World Mysteries - Voynich Manuscript - Mystery of Voynich Manuscript

World Mysteries - Voynich Manuscript - Mystery of Voynich Manuscript

The Voynich manuscript was written in a language that men through the centuries have tried to decode to no avail. The only idea anyone has of its origin are the drawings found on various pages.

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World Mysteries - Voynich Manuscript - Mystery of Voynich Manuscript

What is the Voynich Manuscript?

The message inside "the world's most mysterious medieval manuscript" has eluded cryptographers, mathematicians and linguists for over a century.
And for many, the so-called Voynich book is assumed to be a hoax.
But a new study, published in the journal Plos One, suggests the manuscript may, after all, hold a genuine message.
Scientists say they found linguistic patterns they believe to be meaningful words within the text.
Whether or not it really does have any meaningful information, though, is much debated by amateurs and professionals alike.
It was even investigated by a team of prominent code breakers during WWII who successfully cracked complex encrypted enemy messages, but they failed to find meaning in the text.
The book has been dated to the early 1400s, but it largely disappeared from public record until 1912 when an antique book dealer called Wilfrid Voynich bought it amongst a number of second-hand publications in Italy.

The Voynich Manuscript is a cipher manuscript.

Scientific text in an unidentified language, in cipher, possibly written in central Europe in the 15th century.

World Mysteries - Voynich Manuscript - Mystery of Voynich Manuscript

It is abundantly illustrated with awkward coloured drawings of::

• unidentified plants; 
• what seems to be herbal recipes; 
• tiny naked women frolicking in bathtubs connected by intricate plumbing looking more like anatomical parts than hydraulic contraptions; 
• mysterious charts in which some have seem astronomical objects seen through a telescope, some live cells seen through a microscope; 
• charts into which you may see a strange calendar of zodiacal signs, populated by tiny naked people in rubbish bins.

No one really knows the origins of the manuscript. The experts believe it is European  They believe it was written between the 15th and 17th centuries.

From a piece of paper which was once attached to the Voynich manuscript, and which is now stored in one of the boxes belonging with the Voynich manuscript holdings of the Beinecke library, it is known that the manuscript once formed part of the private library of Petrus Beckx S.J., 22nd general of the Society of Jesus.

Parts of the Manuscript.

The Voynich Manuscript is about 6 by 9inches. Some believe it to be a book about alchemy. It contains the equivalent of 246 quarto pages, but may have originally contained not less than 262 pages. 
There are 212 with text and drawings, 33 pages contain text only, and the last page contains the Key. The text is written in an enciphered script, and the drawings are colored in red, blue, brown, yellow, and green. 

The contents of the Manuscript are divided up into 5categories:

• The first and largest section contains 130 pages of plant drawings with accompanying text, and is called the Botanical division.
• The second contains 26 pages of drawings, obviously astrological and astronomical in nature.
• The third section contains 4 pages of text and 28 drawings, which would appear to be biological in nature.
• The fourth division contains 34 pages of drawings, which are pharmaceutical in nature. 
• The last section of the Manuscript contains 23pages of text arranged in short paragraphs, each beginning with a star. The last page (the 24th of this division) contains the Key only.