Manuscript of Voynich

The handwritten of Voynich is an old book writes using a unknown Alphabet, and whose subject remains also a Mystère. Its contents do not have for the not deciphered moment. According to the estimates most usually allowed, he would have been written between 1450 and 1520.

The book draws its name from one of its former owners, Wilfrid Mr. Voynich, which acquired it in 1912 near the Jésuites of Frascati, a city close to Rome. In 1962, Hans Kraus makes a description of the manuscript on its catalog of sale.

The manuscript is preserved at the Bibliothèque Beinecke of the Université Yale. According to recent work of Gordon Rugg, it could be a question of a trickery. The mystery remains whole as for the true nature of this manuscript since the most various theses clash.

The entirety of the manuscript was published for the first time by a French editor, Jean-Claude Gawsewitch, in October 2005, so that the general public can finally have access as well to the mysterious text as with the enigmatic images.

Description

The book contains 234 15 cm broad pages and 23 cm in height. The manuscript is in Vélin (skin of a very young animal) and 42 pages are missing according to the pagination. It seems that during its acquisition by Voynich in 1912, the book was already incomplete. A goose feather was used for the text and the contour of the figures. Several colors were affixed on the figures in a sometimes coarse way. It is thought that these additions of painting were done after the drafting of the text.

Illustrations

The illustrations in the manuscript give few indications on its exact contents but make it possible to identify a half-dozen of sections devoted to different subjects with a style which varies. Except for the last section whose contents are entirely textual, almost all the pages contain at least an illustration. The sections and their contemporary name are:

Herbarium : each page contains a plant, sometimes two, accompanied by paragraphs. The whole is presented according to the European style of the Herbier S of the time. Certain parts are enlargings and versions improved of the drafts present in the part pharmacology (see below).

Astronomy : diagrams of stars like suns, the moons and stars suggest that the contents relate to the Astrologie and the Astronomie. A series of 12 diagrams represents the symbols of the Constellation S of the Zodiaque (two fish for the constellation of Poisson, a Taureau, a soldier with a crossbow for the Sagittarius, etc). Each symbol is surrounded by exactly 30 female figures, the majority naked, which carry a star with a legend. The two last pages of this section, the Aquarius and the Capricorn, were lost. As for the Ram and the Bull, the pages which are devoted to them are divided into two pairs of diagrams with 15 stars each one. Some of these drawings are on pages which can be unfolded.

Biology or Balneotherapy : a dense and continuous text strewn with drawings which represent mainly nude women bathing in basins or swimming in an elaborate network of tubes. The form of part of this Plomberie makes think of Organe S. Some of these women carry crowns.

Cosmology : pie-charts with the obscure significance. This section also has folders. One of them is spread out over six pages and contains charts of 9 “islands” connected by ways with the presence of Château X and what one estimates to be a Volcan.

Pharmacology : several drawings of plants with a legend. The figures describe parts of plants (roots, sheets, etc) what makes think of a guide for a Apothicaire. Objects in the margins resemble pots used by the pharmacists of the time, the pages are sparse with only some paragraphs of text.

Receipts : many rather short paragraphs, each one being marked of a chip in the shape of flower or star.

Text

The text is clearly written from left to right, with a somewhat unequal margin on the right. The longest sections are divided into paragraphs with sometimes “chips” in the margin of left. There is no obvious sign of punctuation. The Ductus (the order and direction according to which one traces the features which compose the letter) is fluid what lets think that the scribe included/understood what he wrote at the time of the drafting. The manuscript does not give the impression which the characters were affixed one by one, characteristic which appears a complicated Chiffrement in the case of. The writing is not however always careful: by place, the author must tighten the line spaces for lack of place. This is particularly visible in the part “receipts” with a corrugated text which indicates that the scribe was probably not a professional .

The text includes/understands more than 170.000 Glyphe S, normally separate from/to each other by fine interstices. The majority of these glyphes are written with one or two features. The experts remain divided concerning the alphabet used because some of the glyphes are similar. It is thought however that the alphabet of the manuscript of Voynich includes/understands between 20 and 30 signs. Certain unusual characters appear here and there, one counts a dozen this type of it.

