Academic Claims He's Decoded The 'World's Most Mysterious Book' in Just 2 Weeks

From Science Alert: 

In our world, there exists an ancient and cryptic book that reads beyond human understanding. Known as the Voynich manuscript, this artefact, dating from the 15th century, has practically turned into modern legend.

After looking at the strange book for just two weeks, an academic in England now thinks he's got it.

"I experienced a series of 'eureka' moments whilst deciphering the code," linguist Gerard Cheshire recalls, "followed by a sense of disbelief and excitement when I realised the magnitude of the achievement, both in terms of its linguistic importance and the revelations about the origin and content of the manuscript."

Last year, a peer-reviewed computer algorithm found that the language in the 200-page text most resembled Hebrew and not Romance languages.

In 2017, a history researcher and television writer named Nicholas Gibbs made headlines when he claimed the text was a women's health manual with a bunch of Latin abbreviations.

Then the next day, from ARS Technica:

The University of Bristol released a statement today retracting its press release claiming one of their researchers had successfully cracked the code of the Voynich manuscript.

More on Medieval Manuscripts

From the Medieval Manuscripts Blog:

The British Library holds the world’s largest collections of books made or owned in England between the end of Roman Britain and the Norman Conquest of 1066. These books trace the development of writing, society, economy, government and religion from the 7th to the 11th centuries. We are delighted to announce that 175 of these manuscripts can now be viewed in full online on our Digitised Manuscripts website. We’ve produced a complete list of the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts available as of March 2017. 

Arabic Manuscripts Collection @ British Library:

The subject matter covers the Quranic sciences and commentaries, hadith, kalam, Islamic jurisprudence, mysticism and philosophy, Arabic grammar and philology, dictionaries, poetry and other literary genres, history, topography and biography, music and other arts, sciences and medicine, texts relating to the Druze and Bahais, Christian and Jewish literature, and other subjects such as magic, archery, falconry and dream interpretation.

From the Daily O:

On the margins of manuscripts, Camillo told us, we could expect to find, courtesy a scribe or a commentator - padaccheda (word division), anvayokti (explanation of syntax), padārthabodha – a gloss or a quotation, laukika and alaukikavigraha (ordinary language and technical grammatical explanations) and tātparya – an authorial explanation, a gist. In addition we might find decoration, corrections and an invocation.

Medieval Marginalia @ Atlas Obscura:

From intriguingly detailed illustrations to random doodles, the drawings and other marks made along the edges of pages in medieval manuscripts—called marginalia—are not just peripheral matters. “Both tell us huge amounts about a book’s history and the people who have contributed to it, from creation to the present day.”

Rhode Island Public Radio on the Voynich Manuscript:

Yale University Press’ fascimile edition of the Voynich Manuscript will be released November 1st. The book includes an essay by novelist and historian Deborah Harkness. A second limited-run edition will be released by Siloe, a Spanish publishing house. The limited edition will faithfully reproduce the book’s texture and design.

Voynich Manuscript

Spanish publisher to release copies of Voynich Manuscript, a book no living person can understand - The Washington Post

If manuscripts that come with cheeky insanity warnings are your cup of tea, a select few of you are in luck. A small Spanish publisher has obtained the rights to, in essence, clone the document, down to the holes in the parchment and tears on the pages. (If you prefer your unreadable tomes digitized, Yale has made pages from the book available online.) Holding the manuscript, the publisher argues, provokes a feeling that images on the Internet cannot capture.

Read more on publication via Washington Post


Lost In Translation: Sydney Morning Herald

The Voynich – currently under lock and key at Yale University – is a 240-page, lavishly illustrated book that dates from the early part of the 15th century. It has been studied intensively for decades by historians, linguists and cryptologists – including some very smart boffins who successfully cracked codes during two world wars – and still no one has figured out its language, much less its meaning.

Read more about ancient incomprehensible texts here