Potions, ancient scripts, forgotten lands… I couldn’t have been the only one who dreamt of discovering secrets in my home. Treasures hidden away from time itself capable of whisking me away to another world. It was that same niggling desire that led me to the mystery of the Voynich Manuscript, ever since it was uploaded in its entirety to the online catalog of Yale University’s library.
Spanning around 240 pages — though some seem to be missing — the Voynich Manuscript is an illustrated codex, written in a strange language, aptly named “Voynichese.” Some call it a hoax, others a reference work. Theories abound, but the fact is that no one knows what the book says. Not for a lack of trying, of course; scholars have been working from as early as 1921 to figure it out! It remains a true enigma for cryptographers worldwide. Many have tried comparing it to a known tongue, like Hebrew, Arabic, or ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics yet none have succeeded.
They sure seem like they’re having fun.
Source: Yale University Library
The 240 pages of vellum — a special type of paper made of animal membranes — were dated using radiocarbon by the University of Arizona in 2011, setting the manuscript roughly smack dab in the middle of the fifteenth century. Many pages contain drawings or charts, and since the text can’t really be read, researchers have conventionally divided the manuscript into six different sections, each with varying styles and subject matters. Said sections are: Herbal, Astronomical, Balneological, Cosmological, Pharmaceutical, and Recipes. In short, its structure reads as though it were an encyclopedia or textbook of the era. The only problem is that scholars can’t read the words, and they don’t recognize any of the drawings either. Groups of naked women held stars like balloon strings or stood by green pools fed by pipes that resembled fallopian tubes. Its oversized pages folded out to reveal rosettes, zodiacs, cosmos, framed by a botany with leaves in dreamy geometries. Yet, none of the star-charts, or even the plants, resemble anything they’ve seen before, even as they seem to shift from the mundane to fantastical.
Researchers still aren’t sure what’s going on either.
Source: Yale University Library
Still, having an estimate of when it was created gave researchers some clues. The style seems to be European, so they theorize that it was written during the Italian Renaissance. It wasn’t much to go off, but it was enough for them to try and branch out — considering the possibilities of who the author may be. The book first surfaced in Wilfrid Voynich’s ownership, after the rare-books dealer bought the manuscript in Italy. Some propose that the book belonged to the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, and, earlier than that, Queen Elizabeth I’s prolific astrologer, John Dee. However, nothing too concrete has arisen just yet on who might have created it, or how it fell into the hands of those men. Even so, speculation reaches far and wide — deep down the rabbit hole of sheer madness. Some argue that the indecipherable, looping script is authored by an extraterrestrial hand, while others state that the whispers of angels reached the original author’s ears, lending to some divine intervention. Reddit is a true treasure trove of these theories; most of them good enough for a nice laugh.
That alien origin theory is looking more plausible.
Source: Yale University Library
Yet, why does the mystery of the Voynich Manuscript compel us? Maybe the delicately inked illustrations of pregnant women holding stars and prancing about kelp greens are just that — pictures, holding no meaning at all. Its allure, then, is held in the unreachable, tapping into that deep, human desire of needing to know. In eluding interpretation, the Voynich Manuscript has created a cult following, connecting people across nations and time in their pursuit to find the truth behind it all. The magic of the Voynich Manuscript seems to be not in the text itself, but what it represents to those eager to crack the mystery. After all, who doesn’t love a good chase?