Broader spacings approximately divide the text into 35.000 words, of variable size. It seems that the text follows rules Phonétique S or orthographical: certain characters must appear in each word (following the example French vowels), certain characters never follow others from there, others can appear in double.

A frequential Analyze reveals characteristics similar to the natural languages. For example, the frequency of the words follows the Loi of Zipf and the Entropie (quantity of information) of each word rises to 10 bits what is similar to the texts in English or in Latin. Certain words appear only in precise parts or on some pages, others are disseminated in all the manuscript. The repetitions within the legends of the figures are rare. In the section “herbarium”, the first word of each page does not appear nowhere elsewhere, it could thus act of the name of the illustrated plant.

On other points, the language of the manuscript of Voynich differs appreciably from the European languages. For example, there is practically no word with more than 10 symbols, and almost any word of less than three letters. The distributions of the letters inside a word are strange: certain characters appear only at the beginning of a word, others only at the end and a part does not appear that in the center of the mot. Such a provision finds in the Arabic alphabet but not in the Cyrillic alphabet, Greek or Latin.

The text seems to be more redundant than the majority of the European languages, certain words appear sometimes three times after (in French, that would be equivalent to and and ). The words which are different on only one letter are present with an unusual frequency.

History

As the alphabet of the manuscript does not resemble any other and that the text is always indecipherable, the only signs reflecting its seniority and its origin are the illustrations, especially the dresses and the hairstyles of the characters, like two castles appearing in the diagrams. They are characteristic of the European style and, basing itself on this fact, the experts date the book over one period ranging between 1450 and 1520. This evaluation is consolidated by complementary indices.

The official owner oldest of this manuscript was certain a Georg Baresch, a alchemist which lived with Prague at the 17th century. Apparently Baresch was as perplexed as us today in connection with this “Sphinx” which “took place unnecessarily in its library” during so much of years. Baresch learned that Athanasius Kircher, a scientist Jesuit resulting from the Roman Collège, had published a dictionary Copte (Ethiopian) and deciphered the Egyptian hiéroglyphes. It sent to him a copy of part of the manuscript with Rome (by twice), asking indices. Its letter intended for Kircher going back to 1639, which was found recently by Rene Zandbergen, is the first allusion to the manuscript found hitherto.

It is not known if Kircher answered but it would seem that it was interested enough in the subject to try to acquire the book, that Baresch refused to show apparently. After the death of Baresch, the manuscript passed to his/her friend Jan Marek Marci (Johannes Marcus Marci), then headmaster with the Université Charles of Prague, which sent the book to Kircher, his/her old friend and correspondent. The letter of explanation of Marci (1666) is still united with the manuscript. The letter claims inter alia the manuscript was, in the beginning, bought for 600 Taler S of gold by the Emperor Rodolphe II which thought that the work was the fruit of the work of Roger Bacon.

One loses then the trace of the book during 200 years, but according to any probability it was preserved, as the remainder of the correspondence of Kircher, in the library of the Roman college (maintaining the Gregorian pontifical Université). It probably remained there until the invasion of the city by the troops of Victor-Emmanuel II of Italy, which annexed the Papal States in 1870. The new Italian government decided to confiscate many goods of the Church, in particular the library of the Roman college. According to the searchs for Xavier Ceccaldi and others, many books had been transferred to haste right before these events in the private libraries from its faculties. These last had been free of the confiscations. The letters of Kircher were among these books and, apparently, the manuscript of Voynich also, considering which it still carried the Ex-libris of Petrus Beckx, director of the order Jesuit and headmaster of the university at the same time.

The private library of Beckx was moved with the Villa Mondragone, Frascati, a large de luxe hotel close to Rome, bought by the Society of Jesus in 1866.

