Free Republic

This late-medieval document is covered in illustrations of stars and planets, plants, zodiac symbols, naked women, and blue and green fluids. But the text itself – thought to be the work of five different scribes – is enciphered and yet to be understood.In an article published in Social History of Medicine, my coauthor Michelle L. Lewis and I propose that sex is one of the subjects detailed in the manuscript – and that the largest diagram represents both sex and conception.Late-medieval sexology and gynaecologyResearch on the Voynich manuscript has revealed some clues about its origins. Carbon dating provides a 95%...

The 600-year-old document is described as 'the world's most mysterious medieval text.' It is full of illustrations of exotic plants, stars, and mysterious human figures, as well as many pages written in an unknown text. Now, one British academic claims the document is in fact a health manual for a 'well-to-do' lady looking to treat gynaecological conditions.

A mysterious 600-year-old manuscript that has been deemed "unreadable" by the world's top cryptographers has finally been deciphered. That's the claim by one Bristol academic who has cracked the legendary Voynich manuscript and revealed its secrets. Dr. Gerard Cheshire believes that the document is written in a dead language called proto-Romance. By studying the letter and symbols through the manuscript, he was able to decipher the meaning of the words. According to the linguistics buff, the Voynich manuscript contains sex tips, info on parenting and psychology, and herbal remedies. "I experienced a series of 'eureka' moments whilst deciphering the code,...

A University of Bristol academic has succeeded where countless cryptographers, linguistics scholars and computer programs have failed—by cracking the code of the 'world's most mysterious text', the Voynich manuscript. Although the purpose and meaning of the manuscript had eluded scholars for over a century, it took Research Associate Dr. Gerard Cheshire two weeks, using a combination of lateral thinking and ingenuity, to identify the language and writing system of the famously inscrutable document. In his peer-reviewed paper, The Language and Writing System of MS408 (Voynich) Explained, published in the journal Romance Studies, Cheshire describes how he successfully deciphered the manuscript's...

Belphegor's prime number Belphegor's prime number is a palindromic prime number with a 666 hiding between 13 zeros and a 1 on either side. The ominous number can be abbreviated as 1 0(13) 666 0(13) 1, where the (13) denotes the number of zeros between the 1 and 666. Although he didn't "discover" the number, scientist and author Cliff Pickover made the sinister-feeling number famous when he named it after Belphegor (or Beelphegor), one of the seven demon princes of hell. The number apparently even has its own devilish symbol, which looks like an upside-down symbol for pi. According to...

For centuries people have tried to decipher the meaning of the Voynich manuscript, and now a computer scientist claims to have cracked it using AI. The 600-year-old document is described as 'the world's most mysterious medieval text', and is full of illustrations of exotic plants, stars, and mysterious human figures. The 240-page manual's intriguing mix of elegant writing and drawings of strange plants and naked women has some believing it holds magical powers. But even the cryptographers from Bletchley Park, the team that broke the Nazi enigma code, couldn't make sense of the manuscript. Now a computer scientist says the...

The Voynich Manuscript, carbon-dated to the 1400s, was rediscovered in 1912, but has defied codebreakers since. Now, Bedfordshire University's Stephen Bax says he has deciphered 10 words, which could lead to more discoveries. The manuscript, which some think is a hoax, is full of illustrations of plants and stars, as well as text... It largely disappeared from public record until 1912 when Wilfrid Voynich, an antique book dealer, bought it amongst a number of second-hand publications in Italy. Since then, scholars and cryptographers have studied the document but have failed to find meaning in the text. It was investigated by...

The Mysterious Voynich Manuscript Credit: Yale University ; Digital Copyright: B. E. Schaefer (LSU) Explanation: The ancient text has no known title, no known author, and is written in no known language: what does it say and why does it have many astronomy illustrations? The mysterious book was once bought by an emperor, forgotten on a library shelf, sold for thousands of dollars, and later donated to Yale. Possibly written in the 15th century, the over 200-page volume is known most recently as the Voynich Manuscript, after its (re-)discoverer in 1912. Pictured above is an illustration from the book...

HerbalGram's feature article by Arthur O. Tucker, PhD, and Rexford H. Talbert, titled "A Preliminary Analysis of the Botany, Zoology, and Mineralogy of the Voynich Manuscript," is based on a unique, investigative approach to understanding the strange manuscript... Dr. Tucker — botanist, emeritus professor, and co-director of the Claude E. Phillips Herbariumat Delaware State University — and Mr. Talbert, a retired information technologist formerly employed by the US Department of Defense and NASA, decided to look first at the botanical illustrations in the Voynich Manuscript and compare them to the world's geographic plant distribution at the time of the manuscript's...

