Yet, until someone fully and incontrovertibly translates the manuscript’s text, none of these theories can be proven. Researchers have also tried to identify the plants shown in the illustrations, with some arguing that they represent species known from the Aztec world. Most recently, in 2020, the Egyptologist Rainer Hannig concluded that the language is based on Hebrew. Over the years, suggestions for the hidden language have included a medieval North Germanic dialect, the Aztec language Nahuatl, Latin and Proto-Romance. Little has changed since Newbold’s time-solutions appear with great regularity and are just as quickly dismissed by scholars. It appears, then, that a real language hides behind the symbols.

Meanwhile, statistical analyses of the manuscript’s unique script have concluded that its content is not gibberish, and a recent study of the handwriting has shown that the text is the work of five scribes, writing in at least two dialects. Taking these together, historians have divided its content into six categories: botanical, astronomical and astrological, biological or balneological (bathing to help ease health problems), cosmological, pharmaceutical and recipes. Throughout the manuscript’s 234 pages-a number of extra pages are now missing-there are colourful illustrations of plants and herbs, Zodiac symbols, bathing women, strange tubes, a dragon and a castle, among other imagery. Together, these results strongly suggest that the manuscript is not a modern forgery. Scientists have radiocarbon-dated its vellum to between 14, and have shown that its scribes used iron gall ink to write the text and minerals to create its pigments, consistent with materials used during the early 15th century. The factsĪ page from the Voynich Manuscript Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, ConnecticutĪlthough much remains a mystery, recent scientific investigations have greatly improved our understanding of its origins and creation. Do the Voynich symbols encipher a known language? Or are they the alphabet of an invented one? Is the content gibberish? What do the book’s illustrations mean? And what is its purpose? Such questions-and the lack of answers to them-have led it to be dubbed the world’s most mysterious manuscript. Scholars have pored over its content for over a century, but no one has managed to understand its meaning. Today, the Voynich Manuscript, as it became known, is kept in Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Voynich bought the manuscript, and it wasn’t long before it excited imaginations across the globe. Turning the pages, his eyes fell on unusual illustrations and mysterious symbols that formed a unique and unreadable script. As he explored, Voynich found, in his own words, an “ugly duckling”-a manuscript like no other. The Jesuits had decided to sell some of their centuries-old collection and had invited him to see if anything might be of interest. In 1912, rare books dealer Wilfrid Voynich was rooting through dusty chests of manuscripts in Villa Mondragone, a Jesuit college just outside of Rome.

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