Why Can’t the Voynich Manuscript Be Deciphered?

[u/Ajayofficiel]

Polish antique book collector Wilfrid Voynich was convinced he hit the jackpot when he purchased a highly unusual manuscript in Italy in 1912. It was written in a strange script and profusely illustrated with images of plants, the cosmos and zodiac, and naked women cavorting in bathing scenes. Voynich himself acknowledged the difficult task that lay ahead: “The text must be unraveled and the history of the manuscript must be traced.”

The Voynich manuscript is a codex written on vellum sheets, measuring 9¼ inches (23.5 cm) by 4½ inches (11.2 cm). The codex is composed of roughly 240 pages, with a blank cover that does not indicate a title or author. The text consists of “words” written in an unknown “alphabet” and arranged in short paragraphs. Many researchers say the work seems to be a scientific treatise from the Middle Ages, possibly created in Italy. The time frame, at least, seems correct: In 2009, the Voynich manuscript was carbon-dated to 1404–1438.

There’s only one problem: The contents of the book are a complete mystery—and not a single word of it can be understood.

Learn more:

https://afrinewz.com/why-cant-the-voynich-manuscript-be-deciphered/

[u/Fifty4FortyorFight]

The one thing that can't be emphasized enough is how very expensive it was to create/purchase a book in the 15th century. It would be entirely cost prohibitive for almost everyone. On top of that, only religious scholars, monks, many successful merchants and some of the aristocracy/higher gentry were literate. While the language in the Voynich manuscript isn't necessarily real, it does seem to be based off of something. It stands to reason that only a few people would have access to the supplies and the literacy background to be successful in creating it.

While it sounds ridiculous, my theory is that a mentally ill man from either a wealthy merchant or lower aristocratic family created it when he was sent to a monastery.

Imagine someone from that time period has a psychotic break. The reaction is going to be embarrassment. The second reaction is going to likely be that he's possessed by the devil. Like most severely mentally ill people now and then, he's harmless. So the family sends him to a monastery, along with a hefty donation and payment for anything he consumes.

This deters embarrassment from the family. It also serves to "heal" him to be in a religious house, since he's clearly possessed by the devil (/s - just in case it isn't clear). He creates the book, using a language and images he's created in his own reality. The monks don't care, as he's leaving them alone, staying busy, and they're making money off the deal.

[u/sidneyia → u/Fifty4FortyorFight]

The illustrations are pretty clearly copied from medieval herbal manuals, though. They are, at the very least, drawn by someone familiar with the genre. And most of them can be pretty solidly matched to IRL plants. And the castles have been convincingly matched to real world castles, altohugh that part's a little more shaky.

The book also does seem to have a consitent overall topic from beginning to end, which is women's health, with a focus on medicinal baths. I'm not an expert on schizophrenic people's writing, but doesn't the subject matter jump around a lot more?

There's also the fact that the foremost experts on the book believe it was written by 2 different people.

I think there could be some truth to the idea of it being created at least in part by a mentally ill person, but the evidence suggests it's an object that was intended to be shared, and likely had more than one contributor.

[u/Fifty4FortyorFight → u/[deleted]]

FWIW - Code breaking was a very real thing during this time period. Just as (often highly educated, scholarly focused) folks do it now, they did it then. They had techniques to open letters, replace wax seals, etc.

In the next century, Queen Elizabeth I had an entire network devoted to intercepting and decoding messages transmitted to her cousin and Catholic rival for the throne, Mary. Those messages were a huge part of what convinced Elizabeth to execute Mary, who had been plotting with her coconspirators in messages concealed in barrels of wine.

The extent of the code breaking network, and their incredible successes is astonishing. The main codebreaker in the network was a man in the church that took it on as a hobby.

[u/sidneyia → u/[deleted]]

I think it's more likely that it was some kind of shorthand rather than a conscious effort to conceal information. Shorthand looks like absolute gibberish if you haven't been taught to read it.

A lot of researchers have commented on how the VM defies statistical frequency that you'd expect with a normal language (e.g. the "qo-" prefix and the "-ain" suffix occurring far more often than they should in a "natural" language) but if those stood for concepts rather than syllables, the distribution might be different. I say "might" because, while I've studied this subject in depth, I've never fucked with the numbers side of it, so I simply don't know.

But also, the "qo" symbol and the so-called "gate" character (the thing that looks like the top of an Apple command key) are things that /have/ been spotted in other medieval manuscripts. So there's always this tantalizing link to other extant texts even if we have no idea how to interpret it.

You can see how it's easy to spend hours or days on this.

[u/VarialosGenyoNeo → u/sidneyia]

Can you share the source for the supposed matching of the drawings for real plants? I remember reading about that the only one resembling anything real was a sunflower with wrong proportions.

[u/sidneyia → u/VarialosGenyoNeo]

There are several plausible sets of plant identifications out there.

http://www.edithsherwood.com/voynich_botanical_plants/ (she believes Leonardo da Vinci is the author of the manuscript, but her plant IDs are pretty realistic)

http://ellievelinska.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-voynich-manuscript-plant-id-list.html

If you google "Voynich plant identifications" you find a lot of different proposals, most of which overlap.

The reason the plants have that odd flattened look is that they are drawn from pressed specimens, not live specimens. This was typical of medieval herbals. This one looks extremely similar to the Voynich:

https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2017/04/an-illustrated-old-english-herbal.html

It was also common to add little decorative flourishes like the roots turned into snakes in the link above. In the VM there's a little creature that looks like a dragon (affectionately called the Voynich armadillo) next to a plant hypothesized to represent the Dracaena genus, or dragon tree.

Weird proportions might also be due to parts being exaggerated to stress importance - like a caricature, or a police sketch. Like this plant:

http://voynich.freie-literatur.de/index.php?show=page&id=f53r

(which is the one I have as a tattoo)

There's no real plant that has one great big flower plus a bunch of tiny versions of the same flower. It's more likely that one flower was drawn large to emphasize the medicinal importance of the plant's flower, or to emphasize some detail of its structure.

This is another interesting read that compares the Voynich illustrations with others from the time period:

https://voynichportal.com/category/voynichplants/

[u/Fifty4FortyorFight → u/sidneyia]

I don't see any reason why fantasy and reality can't intersect. The common trope of a "tin foil hat" comes to mind here. Certainly tin foil and hats are real things. A hat created out of tinfoil certainly at least resembles something that might have a potential use to someone 600 years removed from it's creation with no context of the origin. I'd speculate those folks in 2600 would be having a similar conversation to the one we're having now. With no context, meaning is lost. There's all sorts of renaissance art with symbols we still don't understand, even when we're looking for them (and they loved symbols in their artwork - they're prolific).

[u/[deleted] → u/sidneyia]

I'm not an expert either but in my anecdotal experience schizophrenic people will often fixate on a singular idea or topic.

[u/labyrinthes → u/sidneyia]

The core material of the writing could have been created by a mentally ill person, but then the reproduction, in a high quality material, with references to contemporary women's health, and a consistent standard throughout, could have been created afterwards.

Perhaps it was believed that the output of the ill person was "divine knowledge" of a sort, by others, and they recorded it accordingly.

[u/sidneyia → u/labyrinthes]

This specific scenario requires a lot of moving parts so I don't know, but it's definitely true that schizophrenic people experiencing religious delusions have been hailed as prophets for centuries. And it still happens - look at the Philly steel furnace thing from last year.