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The Mystery Of The Voynich Manuscript
Scientific American ^ | Gordon Rugg

Posted on 02/12/2008 1:51:49 PM PST by blam

The Mystery of the Voynich Manuscript

New analysis of a famously cryptic medieval document suggests that it contains nothing but gibberish

By Gordon Rugg

STRANGE IMAGES of heavenly spheres, fantastic plants and nude women adorn the pages of the Voynich manuscript, which is written in an odd script that does not match that of any known language. The manuscript now resides at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.

In 1912 Wilfrid Voynich, an American rare-book dealer, made the find of a lifetime in the library of a Jesuit college near Rome: a manuscript some 230 pages long, written in an unusual script and richly illustrated with bizarre images of plants, heavenly spheres and bathing women. Voynich immediately recognized the importance of his new acquisition. Although it superficially resembled the handbook of a medieval alchemist or herbalist, the manuscript appeared to be written entirely in code. Features in the illustrations, such as hairstyles, suggested that the book was produced sometime between 1470 and 1500, and a 17th-century letter accompanying the manuscript stated that it had been purchased by Rudolph II, the Holy Roman Emperor, in 1586. During the 1600s, at least two scholars apparently tried to decipher the manuscript, and then it disappeared for nearly 250 years until Voynich unearthed it.

Voynich asked the leading cryptographers of his day to decode the odd script, which did not match that of any known language. But despite 90 years of effort by some of the world's best code breakers, no one has been able to decipher Voynichese, as the script has become known. The nature and origin of the manuscript remain a mystery. The failure of the code-breaking attempts has raised the suspicion that there may not be any cipher to crack.

(Excerpt) Read more at sciam.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: epigraphyandlanguage; godsgravesglyphs; manuscript; mystery; productofmadness; voynich; voynichmanuscript
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1 posted on 02/12/2008 1:51:54 PM PST by blam
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To: SunkenCiv
GGG Ping

Voynich Manuscript
(Click here for many more images, etc)

2 posted on 02/12/2008 1:55:11 PM PST by blam (Secure the border and enforce the law)
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To: blam

Be sure to drink your Ovaltine!


3 posted on 02/12/2008 1:56:06 PM PST by fso301
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To: blam

Good. We haven’t had a Voynich manuscript thread for too long now.


4 posted on 02/12/2008 1:56:32 PM PST by RightWhale (Clam down! avoid ataque de nervosa)
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To: fso301

Ha ha!!!


5 posted on 02/12/2008 2:02:34 PM PST by a real Sheila (Have you hugged your "furry best friend" today?)
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To: blam

Actually, it has now been deciphered. It turns out, the author was crying at the time, and it blurred the ink. It turns out to be an endorsement of John McCain.


6 posted on 02/12/2008 2:09:46 PM PST by norwaypinesavage (Planting trees to offset carbon emissions is like drinking water to offset rising ocean levels)
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To: SunkenCiv; blam
Where's the mystery here? I can read this text perfectly well after listening to just one Barak Hussein Obama speech. All you have to do is make a Cardan Grill of every known platitude in any Kenyan, Indonesian, or Chicago dialect.

For example: This page says," The plant on the right has been separated and divided far too long from the plant on the right. The money I save by pulling out of Iraq and stopping this senseless warfare against our misunderstood Muslim brothers will let me, as your President, unite the plants and get them moving forward together again in Peace, Harmony, and Brotherhood. And by the way if you don't agree you are a racist swine."

No charge for this sample. Send me the rest of the book and I'll do it for $500 a page.

7 posted on 02/12/2008 2:13:57 PM PST by Kenny Bunk (Dream Tickets: Gore/Obama vs. Petraeus/Blackwell.)
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To: blam

Obviously written in pig Latin.


8 posted on 02/12/2008 2:14:31 PM PST by 3AngelaD (They screwed up their own countries so bad they had to leave, and now they're here screwing up ours)
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To: SirKit

Secret code ping!


9 posted on 02/12/2008 2:26:52 PM PST by SuziQ
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To: blam

It’s like the Democrat manifesto: it literally makes no sense, but you “can believe in it”.


10 posted on 02/12/2008 2:37:54 PM PST by agere_contra
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To: blam

This is one of the things that sparked my interest in Philology and Linguistics.


11 posted on 02/12/2008 2:44:58 PM PST by Army Air Corps (Four fried chickens and a coke)
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To: Army Air Corps

ping


12 posted on 02/12/2008 3:14:33 PM PST by Little Bill (Welcome to the Newly Socialist State of New Hampshire)
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To: blam

May be a copy of the Necronomicon! Don’t read it, or you’ll go MAD!


13 posted on 02/12/2008 3:18:10 PM PST by Some Fat Guy in L.A. (Nope. Not gonna do it.)
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To: Some Fat Guy in L.A.

“May be a copy of the Necronomicon! Don’t read it, or you’ll go MAD!”

Decryption is necessary before election day, as we should have no lesser evil to vote for than Cthulu, the worm itself.


14 posted on 02/12/2008 3:37:38 PM PST by MeanWestTexan (Atah kaki metumtam, McCain)
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To: Some Fat Guy in L.A.

Old man Voynich was probably just messing with our heads


15 posted on 02/12/2008 4:38:13 PM PST by jimberkeley
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To: RightWhale

LOL!


16 posted on 02/12/2008 11:54:05 PM PST by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/____________________Profile updated Sunday, February 10, 2008)
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To: blam; StayAt HomeMother; Ernest_at_the_Beach; 1ofmanyfree; 24Karet; 3AngelaD; 49th; ...

· join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic ·

 
Gods
Graves
Glyphs
Thanks Blam.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.
GGG managers are Blam, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach
 

· Google · Archaeologica · ArchaeoBlog · Archaeology magazine · Biblical Archaeology Society ·
· Mirabilis · Texas AM Anthropology News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo ·
· History or Science & Nature Podcasts · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists ·


17 posted on 02/12/2008 11:54:58 PM PST by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/____________________Profile updated Sunday, February 10, 2008)
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To: Kenny Bunk

:’)


18 posted on 02/12/2008 11:56:44 PM PST by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/____________________Profile updated Sunday, February 10, 2008)
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To: Salamander

Pluris nunti occulti ping.


19 posted on 02/13/2008 12:07:11 AM PST by shibumi (".....panta en pasin....." - Origen)
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To: shibumi

It’s a COOKBOOK!!!


20 posted on 02/13/2008 12:41:05 AM PST by null and void (President Hillary!™ Clinton? Time to invest in body bags. Again...)
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