In the world of manuscripts and rare books, there are few texts as confounding as the Voynich Manuscript. The book’s author, language, purpose, and even meaning remain unknown to this day, despite being created in the early fifteenth century. The book is a medieval original, filled with drawings of plants, zodiacal diagrams, nude ladies in pools of liquid, and mysterious scripts that nobody has been able to decipher.
Source: newyorker
The Voynich Manuscript is named after Wilfrid Michael Voynich, the eccentric book dealer who purchased it in 1912. According to a letter by Johannes Marcus Marci, the book had been sold to Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II and was believed to be a work by Roger Bacon. However, the book’s history prior to Voynich’s ownership remains unclear, with theories ranging from alchemists to medical practitioners as possible authors.
Source: newyorker
The book’s Renaissance-era cover is made of a “limp vellum,” and it has resided at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University since 1969. Despite carbon dating proving the book’s age, it has remained one of the great unsolved puzzles of the past, inviting conspiracy theories, spiritualism, and cryptography.
Source: theartnewspaper
Yale’s new facsimile, edited by Raymond Clemens, is an opportunity to explore the book’s mysterious nature further. The book is filled with strange loops and prettily drawn letters forming an indecipherable language that scholars refer to as “Voynichese.” The first half of the book features drawings of plants that scholars call the “herbal” section, but none of them appear to be real. The second section features circular diagrams similar to those found in medieval zodiacal texts, and the final section appears to contain practical instructions and recipes.
Source: CNN
The Voynich Manuscript remains one of the most intriguing and mysterious texts of all time, with no known author or language. It is a medieval original that cannot be standardized, and it has captured the attention of historians, cryptographers, and conspiracy theorists for generations. It is a book that invites the reader to speculate and guess, making it a fitting monument to the era it came from.
Source: Reddit
For more mystery post, visit our website!