Imagine a "Guide" written in an unknown alphabet, in an unknown language, at an unknown date and place.
Could such a book be read? Could one retrieve the information it contains, if any? This is not a trivial question and it has baffled historians and scientists alike for most part of this century, in the case of a particular medieval document, called "the Voynich Manuscript". The Voynich MS is named for one Wilfrid M. Voynich, an American rare-book collector who came across it in 1912 in the library of the Villa Mondragone, a Jesuit college in Frascati, near Rome (Italy). Recognizing the manuscript as an unusual and potentially valuable artifact, Voynich purchased it and brought it back with him to America. He circulated photographic copies of the pages to scholars he thought might have a shot at deciphering it: paleographers, cryptologists, historians, linguists, philologists, even astronomers and botanists. However, despite the efforts of many of them, the book remains unread.
The manuscript counted at least 116 folios, of which 104 remain. The folio size is 6 by 9 inches, but some folios are two or three times that size and are folded. There is one large composite of six times this size (18 by 18 inches). Both the illustrations and the script of the manuscript are unique. As long as the script cannot be read, the illustrations are the only clue about the nature of the book. According to these illustrations, the manuscript would appear to be a scientific book, mostly an illustrated herbal (containing unidentified and fantastic plants) with some additional sections:
1) an astronomical section (with most zodiac symbols),
2) a biological section (with some pseudo-anatomical drawings and human figures),
3) a cosmological section (with esoteric geometrical figures),
4) a pharmaceutical section (with vases and parts of "plants") and
5) a recipes section (mostly short paragraphs).
Maybe you'll find the solution to this most mysterious linguistic puzzle in the world?
The final Curious © phrase:
“Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good”
( Samuel Johnson )
