In 1912, Wilfrid M. Voynich, an antique book dealer, bought a number of mediaeval manuscripts from Italian Jesuits. Among these was an illustrated manuscript codex of 234 pages, written in an unknown script. The manuscript contains many illustrations of herbs and plants and a number of pages show naked women bathing. It was thought that the book might have been a medical book containing information about herbal remedies with recipes in the second half of the book, which contains no illustrations. The plants remain unidentified to this day and appear to be imaginary.
a section of script and illustration from the Voynich manuscript
The text contains features found in no known language: for example, some common words may be repeated two or three times in succession. It also contains complex, subtle regularities which appear beyond the scope of any ancient hoaxer, which is why it was thought that the manuscript was written in code. However, almost 100 years later, despite numerous attempts by experienced cryptologists, the script still has not been deciphered.
The volume appears to date back to the 15th century and it now reposes in the Beinecke Rare book library of Yale University, having been donated by the previous owner, H. P. Kraus, in 1969.
more of the script and another illustration from the Voynich manuscript
The latest theory, proposed earlier this year by Gordon Rugg, a computer scientist teaching at Keele University, near Manchester, England, is that the book could be a clever hoax. He proposes that the book could have been produced at the rate of a couple of hours per page, using a Cardan Grille, a device first described in 1550 by Girolamo Cardano, which can be used to produce nonsense from tables of words, prefixes and suffixes.
You can view all the pages of the Voynich MS at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library – just enter “Voynich” into the search machine. The images are available in several resolutions, click on the one you wish to see. It is worth a look.