One evening in January last year, Joel Eriksson, a 34-year-old computer analyst from Uppsala in Sweden, was trawling the web, looking for distraction, when he came across a message on an internet forum. The message was in stark white type, against a black background.

1. The Phaistos Disk is considered the most important example of hieroglyphic inscription from Crete. Discovered in 1903, both sides of the clay disc are covered with hieroglyphs arranged in a spiral zone, impressed on the clay when it was damp. Forty five different types of signs have been distinguished, of which a few can be identified with the hieroglyphs in use in the Proto- palatial period. [snip]

The Mystery of the Voynich ManuscriptNew 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,...

The Mystery of the Voynich ManuscriptNew analysis of a famously cryptic medieval document suggests that it contains nothing but gibberish By Gordon Rugg Image: BEINECKE RARE BOOK AND MANUSCRIPT LIBRARY, YALE UNIVERSITYSTRANGE 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. Overview/A Medieval Mystery In 1912 Wilfrid Voynich, an American rare-book dealer, made the find of a lifetime in the library of...

World's most mysterious book may be a hoaxThe Voynich manuscript may be elegant gibberish. 17 December 2003 JOHN WHITFIELD Using a Cardan grille the manuscript could have been written in three months. © G. Rugg A strange sixteenth-century book may be cunningly crafted nonsense, says a computer scientist. Gordon Rugg has used the techniques of Elizabethan espionage to recreate the Voynich manuscript, which has stumped code-breakers and linguists for nearly a century1. "I've shown that a hoax is a feasible explanation," says Rugg, who works at Keele University, UK. "Now it's up to believers in a code to produce evidence...

Introduction The Voynich Manuscript is considered to be 'The Most Mysterious Manuscript in the World'. To this day this medieval artifact resists all efforts at translation. It is either an ingenious hoax or an unbreakable cipher. The manuscript is named after its discoverer, the American antique book dealer and collector, Wilfrid M. Voynich, who discovered it in 1912, amongst a collection of ancient manuscripts kept in villa Mondragone in Frascati, near Rome, which had been by then turned into a Jesuit College (closed in 1953). The Voynich Manuscript is a cipher manuscript, sometimes attributed to Roger Bacon. Scientific text...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 August 26 The Mysterious Voynich Manuscript Credit: Yale University ; Digital Copyright: B. E. Schaefer (U. Texas) Explanation: The ancient text has no known title, no known author, and is written in no known language: what does it say and why does it have many astronomy illustrations? The mysterious book was once bought by an emperor, forgotten on a library shelf, sold for thousands of dollars, and...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 August 26 The Mysterious Voynich Manuscript Credit: Yale University ; Digital Copyright: B. E. Schaefer (U. Texas) Explanation: The ancient text has no known title, no known author, and is written in no known language: what does it say and why does it have many astronomy illustrations? The mysterious book was once bought by an emperor, forgotten on a library shelf, sold for thousands of dollars, and...

Part of the mystery behind an 'alien' book no one can read has at last been unraveled. Found in a chest of books outside Rome by a dealer in antique books, the Voynich manuscript is among literature's great mysteries. The book of aging parchment is written in alien characters, some resembling Latin letters, others unlike anything used in any known language, and arranged into what appear to be words and sentences -- except they don't resemble anything written or read by human beings. And for decades, the manuscript has mystified scientists. "Is it a code, a cipher of some kind?"...

While enthusiasts across the world pored over the Voynich manuscript, penned by an unknown author in a language no one understands, a research team at the University of Arizona solved one of its biggest mysteries: When was the book made?University of Arizona researchers have cracked one of the puzzles surrounding what has been called "the world's most mysterious manuscript" – the Voynich manuscript, a book filled with drawings and writings nobody has been able to make sense of to this day. Using radiocarbon dating, a team led by Greg Hodgins in the UA's department of physics has found the manuscript's...

The Voynich manuscript Another twist in the tale Jan 8th 2004 From The Economist print edition A possible explanation for the world's most enigmatic book Worth 600 ducats of anybody's money! THE Voynich manuscript, once owned by Emperor Rudolph II in 16th-century Bohemia, is filled with drawings of fantastic plants, zodiacal symbols and naked ladies. Far more intriguing than its illustrations, however, is the accompanying text: 234 pages of beautifully formed, yet completely unintelligible script. Modern scholars have pored over the book since 1912, when Wilfrid Voynich, an American antiquarian, bought the manuscript and started circulating copies in the...