By Visio Roughton
For thousands of years, humans have been writing things down on everything from clay tablets to books. Of these many written works, one of the most intriguing and mysterious is the “Voynich Manuscript”, a 15th-century codex that researchers believe was written in medieval Europe. To this day, the author remains unknown, as does the language the book was written in;
The purpose of this book remains just as elusive. Filled with many different drawings of fictitious plants and what are believed to be astrological charts, the book provides a mystery that countless people have tried and failed to solve since it was rediscovered officially in 1912.
Origins, and Rediscovery
Many call the fifteenth-century codex the world’s most mysterious book. Written in an unknown script by an unknown author, the manuscript has no clearer purpose now than when it was rediscovered in 1912 by rare books dealer Wilfrid Voynich. The manuscript appears and disappears throughout history, from the library of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II to a secret sale of books in 1903 by the Society of Jesus in Rome. The book’s language has eluded decipherment, and its elaborate illustrations remain as baffling as they are beautiful. For the first time, this facsimile, complete with elaborate folding sections, allows readers to explore this enigma in all its stunning detail, from its one-of-a-kind “Voynichese” text to its illustrations of otherworldly plants, unfamiliar constellations, and naked women swimming through fantastical tubes and green baths. The essays that accompany the manuscript explain what we have learned about this work—from alchemical, cryptographic, forensic, and historical perspectives—but they provide few definitive answers. Instead, as New York Times best-selling author Deborah Harkness says in her introduction, the book “invites the reader to join us at the heart of the mystery.”
Radiocarbon dating of the book’s pages done by scientists from the University of Arizona in 2009 indicates that the text’s original creation happened sometime in the early 1400s. This is further supported by the fact the materials that comprise the book are consistent with what was typically used for books of that nature at the time in Europe. Based on analysis of the text and art style, it is largely believed that the origins of the manuscript are Italian, however, there are still disputes within academic circles as to whether this is truly the origin or not.
The text has passed between many owners, however, the first recorded person to own the book was an alchemist from Prague, Georg Baresch. Over the next four centuries, the book would pass hands from Baresch to his friends, and then to the Italian church. There is a 200-year gap where it is unknown who exactly was in possession of the book, but when the script was in possession of the Society of Jesus (Collegio Romano), the organization happened to be running short on money. It decided to sell some of its collection to the Vatican library, however, the Voynich manuscript would be sold to a Polish antique bookseller Wilfred Voynich, from which the modern name of the manuscript is derived. While in his care, Wilfred Voynich attempted to garner attention for the manuscript in an attempt to help it be solved while he attempted to do so, though he was not successful.
In 1969, after passing between a few more owners, the text was finally donated to Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
In 2020, Yale University published a scanned version of the manuscript online, a link to the manuscript can be found at the bottom of this post.
Makeup of a Mystery:
The book itself is made up of 240 pages of undeciphered text, and fascinating illustrations. The characters that make up the “Voynichese” as it is referred to, contain specific linguistic patterns, with repeated sequences that resemble actual words and phrases.
Using the book’s illustrations, scholars have divided the book into the following sections:
Botanical, as there are many detailed drawings of plants, some that represent real species of flora, and others that detail unknown plants.
Astronomical, as some portions are decorated with star charts and zodiac diagrams, something that indicates possible astrological or cosmological knowledge.
Biological, with depictions of nude women interacting with interconnected tubes, pools, and systems that resemble possible biological or alchemical processes.
Medicinal, about the drawings of jars and containers, potentially linked to herbal remedies or alchemical concoctions.
Finally, recipes: Lists of text that resemble instructions, possibly related to medicine, alchemy, or rituals. Despite these divisions, the manuscript’s ultimate purpose remains speculative.
Decoding the Text:
Even after over 100 years of a continuous effort to decode the writing, no cipher would decode the book in its entirety.
One notable attempt at decoding the manuscript comes from the 1950s when codebreakers who had worked on World War II encryption methods made an attempt to decode the strange language under the belief it was a cipher of some sort. This attempt was unsuccessful however. There are phrases that have been translated, however this is because it was discovered that the said sections were written in old Latin.
Some researchers theorize that the writing in the manuscript could be the remnants of some lost language, while others assert that it could be the result of some form of invented writing system.
The advent and advances of new technologies made in recent years, especially regarding the growth in the field of artificial intelligence, have allowed researchers to examine the manuscript’s language in new ways. Artificial intelligence has been used to analyze patterns found in text in hopes that it would be able to pinpoint any linguistic structures or links to known languages.
Because there has been such a struggle to fully decipher the writing of the manuscript, some believe that it is nothing more than an elaborate hoax with the sole intention to confuse or impress its audience. Others argue it’s a genuine scientific, artistic work, or a record of knowledge or experiments that were unique to its creator.
So many stories and research journals from centuries before our time have been recovered and translated for us to read, however, the Vonyich Manuscript stands as one of a larger group of written accounts that have yet to be translated into something we understand. It is a literary and academic enigma that will continue to baffle humans and machines alike. It will be interesting to see how in the future technology like AI could be utilized as a tool to help understand the ancient writing of the Vonyich Manuscript, or other lost languages. While it would not provide a clear-cut solution, it could help aid scientists in understanding the societies of the past.
A link to Yale Library’s scanned version of the Vonyich Manuscript: https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/2002046
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