speculation about the book ’s root is vast and varied , with some believing it to be a hoax , that it ’s aguide to alchemy , or even that it was write by an noncitizen stranded on Earth . As of yet , none of these claims have been shew , but the exploit to decode the Word ’s alien language continue .
As the script does n’t appear to follow any exist voice communication pattern , some have assume that each fictional character is a symbol as opposed to a alphabetic character . The potentially coded oral communication advert to a possibility that the content of the record book was specify to remain a mystery .
An endeavour to decode the textusing AIin 2018 resulted in theconclusionthat the watchword were probable Hebrew , and that the word were alphagrams : anagrams with the letters arranged alphabetically . swear on Google translate to realise the Hebrew terminology , the researchers failed to gather any import from the mostly nonsense sentences , alternatively just identifying curious Word of God that related to the images seen on the page .
Image credit: Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University / Wikicommons
Another theory is show in a2019 studythat proposes the text file waswritten by and for fair sex , and that this would explicate the nonstarter of previous attempts to understand the textbook . Study writer Dr Gerard Cheshire claims that the language is n’t cypher at all and is or else written in a proto - Romance idiom , from which many modern European languages originated .
This close , however , come undercriticismfrom other Voynich scholars , who claim Cheshire fit his determination to his theory by assuming proto - Romance words free-base on identifying singular Scripture rather than full sentence .
Inside the manuscript
Theroughly A5 - size of it book is bound in what ’s been draw as a renaissance version of a paperback , with some believing its blank concealment to be a way of hold back its cryptic content . In one of history ’s more grisly ( but not solely rare ) practices , the manuscript ’s pages are made of the skin of at least14 full cows .
While the language presented in the script has yet to be decoded , the many colourful illustrations seem to part the holograph into six distinguishable sections : botany , uranology and star divination , biology , cosmogeny , pharmaceutic , and full pages of text that are thought to be formula .
Thebotanysection , the big “ chapter ” in the leger , features 113 detailed drawings of seemingly unrecognisable plant species , while theastronomyandastrologypages show planet arrangements and pictures appear to render the different zodiac signs .
Image credit: Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University / Wikicommons
Also pictured are illustrations of women bathing in colored liquids , sometimes appear intertwined and connected by tobacco pipe . This biology section of the book sparked a abbreviated conclusion in 2017 that the ms was discussingwomen ’s wellness , but this hypothesis was quickly debunked .
The manuscript’s history
The detailed history behind the volume begin sometime in 15th - century Europe . Believed to have first been owned byHoly Roman Emperor Rudolf IIof Germany during his reign between 1576 and 1611 , the ms was said by some reports to have been bought fromJohn Deefor 600 ducat .
Dee , a mathematician and stargazer , purportedly owned the ms as a part of a collection of employment by thirteenth - hundred English philosopherRoger Bacon .
According to generator , the rule book was believed by some – include Rudolf II – to have been written by Bacon , but radiocarbon date refuted this claim by place the yield of the book roughly 300 years after Bacon ’s end in 1292 .
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Image credit: Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University / Wikkicommons
Next , the rule book was seemingly given by Rudolf II to the emperor moth ’s personal MD , Jacobus Horcicky de Tepenecz . This assumption come as the book was studied under ultraviolet light ; a substance can be seen on a varlet of the holograph that reads“Jacobi de Tepenecz . ”
The next known telephone exchange comes in 1666 when , just a year before his death , bohemian MD Johannes Marcus Marci of Cronlandpassed the bookto German Jesuit scholarAthanasius Kircher .
In the Jesuit College near Rome is where Wilfrid Voynich found the book 246 eld later on . After Voynich ’s death in 1930 , the holograph was purchased from his the three estates by book dealerHans P. Kraus , who donate it to Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University in 1969 .
Since its arrival at the Yale depository library , the ms has leave only once for an showing at the Folger Shakespeare Library .
While the original book remain under lock and key , the library does have a straight - to - life story printed replication on show and receptive to the public . Printed translation of the manuscript are also available topurchase onlineif you fancy having a go at deciphering its mysterious ramblings .
