This volume sets out clearly and succinctly the current state of knowledge about this remarkable manuscript. The Voynich Manuscript remains an enigma.
Indeed, multispectral imaging has revealed the erased signature of the earliest known owner, the Prague pharmacist, Jacobus Horčicky de Tepenec (also called Sinapius), who died in 1622. There is no evidence for the manuscript being a later forgery. Chemical analysis of the inks and paints used for the text and images shows that they are consistent with this period. Radiocarbon dating reveals that the parchment itself almost certainly dates from the first half of the fifteenth century.
Extensive investigations into its physical characteristics, reported here by a team of Yale University conservators, have produced some results, however. Īs all these contributors make clear, we are still no closer to understanding either the text of the manuscript or its pictures and diagrams. Rampling discusses the manuscript’s images and their possible connection with alchemical traditions. William Sherman reviews the many unsuccessful attempts to decode the manuscript in the twentieth century, including the work of eminent British and American code-breakers better known for their work on Japanese and German ciphers during the Second World War. René Zandbergen summarizes what is known about its history and provenance between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, while Arnold Hunt contributes a fascinating account of the antiquarian book dealer, Wilfrid Voynich (1865–1930), whose name is now inextricably linked to the manuscript he discovered in the early twentieth century. The images are high-quality, clear reproductions, with the exception of a slightly blurred folio 100 v.Īpart from the inherent value of having such a facsimile commercially available, this book is important for the accompanying group of authoritative essays, which deal with various aspects of this enigmatic manuscript. But this Yale-produced facsimile is the first such book to appear, featuring colour images of every page of the manuscript - and even including a re-creation of several foldout folios which appear in the second half of the codex. The Spanish publisher, Siloé, has announced a full-size replica edition, due to be published in 2018.
There is already a digitized version of the Voynich Manuscript available from the Beinecke Library’s website, which is apparently responsible for 11 per cent of the overall traffic to that site and nearly 50 per cent of the traffic to its zoom viewer for images. Its history and origins are also mysterious, though it is known to have belonged to Athanasius Kircher and possibly to the Emperor Rudolf II in the seventeenth century. It has become something of a cult, with various websites devoted to it and a growing number of adventure novels built around it - including one in the Indiana Jones series. Numerous cryptologists, both amateur and professional, have failed to decipher it. Its script, language and text remain unknown and unreadable, and its many detailed coloured drawings of plants appear to relate to no known species. MS 408 in the Beinecke Library at Yale University (the Voynich Manuscript) has been dubbed ‘the most mysterious manuscript in the world’.
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