Voynich Manuscript 13th to 15th century Magical or Scientific Text?

[PerseH ~Staff Wrangler~]

Voynich Manuscript

Written in Central Europe at the end of the 15th or during the 16th century, the origin, language, and date of the Voynich Manuscript—named after the Polish-American antiquarian bookseller, Wilfrid M. Voynich, who acquired it in 1912—are still being debated as vigorously as its puzzling drawings and undeciphered text. Described as a magical or scientific text, nearly every page contains botanical, figurative, and scientific drawings of a provincial but lively character, drawn in ink with vibrant washes in various shades of green, brown, yellow, blue, and red.

Based on the evidence of the calligraphy, the drawings, the vellum, and the pigments, Wilfrid Voynich estimated that the Manuscript was created in the late 13th century. The manuscript is small, seven by ten inches, but thick, nearly 235 pages. It is written in an unknown script of which there is no known other instance in the world.

The Voynich Manuscript is a cipher manuscript, sometimes attributed to Roger Bacon. 
Scientific text in an unidentified language, in cipher, possibly written in central Europe in the 15th century.

It is abundantly illustrated with awkward coloured drawings of::

• unidentified plants; 
• what seems to be herbal recipes; 
• tiny naked women frolicking in bathtubs connected by intricate plumbing looking more like anatomical parts than hydraulic contraptions; 
• mysterious charts in which some have seem astronomical objects seen through a telescope, some live cells seen through a microscope; 
• charts into which you may see a strange calendar of zodiacal signs, populated by tiny naked people in rubbish bins.

Detail from page 78r of Voynich Manuscript depicting the "biological" section

"Tiny naked women frolicking in bathtubs" - a fragment of page 70
Copyright: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale UniversityPage 70r  Image Source >>

No one really knows the origins of the manuscript. The experts believe it is European  They believe it was written between the 15th and 17th centuries.

From a piece of paper which was once attached to the Voynich manuscript, and which is now stored in one of the boxes belonging with the Voynich manuscript holdings of the Beinecke library, it is known that the manuscript once formed part of the private library of Petrus Beckx S.J., 22nd general of the Society of Jesus.

A sample of untranslatable text from the Voynich manuscript

There is no other example of the language in which the manual is written.
It is an alphabetic script, but of an alphabet variously reckoned to have from nineteen to twenty-eight letters, none of which bear any relationship to any English or European letter system. The text has no apparent corrections. There is evidence for two different "languages" (investigated by Currier and D'Imperio) and more than one scribe, probably indicating an ambiguous coding scheme.

The VM is written in a language of which no other example is known to exist. It is an alphabetic script, but of an alphabet variously reckoned to have from nineteen to twenty-eight letters, none of which bear any relationship to any English or European letter system. 

Apparently, Voynich wanted to have the mysterious manuscript deciphered and provided photographic copies to a number of experts. However, despite the efforts of many well known cryptologists and scholars, the book remains unread. There are some claims of decipherment, but to date, none of these can be substantiated with a complete translation. 

Few Examples:

Click on image to enlarge. Page 70r  Image Source >> 
Copyright: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

Page 85v. 
Copyright: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

Parts of the Manuscript

The Voynich Manuscript is about 6 by 9inches. Some believe it to be a book about alchemy. It contains the equivalent of 246 quarto pages, but may have originally contained not less than 262 pages. 
There are 212 with text and drawings, 33 pages contain text only, and the last page contains the Key. The text is written in an enciphered script, and the drawings are colored in red, blue, brown, yellow, and green. 

The contents of the Manuscript are divided up into 5categories:

• The first and largest section contains 130 pages of plant drawings with accompanying text, and is called the Botanical division.
• The second contains 26 pages of drawings, obviously astrological and astronomical in nature.
• The third section contains 4 pages of text and 28 drawings, which would appear to be biological in nature.
• The fourth division contains 34 pages of drawings, which are pharmaceutical in nature. 
• The last section of the Manuscript contains 23pages of text arranged in short paragraphs, each beginning with a star. The last page (the 24th of this division) contains the Key only.

View online pages from the manuscript:

• http://www.library.yale.edu/beinecke/ 
  Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
  Photonegatives Database (enter Voynich)

• http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/digitallibrary/voynich.html

• http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/

  http://www.world-mysteries.com/sar_13.htm