-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.voynich.nu/ Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.voynich.nu/";>The Voynich Manuscript</A> ----- Welcome to : The Voynich Manuscript Here you may find all you ever wanted to know about this MS, with one major exception: its solution. This mystery has not been solved and the epithet: The Most Mysterious Manuscript in the World still belongs to the Voynich MS. Should the solution ever be found, you will read about it here. This page contains an introductory overview, followed by the table of contents , an explanation of the conventions used at this site and the acknowledgments . Another introductory overview may be found in an on-line copy of an article by Landini and Zandbergen. Under construction Some pages are more complete than others. Updates and extensions are currently on-going. [home] [toc] [next] [prev] [pages] [gloss] [pics] [refs] History cumque in mea Bibliotheca Sphinx quaedam, Scripturae incognitorum characterum inutiliter occupasset locum, ... Ex pictura herbarum, quarum plurimus est in Codice numerus, imaginum diversarum, Astrorum, aliarumque rerum, faciem chymicorum arcanorum referentium, conjicio totum esse medicinalem; When, in 1639, the Prague citizen Georg Baresch wrote to the famous Jesuit scientist Athanasius Kircher that he owned a mysterious book which was written in an unknown script and profusely illustrated with pictures of plants, stars and alchemical secrets, he thought that Kircher would be able to decipher this book for him. He could not have guessed that not only was Kircher unable to do this, a long row of vastly more expert codebreakers were equally going to fail. The book has come down to us and even now, more than 360 years later, not a single word from its 234 pages can be understood. Nor was Baresch the first to attempt in vain to read the MS. Before him, various scientists which the Holy Roman emperor Rudolph II collected at his court may well have tried their hand. The book is now known as the Voynich manuscript (MS), after its (re)discoverer in 1912. The discovery of the MS by Wilfrid Voynich is best told by himself: In 1912 [...] I came across a most remarkable collection of preciously illuminated manuscripts. For many decades these volumes had lain buried in the chests in which I found them in an ancient castle in Southern Europe where the collection had apparently been stored in consequence of the disturbed political condition of Europe in the early part of the nineteenth century. [...] While examining the manuscripts, with a view to the acquisition of at least a part of the collection, my attention was especially drawn by one volume. It was such an ugly duckling compared with the other manuscripts, with their rich decorations in gold and colors, that my interest was aroused at once. I found that it was written entirely in cipher. Even a necessarily brief examination of of the vellum upon which it was written, the calligraphy, the drawings and the pigments suggested to me as the origin the latter part of the thirteenth century. The drawings indicated it to be an encyclopedic work on natural philosophy. [...] 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 unkown, so I included it among the manuscripts which I purchased from this collection. [...] two problems presented themselves - the text must be unravelled and the history of the manuscript must be traced. [...] It was not until some time after the manuscript came into my hands that I read the document bearing the date 1665 (or 1666), which was attached to the front cover. [...] This document, which is a letter from Joannes Marcus Marci to Athanasius Kircher making a gift of the manuscript to him, is of great significance [...] The Prague doctor and scientist Johannes Marcus Marci had been a faithful correspondent to Athanasius Kircher for 25 years, and it was shortly before his death that he sent the MS to Kircher. In the letter he explains how he had inherited the MS from a close friend, who had tried to decipher this MS till the very end of his life, and had also asked for Kircher's help. He further explains that he learned from one 'Dr. Raphael' how the MS was originally bought by the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II of Bohemia (1552-1612) for 600 ducats, and that it was believed at that time (at least by Rudolf) that the MS was written by Roger Bacon. (Click here to view the letter from Marci to Kircher (with English translation)) Voynich wanted to have the mysterious manuscript deciphered and provided photographic copies to a number of experts. However, despite some spectacular claims, none of the proposed solutions can be substantiated with a complete translation. In 1961 the book was bought by H. P. Kraus (a New York book antiquarian) for the sum of $24,500. He later valued it at $160,000 but was unable to find a buyer. Finally, in 1969 he donated it to Yale University, where it remains to date at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library with catalogue number MS 408. (Click here to read more about the history of the Voynich MS) What does the manuscript look like? The Vonich MS is a compact parchment codex of 6 by 9 inches, with 116 vellum leaves, of which 102 remain. Its limp vellum cover is blank: it does not indicate any title or author. The MS is written in an elegant, but otherwise unknown script. The text appears to be composed of 'words', and for a large part of the MS the text seems to be arranged in short paragraphs. (click (>> IMAGE:) here to view a close-up of part folio 3v, or here to see a few more pages) Almost all pages of the MS contain illustrations. Illustrations of similar nature are grouped together in the MS, and thus one may tentatively identify the following sections in the MS (based on these illustrations): * a herbal section, with drawings of plants, most of which are unidentifiable or even phantasmagorical * an astronomical section, with illustrations of Sun, Moon, stars and zodiac symbols * a so-called biological section, which contains some bewildering "anatomical" drawings with small human (feminine) figures populating systems of