Towards 1912, the Roman college decided to sell, very discreetly, some of its goods. Wilfrid Voynich bought 30 manuscripts, among which that which bears its name now. After its death in 1931, its widow Ethel Lilian Voynich inherited the manuscript. She died in 1960 and left the manuscript to her close friend, Miss Anne the Nile. In 1961, Anne the Nile sold the book to the merchant of old books Hans P. Kraus. Incompetent to find a purchaser, Kraus made of it gift with the Université Yale in 1969.

Assumptions on the author of the manuscript

The paternity of the manuscript of Voynich was the subject of a debate opposing the historical aspects and the scientific reports. Several names were proposed. One will retain here most popular.

Roger Bacon

The letter of 1665 dispatched by Marci for submission to Kircher indicates that, according to Raphael Mnishovsky, a close friend, the book had been bought by Rodolphe II of the Holy roman Empire. The missive suggests that Rodolphe (or perhaps Mnishovsky) thought that the author was the English philosopher and alchemist Roger Bacon (1214-1294).

Even if Marci known as “to express doubts” about this assertion, this thesis were taken with serious by Voynich which tried to better validate it of sound. The conviction of Voynich enormously influenced the attempts of analysis and deciphering which followed. The American William Newbold worked during two years on the manuscript and concluded that the author was Bacon, but he died in 1926 and could not defend its theory which was passably criticized thereafter.

Experts familiar with work of Bacon on the occasion to examine the manuscript and rejected this assumption categorically. It still should be noted that Raphael Mnishovsky dies in 1644 and that the purchase of the book by Rodolphe II took place certainly before its abdication in 1611 is 55 years before the letter of Marci.

John Dee

The assumption that Roger Bacon was the author led Voynich to conclude that the person who sold the manuscript of Voynich to Rudolf could be only John Dee. Dee was a mathematician and an astrologer of the court of the queen Elisabeth I {{Re}}, known to hold a large collection of manuscripts of Bacon.

Dee and its Médium Edward Kelley had lived into Bohemian for several years when they hoped to sell their services with the Emperor. However, the diaries méticuleusement held by Dee do not mention that and make this assumption rather incredible. In any case, if the author of the manuscript of Voynich is not Bacon, the relation with Dee disappears. In addition, Dee itself can have written it and to have launched the rumor according to which it was originally about a work of Bacon. Dee would have acted of the kind in the hope to sell later on the manuscript.

Edward Kelley

The companion of Dee to Prague, Edward Kelley, was an alchemist who left the ordinary one. He had announced his capacity to transform copper into gold by the means of a secret powder which he had discovered in the tomb of a bishop to the Wales. He also affirmed to be able to call upon angels by touching a crystal ball and to have long conversations with them. Dee brought back these facts in handwritten documents. The language of the angels was the énochien, according to Énoch, the biblical father of Mathusalem. According to the legend, Kelley would have gone on a journey with the angels and would have explained its tour in the delivers of Énoch. Several people suggested that as Kelley had invented the book of Enoch to mislead Dee, it could also have manufactured the manuscript of Voynich with an aim of selling it with the emperor (who remunerated already Kelley for his supposed talents of alchemist). However, if Roger Bacon is not the author of the work then the bond between Kelley and the manuscript of Voynich is quite as weak as that relating to Dee.

Wilfrid Voynich

Voynich was suspecté to have manufactured itself the structure which supports its name. As a merchant of old books, it had of the means and knowledge necessary to invent a manuscript wrongfully allotted to Roger Bacon. Such a book would have represented a fortune and pecuniary reasons could have justified the creation of this forgery. This possibility seems to be able to be isolated. The letter of Baresch intended for Kircher going back to 1639, which was found recently by Rene Zandbergen, is the first allusion to the manuscript found hitherto and it is extremely improbable that W. Voynich was informed of it.

Jacobus Sinapius

A reproduction Photostatique of the first page of the manuscript, realized by Voynich towards 1921, watch certain almost unperceivable annotations which had been unobtrusive. The text could be raised using chemicals, and let appear the name of Jacobj `has Tepenec . It would be about Jakub Horcicky de Tepenec, Jacobus Sinapius in Latin. This specialist in herb trade was the personal doctor of the emperor Rodolphe II and also dealt with his gardens. Voynich and other people after him, concluded according to this “signature” that Jacobus had the work before Baresch. This discovery reinforced the history of Raphael Mnishovsky. Others affirmed that Jacobus itself could be the author of the manuscript.

