The Voynich Manuscript is a famously untranslated work. I purchased a reproduction from The Galobart Books, who make high quality parchment recreations of famous works. In terms of what I read, there’s some companion work to this, but the real appeal is the opportunity to just peruse a work that otherwise only exists in a museum.
I first found out about this manuscript from a Cracked.com article a million years ago. I’m going to see if I can embed the content of that article into this review so that other people can appreciate why I was so fascinated by this. The name comes from the first known owner, a bookseller named Voynich. It was then purchased by an emperor with the help of John Dee, a famous mystic. No one knows what language this is, it’s full of mysterious plant drawings that don’t exist, as well as what appear to be strange calendars.
Now for the buzzkill: I’m not qualified at all to say what this is, but I’m pretty sure it’s an almanac. The first half is seriously nothing but plants, later on all these calendars, lots of nudes maybe discussing fertility… that’s just my take. It was fun to peruse this and if you’re interested in collecting things like this you could do worse. I had a good time.
Content from cracked.com that originally got me interested in this:
The Voynich manuscript is an ancient book that has thwarted all attempts at deciphering its contents. And it’s not like some idiot just scribbled a bunch of nonsense on paper and went, “Figure THIS out, fuckwads.” It is actually an organized book with a consistent script, discernible organization and detailed illustrations.
It appears to be a real language–just one that nobody has seen before. And it really does appear to mean something. But nobody knows what.
[Translation: “…and when you get her to put the tennis racket in her mouth, have her stand in a fountain for a while. Then draw pictures of her.”]
There is not even a consensus on who wrote it, or even when it was written. And we sure as fuck don’t know why.
Why Can’t They Solve It?
Could you? Look at this shit:
Don’t even try. Expert military code-breakers, cryptographers, mathematicians, linguists, people who get paid to find and decipher patterns, have all been left unable to decipher a single word.
As you can imagine, proposed solutions have been all over the board, from reasonable to completely clownshit. Some say it’s an unbreakable code that requires a key to solve. Some say it’s a hoax, and a damned fine one if we do say ourselves. Some say it’s glossolalia, which is the fine art of speaking or writing something you don’t understand but that is being channeled to you by God or aliens or whatever (note that the word was chosen specifically to make you sound r******d when saying it).
Our Guess:
It’s written in English, by a person who was extremely shitty at writing in English.