tubes transporting liquids * a cosmological section, with mostly circular drawings of an as yet unexplained nature * a pharmaceutical section, so called because it has drawings of containers, next to which various small parts of plants (leaves, roots) have been aligned * a recipes section, which consists of many short paragraphs, each accompanied by the drawing of a star in the margin. (Click here to read more about the illustrations in the Voynich MS) What does the Voynich MS say? Since the MS has not been translated, nobody knows what it says. It is assumed that the text relates to the illustrations, but this is not certain. There have been many suggestions about the historical importance of this MS, ranging between totally opposite extremes. These include: * early discoveries and inventions by the 13th century friar Roger Bacon, witten in a very complicated code. * nonsense, written by a medieval italian quack, to impress his clientele * a rare prayer book from the Cathars, not destroyed by the inquisition, written in a pidgin version of a Germanic/Romance creole. * meaningless strings of characters, cleverly composed by John Dee and/or his associate Kelly for monetary gain This is by no means a complete list! Most of the proposed solutions of the Voynich MS have been disproved, and the following questions about it remain unanswered: * Is it plain language, encrypted language, constructed language or meaningless drivel? * If there is an underlying meaning, in which language is it? (A now lost language cannot even be excluded.) * Does the text relate to the illustrations? Table of Contents 1 Introduction 2 The history of the Voynich MS 2.1 Its origin: who, where, when? 2.2 The history of the MS after the purchase by Rudolf II 2.3 The history of its decipherment 3 Appearance of the MS 3.1 The illustrations 3.2 The text 4 Analysis of the Voynich MS text 4.1 Transcription 4.2 Qualitative studies of the text 4.3 Quantitative studies of the text 5 Reference section 5.1 Layout of the MS: quires, folios 5.2 Page by page description of the MS 5.3 Glossary of terms 5.4 Picture gallery 5.5 Biographies 5.6 References 5.7 Related web sites About these pages The layout of the pages at this web site has been kept simple, in order to keep the loading time of a page to a minimum. For the same reason, there are not many in-line graphics. Usually, when an illustration is available which is not essential for the understanding of the text, the picture can be made visible by clicking on a link which starts with the word: IMAGE. In the text, there are many links to other pages at this site or at other (external) sites. Links to external sites may be distinguished by the double caret ">>" which precede them. Consequently, images at external sites are preceded by >> IMAGE. Some standard links are included on almost all pages: [home] to return to the starting point of this site (i.e. this page) [toc] to go to the table of contents (on this page) [next] to go to the next page, according to the table of contents [prev] to go to the previous page, according to the table of contents [pages] to go to the page-by-page overview of the Voynich MS. [gloss] to go to the glossary of terms [pics] to go to the picture gallery [refs] to go to the bibliography / references / web sites page A few pages are 'disconnected' from the main flow of the text at this site. On these pages, the reader is advised to use the browser's BACK button to return to the point from which this page was reached. The [home] and [toc] links are usually provided on these pages as a minimum. Occasionally, cipher text from the Voynich MS is represented at this site. Generally, this will be done using the EVA transcription alphabet, which is explained at the >> EVMT web site. The original character shapes my appear in your browser if you have installed the True Type font: "Voynich EVA Hand 1", available at the same site. You may verify this here: if the following line appears in the Voynich MS script, the font has been properly installed. fachys ykal ar ataiin If it says "fachys ykal ar ataiin" (EVA transcription of the start of the Voynich MS) the font has not been installed on your computer. Acknowledgment This site contains both 'old' and 'new' material. The creation of an interest group which communicates via a mailing list on the internet forms the natural dividing line between the two. For most of the 'old' material the author is heavily indebted to D'Imperio, Voynich, Manly, Tiltman, Kahn and Brumbaugh (in rough order of importance), whose publications are listed in the page of references. Most of the 'new' material presented in these pages originates from the members of the aforementioned mailing list. Contributions have been included from (this time in alphabetical order): R. Firth, J. Gillogly, J. Grove, J. Guy, G. Landini, D. Latham, M. McCarthy, M. Perakh, R. Prinke, J. Reeds, M. Roe, D. Stallings, J. Stolfi, T. Takahashi, and the author of these pages. Valuable contributions from these and other members of this interest group still need to be included. Whenever the author of a statement or theory is known, it will be indicated with the notation (<watsisname). Additional acknowledgments for contributions on specific topics may be found on the pages concerned. The counter at this site is managed by: Disclaimer This is not an 'official' site of the Voynich MS, in any sense. The information presented here is mainly derived from the above-mentioned sources, but is naturally affected by the interests or personal views of the author. I may have missed some attributions of theories or statements to their originators. For such cases, apologies are offered, and correction promised, in advance. This site does not belong to the Beinecke library of Yale University, nor does it reflect their opinion. Ren� Zandbergen [home] [toc] [next] [prev] [pages] [gloss] [pics] [refs] Copyright Ren� Zandbergen, 2000 Comments, questions, suggestions: please let me have your feedback. I may be contacted via rene at voynich dot nu Latest update: 2000/08/2 <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. 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