A doubt rests on this track: the unobtrusive signature of the manuscript does not correspond to the other known signatures of Jacobus like that discovered by Jan Hurich in a document. It is completely plausible that this annotation on the right page f1 was the work of a bookseller or any nobody who on the occasion to study or to have the book. At the time of Kircher, Jacobus is the only alchemist or doctor of the court of Rodolphe II to which one devoted a whole page in the books of history Jesuits. Tycho Brahe for example is hardly mentioned. The application of the chemicals so much degraded the vellum which the signature is hardly visible. It is possible that Voynich voluntarily worked and damaged this signature with an aim of reinforcing the theory allotting paternity to Roger Bacon, while preventing possible counter-evaluations.

Jan Marci

Jan Marci met Kircher whereas it was with the head of a delegation sent by the Charles university in Rome in 1683. During twenty-seven years which followed, the two scholars exchanged a bulky scientific mail. The purpose of the voyage of Marci was to ensure the independence of the Charles university with respect to the Jesuits. Those managed the college Clementinum, which was a rival for the university. In spite of these efforts, the two establishments were amalgamated under the control of the Jesuits.

It is in this religious and political context tended that Marci could have manufactured the letters of Baresch and later the manuscript of Voynich with an aim of being avenged for Kircher, favorable to the Jesuitism. The personality of Marci and its knowledge seem to be compatible with the realization of the work. Kircher was convinced to hold the knowledge, it was more known for its errors and its frankness that for its alleged genius. Kircher was thus an easy target and it had been already made ridicule on another occasion. The orientalist Andreas Mueller had concocté to him a manuscript be-saying originating in Egypt, the contents were in fact incoherent and voluntarily without any significance. Mueller required of Kircher to make a translation of it. Kircher returned a complete translation then, which did not fail to discredit it.

It should be noted that the only evidence of the existence of Georg Baresch is three letters sent to Kircher: one by Baresch (1639) and two by Marci (approximately a year later). The correspondence between Marci and Kircher is completed in 1665, at the same moment as the letter concerning the manuscript of Voynich. However, all this thesis rests on the hatred of Marci with regard to the Jesuits. This feeling is only pure conjecture: Marci was an enthusiastic catholic, he had studied itself to become Jesuit and little before its death in 1667, he was named honorary member of the order.

Raphael Mnishovsky

Raphael Mnishovsky, the friend of Marci, was itself a Cryptographe (inter alia) and had apparently invented a method of Chiffrement which he said inviolable (towards 1618). Its knowledge of the figures of course fed the suspicions about it. The manuscript of Voynich could have been a demonstration of the system of Mnishovsky. Baresch would have thus been its “guinea-pig” for this experiment of cryptanalyse. After the publication of the book of Kircher on the Copte, Raphael would have thought that to mislead a Jesuit would have been more gratifiant that Baresch. He would have thus asked the alchemist to come into contact with Kircher by justifying it thanks to a history on Roger Bacon assembled of all parts. No concrete proof however came to support this assumption.

Anthony Ascham

In the Forties, Doctor Leonell Strong, researcher in cancerology and cryptologist at his lost hours, tried to decipher the manuscript of Voynich. Strong affirmed that the solution of the manuscript of Voynich rested on a “strange double system with arithmetic progressions of a multiple alphabet”. It ensured that the plaintext corresponded to a manuscript of the 16th century by the English author Anthony Ascham. Ascham had published has Little Herbal in 1550. If the manuscript of Voynich contains a section indeed resembling very strongly an herbarium, the theory of Strong does not explain how Ascham could have acquired cryptographic and literary knowledge necessary to write the manuscript.

