The mysterious Voynich manuscript

Voynich manuscript is one of the mysterious manuscripts that is not yet decoded. No one knows who wrote this book and for what purpose but the carbon dating determines its existence came in 13th century.

This book is preserved in Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript library. Dozens of medievalists and cryptologists are studying this book every year but are not yet able to decipher itIt is also believed that the content of this book was ciphered by retouching text and drawings.

Content of this book consists of scripts with illustration of plants, stars, female expressions and chemical secrets. Though the content of this book is well organized, but annoying point is that this 234 pages book has empty cover i.e. neither author name nor the book title.

Various assumptions for the purpose of this book includes:
  • Early discoveries and inventions by the 13th century written in the encoded form.
  • Nonsense written by a medieval quack, to impress leaders.
  • A rare prayer book not destroyed by the inquisition, written in a pidgin version of a Germanic/Romance creole.
  • Meaningless strings of characters cleverly composed for monetary gain.

Encoding of this script is done to some extent and it is believed that below alphabetic format is used:
Voynich Manuscript

Whole book is available in digital form and can be explored here. This is one of the sample page of this book:

Voynich Manuscript

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