The Voynich Manuscript

[ScottyMcGee]

Surprised this hasn't been brought up, except it seems like only [USER=22385]@Heroine of the Dragon[/USER] has mentioned it as I searched for it on the forums. So you might like this!

I've been fascinated by this thing ever since I came across it on a cracked.com article.

Basic overview:

It's an early 15th century handwritten codex written in a lanuage indecipherable even to this day. Many cryptologists and linguists have tried to understand the words in this manuscript with no avail. The manuscript is known for it's weird, sometimes creepy illustrations of unidentifiable plants and odd. . .rituals? If you could even call them rituals. Just all around head-scratching stuff. You can read more on the wiki page here.

I really want to one day see this book for myself. Lucky enough, the closest thing I'll get is THE ENTIRE COPY ONLINE.
SO COOL.

One of my crazier theories is that this is a book from an alternate Earth.

[Kil'jaeden]

I think it is some medieval text on plant based alchemy. With all the plants and possible astronomical charts, I think it is a good bet that this is the case. I guess the main question is what it is written in.

[Sim Kid]

I've heard people suggest that it might come from the Hollow Earth.

[Heroine of the Dragon]

Yayyyyyyy I often follow up news about this. I have had an interest in the Voynich Manuscript for a very long time and saved copies of the pages some years ago. ;)



I find the artwork fascinating and it must have taken the author months of painstaking work to complete the manuscript. It's such an enigma... and enticing to a curious mind.

I love to imagine that it is a magic/medical manual. :p

[I REALLY HATE POKEMON!]

Maybe it's an old prank on us future dwellers by a crafty trickster with good forethought.

[CaptHayfever]

Botany textbook. Mystery solved. That'll be one million dollars please, via cash, check, or Paypal transfer.

And remember, "I'm-a Luigi, number one!"

[Sim Kid]

Well obviously it's a Botany Textbook of some kind, but the language isn't known.

[ScottyMcGee]

Neither are the plants though.

Or the artist must have been really, really, really, really, really, REALLY bad at drawing what they saw.

Heck, wait, maybe all these plants are just extinct by now. . .yanno?

[Heroine of the Dragon]

[QUOTE="CaptHayfever, post: 1530401, member: 25169"]Botany textbook. Mystery solved. That'll be one million dollars please, via cash, check, or Paypal transfer.

And remember, "I'm-a Luigi, number one!"[/QUOTE]

Maybe not just botany. ;) It has been suggested that some pictures may be astronomical in nature, there's also many female figures... but it's the 'text' that is most intriguing...

[Kil'jaeden]

^The star charts and astrological symbols would be very relevant to the botany. In preparing extracts from plants, the position of the stars and planets at the time of harvesting the plant and/or preparing the plant based product would have been considered very important.

As for the little female figures, I have several ideas. One is that they are homunculi. The other is that they represent plant "seed" or vital force in the plant.

[I am nobody]

It's written in a language that has a serious obsession with 'q', clearly.

My guess is that it's the medieval version of a person who has a strange dream and then dedicates their life to recreating it. It has a similar level of bizarre detail to modern cases like that.

[ScottyMcGee]

Clearly this is a depiction of the world's first water park.

[Kil'jaeden]

http://www.medievalhistories.com/voynich-manuscript/
http://www.voynich.nu/writing.html
This is a good place to start.

[Kil'jaeden]

We ought to make this a project. Maybe we will discover something big from it and get to be somewhat famous in an obscure circle.

[SmackDownPete]

All I have to say is I wish my handwriting was that nice.

[Heroine of the Dragon]

So in news today...

"The mysterious Voynich manuscript has finally been decoded"

...Now, history researcher and television writer Nicholas Gibbs appears to have cracked the code, discovering that the book is actually a guide to women's health that's mostly plagiarized from other guides of the era.

Gibbs writes in the Times Literary Supplement that he was commissioned by a television network to analyze the Voynich Manuscript three years ago. Because the manuscript has been entirely digitized by Yale's Beinecke Library, he could see tiny details in each page and pore over them at his leisure. His experience with medieval Latin and familiarity with ancient medical guides allowed him to uncover the first clues.

After looking at the so-called code for a while, Gibbs realized he was seeing a common form of medieval Latin abbreviations, often used in medical treatises about herbs. "From the herbarium incorporated into the Voynich manuscript, a standard pattern of abbreviations and ligatures emerged from each plant entry," he wrote. "The abbreviations correspond to the standard pattern of words used in the Herbarium Apuleius Platonicus – aq = aqua (water), dq = decoque / decoctio (decoction), con = confundo (mix), ris = radacis / radix (root), s aiij = seminis ana iij (3 grains each), etc." So this wasn't a code at all; it was just shorthand. The text would have been very familiar to anyone at the time who was interested in medicine.

More: https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09 ... n-decoded/





Oh wow!! Exciting news if it is so.

[Heroine of the Dragon]

Yayyyyyyy I often follow up news about this. I have had an interest in the Voynich Manuscript for a very long time and saved copies of the pages some years ago.



I find the artwork fascinating and it must have taken the author months of painstaking work to complete the manuscript. It's such an enigma... and enticing to a curious mind.

I love to imagine that it is a magic/medical manual.

Does this mean I get to say... got it?

[Apiary Tazy]

Well, seeing as medicine was probably called magic back in the day you might be right on both counts.

[ScottyMcGee]

So in news today...

"The mysterious Voynich manuscript has finally been decoded"

...Now, history researcher and television writer Nicholas Gibbs appears to have cracked the code, discovering that the book is actually a guide to women's health that's mostly plagiarized from other guides of the era.

Gibbs writes in the Times Literary Supplement that he was commissioned by a television network to analyze the Voynich Manuscript three years ago. Because the manuscript has been entirely digitized by Yale's Beinecke Library, he could see tiny details in each page and pore over them at his leisure. His experience with medieval Latin and familiarity with ancient medical guides allowed him to uncover the first clues.

After looking at the so-called code for a while, Gibbs realized he was seeing a common form of medieval Latin abbreviations, often used in medical treatises about herbs. "From the herbarium incorporated into the Voynich manuscript, a standard pattern of abbreviations and ligatures emerged from each plant entry," he wrote. "The abbreviations correspond to the standard pattern of words used in the Herbarium Apuleius Platonicus – aq = aqua (water), dq = decoque / decoctio (decoction), con = confundo (mix), ris = radacis / radix (root), s aiij = seminis ana iij (3 grains each), etc." So this wasn't a code at all; it was just shorthand. The text would have been very familiar to anyone at the time who was interested in medicine.

More: https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09 ... n-decoded/





Oh wow!! Exciting news if it is so.

Yoooo - just noticed your post now. That's cool.

And at the same time once you know that the mystery can be unlocked and it's something relatively common, you are also slightly bummed out.

[Marilink]

Shorthand Latin was the answer all along. That's pretty awesome.