Multiple authors

Prescott Currier, a cryptographe of the US Navy which worked on the manuscript in the years 1970, observed that the pages of the part herbarium could be separate in two groups, has and B , with each statistical property and of the different writings. He concludes from it that the manuscript of Voynich was the fruit of the work of several authors using of the dialects and different conventions of orthography but dividing the same manuscript. However, of the recent studies in question these conclusions called. An expert in writing which examined the book saw only one writing in the whole of the manuscript. When all the parts are examined, one can note a gradual transition from the style between the various layers of the manuscript, with the two groups has and B located by Currier like ends of this evolution. Therefore, its observations are probably rather the result of the writing of these two sections of the herbarium at very different periods.

Assumptions on the contents and the goal of the manuscript

The general impression released by the manuscript suggests that it was to be used as Pharmacopée or of reference for medieval medicine. The presence of strange illustrations fed the most insane theories about the origins of the work, its contents and the sought-after goal by the author. It would be impossible to describe the whole of the evoked possibilities here on this subject but some deserve to be mentioned:

Herbarium

Plants represented

The first section of the book is obviously devoted to the vegetable kingdom with cards comprising of the illustrations of plants. Only some specimens were formally identified in spite of research in the other herbaria of the time. Among the plants easiest to recognize, one finds a thought violet and a Fougère. These diagrams of the part “biology” of the manuscript are finer versions of those present in the part “pharmacology”. The missing zones were filled by a multitude of improbable details. In fact, the majority of these plants seem to be hybrids: roots of a species connected to the stem and sheets of another and finally of the flowers coming from a third species.

Sunflowers

Brumbaugh thought that one of the illustrations represented a Helianthus annuus , the sunflower which we know nowadays and who came from America. This indication would make it possible to locate with more precise details the date on which was manufactured the manuscript. But the resemblance to the real plant is limited, especially if the figure is compared with wild species. Moreover, the scale of the draft not being known, it is difficult to affirm that it is indeed of a sunflower and not a similar species of the vast family of the Asteraceae (the Artichaut, the daisy or the Pissenlit) which is present everywhere in the world.

Astrological herbarium

The astrological considerations often played a great part in the gathering of grasses, the bleeding and other widespread medical procedures at the time supposed drafting of the text (see, for example, books of Nicholas Culpeper). However, separately the obvious zodiacaux signs and a diagram seeming to represent planets, nobody was still able to interpret the illustrations by means of the known astrological traditions (European or different).

False herbarium of charlatan

Sergio Toresella, specialist Italian in the herbaria, proposed that the work would be an imitation of medical book including/understanding various sections (astrology, botany, balneotherapy…) and carrying a voluntarily mysterious text, used by a charlatan to impress his customers. He thinks that he was produced in the North of Italy, perhaps the area of Venice.

Alchemy

Comparison with the books of alchemy

The basins and the pipes of the part biology seem to indicate a relation with the Alchimie, which would be useful if the book contained instructions concerning the preparation of medical components. However, the books of alchemy of this period share the same pictorial language where the processes and materials are represented by specific images (eagle, toad, man in a tomb, couple with the bed, etc) or of the standard textual symbols (circle with a cross, etc). None of those appears in a convincing way in the manuscript of Voynich.

Elixir of long life

The manuscript of Voynich could be a medieval receipt to create the Philosopher's stone, i.e. the elixir of long life. The vulgar alchemical bonds (clamping plates, eagle, etc) do not have a direction here. the representations are clear. Fluids of young virgins of which one recovers “vital moods”, the concoction containing mysterious, rare or unknown judicious plants being, and the optimal astrological position contribute simultaneously to the success of the elixir of long life.

Alchemical herbarium

Sergio Toresella, expert in old herbaria, showed that the manuscript of Voynich could be a alchemical herbarium which would have nothing to do with alchemy but would be a pseudo herbarium illustrated by images invented by a doctor charlatan to impress his customers. Apparently, a small family industry existed at that time, producing this kind of literature some share in the north of the Italy. Nevertheless these books are rather different from the manuscript of Voynich in the style and the format and are written in current language.

