The mysterious Voynich manuscript

Voynich manuscript is one of the mysterious manuscripts that is not yet decoded. The writer of this book and its purpose is still a mystery, and so as expected there are many theories woven around this. Various assumptions for the purpose of this book include:
  • Early discoveries and inventions by the 13th century written in encrypted form.
  • Nonsense wrote by a medieval quack, to impress leaders.
  • A rare prayer book not destroyed by the inquisition, written in the ancient script not known.
  • Meaningless strings of characters cleverly composed for monetary gain.
This book is preserved in Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Carbon dating determines its existence came in the 13th century.

Dozens of medievalists and cryptologists are studying this book every year but are not yet able to decipher it. It is also believed that the content of this book was ciphered by retouching text and drawings.

The content of this book consists of scripts with the illustration of plants, stars, female expressions and chemical secrets. Though the content of this book is well organized, the annoying point is that this 234 pages book has an empty cover i.e. neither author name nor the book title.


Encoding of this script is done to some extent and it is believed that below alphabetic format is used:

Voynich Manuscript

The whole book is available in digital form and can be explored here. This is one of the sample pages of this book:

Voynich Manuscript

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