The world’s most mysterious book

Books, a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for such a physical arrangement is called as codex. Books and tomes are an important part of our lives. They help us gain knowledge and pen it down for future generations.  Thus, it is important for them to be understandable not only to the present generation but also to the future generations. However, there are certain tomes and books out there that are in the form of code or ciphers. Most of them are pursued relentlessly so as to be decipher them by both trained officials and the general public enthusiasts. Yet there seem to be many indecipherable mysterious books that seem to stump any who try to decode them. One such book can be found in the Yale university’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript library. There lies the only copy of a two forty-page tome, known as The Voynich Manuscript.

Its mostly referred to as the worlds most mysterious book, because to date there has been little to no progress made in being able to understand this tome. Its vellum pages feature a looping handwriting, and hand drawn illustrations that seem to be out of some dream. It contains many weird images such as real and imaginary plants, floating castles, bathing women, astrology diagrams, zodiac signs and suns and moons with faces upon them, all of which are accompanied by text. At first glance it seems like something out of a stoner’s hallucination, but this 24×16 centimetres book is one of history’s biggest unsolved mysteries. Its name originates from Wilfrid Voynich, a polish bookseller who came across this soon to be world famous document at a Jesuit College in Italy in 1912. Having purchased it from the cash-strapped priest of the college, he eventually brought the book to the US where experts have subsequently puzzled over it for more than a century. Many cryptologists agree that the writing has all the characteristics of a real language, just one that no one has ever seen before. What makes it seem real is that in actual languages we often see letters and groups of letters appear with consistent frequency which the language of the Voynich manuscript follows, thus eliminating the possibility for it to have been generated by any random language generator. Other than that, so far, we know little more that what we can see. What makes it interesting is that it is littered with scroll like embellishments and that it seems to have been written by two or more hands and illustrated by yet another. Over the years three main theories have emerged, each with its varied following amongst the populace. The first theory establishes that it is written in cipher, with a secret code that is meant to hide a secret meaning. The second theory puts forward that it is a hoax, written in gibberish, to make money off a gullible buyer. Many believe that this is the work of a medieval con man, while some believe it was Voynich himself. The third theory which so far has the most backing within the cryptology department is that this manuscript contains an actual language but in an unknown script. Perhaps its medieval authors were trying to create letters for a language that was spoken but not yet written. In such a case the Voynich manuscript could be like the rongorongo script from Easter island, which is unreadable now as the culture that made it has collapsed. However, a few breakthroughs have been seen, the first in carbon dating. Its provenance can be traced to Rome in 1612, while its carbon dating of the vellum pages shows it to be around 1420. Also, linguistic researchers have recently proposed a few provisional identifications of a few words from the tome.

The question remains, what will we find when we finally decode this manuscript? The dream journal of an illustrator, a bunch of nonsense or the lost knowledge of a forgotten culture?