Microscopes and telescopes

A circular drawing in the astronomical part watch an object of irregular form with curved extensions, of which some were interpreted like images of Galaxie, visible only using a Télescope. Other drawings were interpreted like representative of the cells seen through a Microscope. That would suggest a work more modern than the supposed origins of the manuscript could not allow it. This resemblance must however be considered with a certain circumspection: an attentive examination shows indeed that the central part of this “galaxy” resembles a water puddle pool rather.

Assumptions on the language

Several assumptions were advanced concerning the “language” used by the manuscript of Voynich.

Coding letter-with-letter

According to this assumption, the manuscript of Voynich is a text written in a European language, but whose direction was returned hidden intentionally while coding it by means of a Chiffrement. This algorithm operates letter by letter, and produces a text using “the alphabet” of the manuscript of Voynich.

It is this working hypothesis which was used in the majority of the attempts at deciphering carried out at the 20th century, of which one was led by the Cryptologue William F. Friedman to the head of an abstract team of NSA to the beginning of the Années 1950.

Simple codings by substitutions can be excluded because they are too easy to break. The efforts thus went on the codings polyalphabetic, invented by Alberti in the years 1460. The Chiffre of Vigenère, which belongs to this family, could have been used and reinforced by the use of null or equivalent symbols, the rearrangement of letters, the false cuts of word, etc

Certain people worked out a theory according to which the vowels had been removed before coding. Several solutions of deciphering using this theory were proposed, but none was largely accepted: the texts thus deciphered depend on as well conjectures as, by using these techniques, one could reconstitute any message starting from a symbol string taken randomly.

The main argument in favor of the assumption of coding letter-with-letter is that the use of a strange alphabet by a European author is explained with difficulty, except in the will to mask information. Indeed, Roger Bacon knew the techniques of coding, and estimated manuscript dates it coincides roughly with the birth of the Cryptologie as a systematic discipline.

However, a coding polyalphabetic should normally destroy the statistical characteristics “natural” observed in the manuscript of Voynich, such as the Loi of Zipf. Moreover, although codings polyalphabetic were invented towards 1467, the alternatives became popular only at the 16th century, i.e. after the estimated date of the manuscript of Voynich.

Coding by dictionary

According to this theory, the “words” of the manuscript of Voynich would be coded so that they should be found thanks to a dictionary or a table of coding. The principal concordant index is that the structuring and the statistical distribution of these words are similar to the Roman numbers. Those would be a natural choice for the code used. The coded books are however viable only for short messages because of their obstruction and their not very convenient use: each writing or reading of a word requires a course of the repertory. Other theories call into question “the obviousness” of the choice of the Roman numbers.

Visual coding

James Finn proposed in his book Pandora' S Hope (2004) that the manuscript of Voynich would be in fact of visually coded Hebrew. Once the correctly transcribed letters of Voynich, with EVA like guide, much of words can be read as of the Hebrew words which are repeated with distortions to disturb the reader. For example, the word AIN of the manuscript is a Hebrew word for “eye” and it also appears in other forms like “aiin” or “aiiin”, to give the impression which they are different words whereas in fact they are identical. An argument in favor of this method is that she would explain the lack of success of the other researchers basing their methods on more mathematical approaches. The principal argument against the assumption of visual coding is that induces one overpowering workload for the deciphering of the text which induces multiple visual interpretations. It would be difficult to separate the direction from the text of origin of its interpretation and from the influence of the “decoder”.

Stéganographie

This theory proposes the assumption that a good part of the text does not have any direction but dissimulates the information hidden in details passing unperceived. For example, the second letter of each word or the number of letters of each line can have a significance, the remainder being useless. This named technique Stéganographie is very old and was described, inter alia, by Johannes Trithemius in 1499. It was also suggested deciphering the text thanks to an unspecified grid of Cardan.

This theory is complex to prove (one can obtain a convincing result without to have found the good method) but also to refute, since this kind of code can be arbitrarily difficult “to break”. An argument against this assumption is that the aspect “text quantified” of the whole of the manuscript goes against the main objective of the steganography, namely to hide the existence even secret message.

