In 1912, the Collegio Romano (now known as the Pontifical Gregorian University) faced a financial crisis. Short on cash, the school decided to raise funds through a discreet sale of a portion of the holdings in its library. Polish-American book dealer Wilfrid M. Voynich acquired 30 of the texts, which included what has become one of the most studied and least understood books in history – a book now known as the Voynich Manuscript.
This 272-page hand-written book (of which only 240 pages remain) is filled with writing in an unknown language as well as beautiful illustrations. So far, no one has managed to decipher the text or ascertain its meaning.
The language in which the text is written is perhaps the most mysterious part of the entire book. There are over 170,000 unique glyphs (or “letters”) in the text, and an alphabet of approximately 20-30 glyphs would account for nearly the entire text. The glyphs are arranged into approximately 35,000 words of varying length that seem to follow some basic rules of spelling similar to other known languages – certain glyphs must appear in each word (as vowels do in English), some glyphs can never follow others, and some symbols may be doubled while others may not. Some words are quite common, while others appear sporadically or only once. But the letter frequency, word frequency, and word relationships are unlike those in any other known language – it is far more complicated than a simple substitution cipher.
The book is organized into 17 groups of 16 pages each, divided into six major sections of different style and subjects (as indicated by the illustrations) on matters that appear to be herbal, astronomical, biological, cosmological, pharmaceutical, and instructive. The relationship between the illustrations and the text is uncertain.
The book’s history is also somewhat uncertain. By the style of dress of people depicted in the illustrations, most historians believe the book was written between 1450 and 1520. The earliest reference to the book was in a letter written in 1639 by Georg Baresch, an obscure alchemist living in Prague, to Jesuit scholar Anathasius Kircher at Collegio Romano asking for assistance in deciphering “this Sphynx that had been taking up space uselessly in [his] library for many years.” Kircher acquired the book in 1666 after Baresch’s death.
There is no mention of the book for the next 200 years, although it was likely kept at the library of Collegio Romano. When the forces of King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy captured Rome in 1870, the college moved much of its library collection to the Italian countryside for protection.
After Voynich’s death in 1930, the book made its way through the hands of various book collectors and dealers who were unable to find a buyer for it. In 1969, the book was donated to Yale University.
Fortunately, Yale has made high-res scans of the entire Voynich Manuscript avaialble online. Click here to take your own tour of the book’s secrets.
Many theories abound about the book’s authorship, content, purpose, and language. My favorite one was postulated by the folks over at XKCD.
The illustrations are gorgeous! Hard to believe all those code breakers have not been able to decipher it. Thanks for the info eP.
It’s a beautiful thing. To not know. To wonder and know that no one knows. As a kid the statues of Easter Island amazed me in way similar but what a unique thing this is. For someone to create something so intricate and who’s meaning is not understood is exciting.
Everyone, i think i know the basic plan to resolve this book.
first remember the number of the vowels and the number of words
now theoratically that book was written in a language similar to english so we are talking abut 26 letters and 5 vowels, now devide the number of the uniqe letters u have and you will find a number.
that number is the number of people who wrote the book and coded it out.
i had a game with my friends, i invent a shape of alphabetic letters that ONLY me understand it and each one of my friends do the same, then we join all text which have the SAME text but DEFERMENT letters, so the only way to desyphir it is by joining all of us so each one explain his letters.
so what i am saying is dived the number of All letters on 26-hypothetically- and then divide the similar pattern letters on that number and there you go…..i am worst to explain but i hope i made my point clear, u can contact me if interested.