The Voynich Manuscript

 

In 1912 an antiquarian bookseller bought a very old book. Nothing unusual there.  After all, booksellers need to buy books in order to be able to sell them! What was unusual about this particular book, however, was that it was, and has remained, completely indecipherable. Wilfrid Voynich, the bookseller in question, had opened his first bookshop in London in 1898. Prior to this he had been a Polish revolutionary! A somewhat seismic career change, I think you’ll agree. His life as a dealer in books, however, had been unremarkable. Until that is, the day he came across the codex that would become known as the Voynich Manuscript.

 

Wilfrid Voynich (1865-1930)

 

Wilfrid was examining a collection of manuscripts, which he said had been residing undisturbed in a castle in Southern Europe, when he came upon the book that was henceforth to bear his name, and ensure him a degree of immortality. He later commented; “… my attention was especially drawn by one volume. It was such an ugly duckling compared with the other manuscripts …. I found that it was written entirely in cipher … the vellum upon which it was written, the calligraphy, the drawings and the pigments, suggested to me as the date of its origin the latter part of the thirteenth century. … the fact that this was a thirteenth century manuscript in cipher convinced me that it must be a work of exceptional importance, and to my knowledge the existence of a manuscript of such an early date written entirely in cipher was unknown, so I included it among the manuscripts which I purchased from this collection. … It was not until sometime after the manuscript came into my hands that I read the document bearing the date 1665, which was attached to the front cover. … This document, which is a letter from Johannes Marcus Marci to Athanasius Kircher, making a gift of the manuscript to him, is of great significance.”

 

Johannes Marcus Marci was a Bohemian scientist and doctor. The manuscript appears to have come into his possession following the death of Georg Baresch, the previous owner and an antique collector from Prague. Athanasius Kircher was a polymath, who has been compared to Leonardo Da Vinci, owing to the enormous range of subjects he studied. Earlier in 1639, Baresch had written to Kircher, seeking help in translating a mysterious book illustrated with pictures of stars, plants and chemical secrets, that had been written in an unknown script. Kircher was unable to decipher the text, but presumably expressed considerable interest in the manuscript, as it was eventually gifted to him.

 

Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680)

 

All this is very interesting, but what actually is the  Voynich Manuscript? Physically it is a codex (the earliest form of book, replacing scrolls and wax tablets), and measures 22.5cm x 16cm and is approximately 5cm thick. It is thought to have originally contained 116 folios, but 14 are missing, leaving us with 102. The writing is elegant, but the script is entirely unknown. Most pages contain illustrations of herbs, constellations or arrangements of tubes for transporting liquid. Small female figures also appear frequently in the manuscript. By interpreting the illustrations, the book appears to be divided into sections of differing subject matter. A herb section depicts known herbs as well as some unknown or imaginary varieties. An astronomical section has images of the sun, moon and stars, as well as symbols of the zodiac. A biological section  contains what appear to be anatomical illustrations. A pharmaceutical section has depictions of containers alongside herbs. The manuscript also appears to contain a recipe section and a cosmological section.

 

Photographs of The Voynich Manuscript

 

The intended purpose of the manuscript, however, remains a mystery. A number of suggestions have been put forward to try and put the book into some kind of historical context. Among  the most notable are:

 

discoveries and inventions by the thirteenth century friar Roger Bacon, written in a complicated code;

a book of nonsense written by a medieval quack, to impress potential customers;

a prayer book from the Cathars which survived the inquisition, written in some kind of Germanic pidgin;

meaningless strands of characters, composed by sixteenth century occult philosopher, astrologer and alchemist John Dee, for monetary gain.

 

In 2009 a piece of parchment from the manuscript was radio-carbon dated, with a resulting date range suggesting its production to have been between 1404 and 1438, effectively ruling out both Bacon and Dee as potential authors, and making Voynich’s initial assessment over one hundred years too early. Numerous cryptographers, both amateur and professional, have studied the manuscript, including British and American codebrakers  from both world wars, without success.  It is generally regarded as one of the most significant cases in the history of cryptography.

 

The Voynich Manuscript was purchased in 1961, by the antiquarian book dealer Hans Peter Krauss, for 24,500 dollars. Unable to find a buyer, he donated it to Yale University in 1969, where it remains to this day, unimaginatively registered as MS 408. Voynich himself, believed that the book would increase in value once it had been deciphered. However, it is precisely because the Voynich Manuscript remains an enigma, that it retains its unique fascination. If the day ever comes when the manuscript is decoded, a little bit of ancient mystification will  disappear forever. Historians and cryptographers may beg to differ, but I for one hope that day never comes.

 

Source:  voynich.nu