Others suggested that the significance of the text would be coded in the length or the shape of the feature of writing. Examples exist of such a contemporary method at that time, using the form of the characters ( Italic against right ) for hiding information. However, after examination, the manuscript of Voynich seems well to be written of a natural writing, influenced by the reliefs of the surface of Vélin.

Exotic natural language

The linguist Jacques Guy suggested that the manuscript of Voynich could be an exotic natural language, usually writes with an invented alphabet. The structure of the words is in fact rather similar to the languages of the East and Central Asia, mainly the sino-Tibetan (Chinese, Burmese Tibetan and ), the austroasiatique one (Vietnamese, Khmer, etc) and perhaps also the Tai (Thai, lao, etc). In much of these languages, the “words” have only one syllable; and the syllables have a richer structure, including tons.

This theory is historically probable. Although these languages had manuscripts, those were manifestly difficult to include/understand by the Westerners; what justified the invention of several alphabets Phonétique S. the majority used the Latin letters but sometimes with new invented alphabets. Although these known examples are quite posterior at the supposed period of the origin of the manuscript of Voynich, the history records hundreds of explorers and missionaries who could have written it, even before the voyage of Marco Polo at the 13th century, but more particularly after Vasco de Gama discovered the road of the East by the sea in 1499. The author of the manuscript could have been a native of East Asia living in Europe, or educates in a European mission.

The principal argument of this theory is that it would be coherent with all the statistical properties of the text of the manuscript of Voynich tested until now, including the double and triple words (found also frequently in Chinese or Vietnamese texts). That explains also the apparent lack of numbers and features characteristic of Western syntax (like the articles and the Copule S), and the illustrations with impenetrable general graphics. Another concordant point is the presence of the two great red symbols of the first page, which were compared with a title of book way Chinese, written from top to bottom and badly recopied. In the same way, connect it division of the year in 360 degrees (rather than 365 days), in groups of 15 and on the basis of the Poisson, is a feature relating to the Chinese agricultural calendar ( jie Q `I ).

The principal argument of the detractors of this theory is that nobody (including scientists of the Chinese Academy of Science of Beijing) would have found example convincing of symbolism or science Asian in the illustrations of the manuscript.

End 2003, Polish Zbigniew Banasik proposed an incomplete translation of the first page of the manuscript while postulating which he was written in Manchu language .

Polyglot language

In its book Solution off the Voynich Manuscript: With liturgical Manual for the Endured Rite off the Cathari Heresy, the Cult off Isis (1987), Leo Levitov declared that the manuscript was a transcription of a “polyglot oral language”. It defines it as “a comprehensible literary language for the people who did not include/understand Latin but which could read this language”. Its method of deciphering gathers series of three letters to form each syllable and to produce a series of syllables forming a Flemish mixture of medieval, Former French and Ancien high German.

According to Levitov, the rite of Endured was anything else only the assistance with the ritual suicide for the people considered as close relations of their end, associated with the faith Cathare (although the reality of this rite is also called in question). He explains why the chimerical plants are not there to represent any floral species, but are secret symbols of the faith. The women in the basins with complex piping represent the ritual itself, which implied to cut the veins to let run blood in a hot bath. The constellations, without celestial analog, represent stars of the coat of Isis.

This theory is questioned on several points. Firstly, the faith cathare is largely known to have been a Christian Gnosticisme but ever associated any way with Isis. Secondly, this theory places the origin of the book at the 12th century or the 13th century, therefore very former so that the members of the theory of Roger Bacon themselves believe. Thirdly, the rite of Endured implies a fast and not an act of self-mutilation like cutting the veins. Levitov did not propose any proof of its theory beyond its translation.

Built language

The singular structure of the “words” of the manuscript of Voynich carried out William F. Friedman and John Tiltman, independently one of the other, with the conjecture which the text would be the result of the use of a language invented of all parts, specifically philosophical. In the languages of this style, the vocabulary is organized according to a system of categories, so that one can deduce the general direction from a word starting from his sequence of letters. For example, in the modern language Ro, bofo- is the category of the colors and all the words starting with this prefix indicate in fact a color: thus red is bofoc and yellow is bofof . It is here about a version pushed to the extreme of certain methods of classification of the pounds used by the libraries and which say, P for language and literature , Pa for Greek Langage and Latin , PC for the mawkish novels…).

This concept is rather old, as attests it Philosophical Language of John Wilkins (1668). In the majority of the known examples, the categories are subdivided by addition of suffixes. Consequently, a text related to a particular topic would contain many words comprising of the similar or common prefixes. For example, the names of all the plants would start with the same prefix and the same would apply to the diseases, etc This characteristic could explain the repetitive nature of the text of the manuscript. However, nobody was able to establish correspondences between obvious or plausible significances and certain prefixes or suffixes of the manuscript of Voynich. Moreover, the examples of known philosophical languages are posterior with the manuscript, about the 17th century.

Hoax

Strange characteristics of the text of the manuscript of Voynich (like the doubling or the tripling of words) and suspect contents of its illustrations (as the chimerical plants) made think that this manuscript was in fact a Canular.

In 2003, the data processing specialist Gordon Rugg showed that a text comparable with the manuscript of Voynich could be produced by using a table of prefixes, radicals and suffixes of words, which would be selected and combined by means of a perforated paper mask. This last system, known under the name of grid of Cardan joint , was invented towards 1550 like tool for coding. Despite everything, the texts generated by the method of Gordon Rugg have, neither the same words, nor the frequencies of the manuscript of Voynich; the resemblance is visual, nonquantitative. But since, one is able to produce a pure gibberish resembling English (or any other language) in proportions similar to the manuscript of Voynich.

Influence on the popular culture

A certain number of elements of the popular culture seem to be influenced, partly at least, by the manuscript of Voynich.

the very dangerous Grimoire named the Necronomicon appears in the Mythe of Cthulhu of H.P. Lovecraft. Whereas probably Lovecraft created the Necronomicon without knowing the manuscript of Voynich, Colin Wilson published a news in 1969 called The return off the Lloigor ( the return of Lloigor ), in Tales off the Cthulhu Mythos ( Contes of the Myth of Cthulhu ) of the publisher Arkham' S House , where a character discovers that the manuscript of Voynich is a copy partial of the black book mortal. Since, the Necronomicon of the fiction was compared in a recurring way to this real enigma by other authors.

the intrigue of the news of Fantasy of John Bellairs published in 1969, The Face in the Frost , implies an apparently indecipherable black book based on the manuscript of Voynich.

the Codex Seraphinianus is a test of modern art in the style of the manuscript of Voynich.

the contemporary type-setter Hanspeter Kyburz wrote a part for orchestra based on the manuscript of Voynich, reading it like a musical partition.

Of the drawings and allusions to the manuscript of Voynich was included in the intrigue of the film Indiana Jones and the last Crusade .

the intrigue of It Romanzo Di Nostradamus writes by Valerio Evangelisti puts in scene the manuscript of Voynich like a work of black Magie, against which the famous French astrologer Nostradamus will fight all his life.

daN Simmons mentions the manuscript of Voynich in Olympos (p. 486), describing it like “a singular and interesting handwritten bought by Rudolph II the saint Roman Emperor, in 1586”.

In the video game Knights of Baphomet: The Manuscript of Voynich , the manuscript of Voynich is translated by a Hacker which is then made assassinate by Neo-Templiers to protect the contained informations, namely the localization of places on ground where one would find of “energy geomancian”.

In the Handwritten novel ms 408 of Thierry Maugenest (Editions Liana Levi), the manuscript of Voynich is regarded as a writing of Roger Bacon who, once deciphered, makes lose the life with his reader because of the revelations on the direction of the life that it contains.

In the novel the book of the magician of Paul C. Doherty (editions 10/18, collection Large Detectives, series " Hugh Corbett"), a book written in language coded by Roger Bacon is studied jointly by English and French specialists. The author precise in postface which it is undoubtedly about the manuscript of Voynich.

the mysterious manuscript of Rambaldi which causes covetousnesses of the protagonists of the televised series Alias is obviously inspired by the manuscript of Voynich.

See too

European Voynich Alphabet

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