Mark Haddon wrote in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, “Lots of things are mysteries, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t an answer to them. It’s just that scientists haven’t found the answer yet.” This is especially true in the case of the Voynich Manuscript—it has been a mystery for centuries, baffling cryptographers and linguists alike. The world’s greatest cryptographer, William Friedman, tried to crack the Voynich for years, and finally had to give up without so much as a single word deciphered. What is this manuscript that nobody can read? By employing both primary and secondary sources such as journal articles and published research, this paper will prove that the Voynich Manuscript is a valid document (not a hoax), written in a previously unrecorded language, for the purpose of charting stars and explaining medicinal uses for various plants and herbs.
In order understand why the Manuscript is not a hoax (but rather a valid document) some history and background is helpful. In 1912, an American rare books dealer named Wilfred Voynich visited the Jesuit College and Frascati near Rome. He dug through a trunk of old books and manuscripts that came from the Estate of Athenaeus Kesher. Inside he found an old manuscript filled with colorful illustrations and an unreadable text. He bought the manuscript and spent the remainder of his life trying to decode it. He died many years later having made no progress. Owners of the manuscript then donated the book to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. People have studied and tried to decode it ever since.
In 2009, researchers made huge progress in determining the origin of the document. Greg Hodgins, from the University of Arizona...
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... some of the patterns followed in natural languages for example, as Stephen Bax explains in his research on the Voynich, when word for “black” in Arabic is repeated, it means “pitch black.” The meaning changes to include an intensive adjective. In addition, research has been conducted that proves the Voynich Manuscript to be written in a natural language.
It is important to consider this question: if this is a valid language, why don’t we know much about it? It is very likely that the language existed for many years as a spoken language, and the author of the Voynich created the written version to record his medical findings. Furthermore, it is possible that the written language was not widely used enough for many documents to survive the years. It is probable that somebody or something destroyed any other documents written in this unknown language long ago.
It is a primary source. 4. When was the document created?
Pollitt, Katha. "What's the matter with Creationism?." 14 June 2012. Web. 18 May 2014. .
[xx] Morris, Henry M., and John D. Morris. The Modern Creation Trilogy: Science & Creation. Vol. 2. Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 1997.
During the late medieval and early renaissance, there are 83 manuscripts of this work. It was all written in Middle English, so it was clearly very difficult to
Anglin, M., Burke, C., Perrochet, B., Stamper, E., & Dawud-Noursi, S. (2000). History of the
Starr, Chester G., Nowell, Charles E., Lyon Bryce, Stearns, Raymond P., Hamerow Theordore S. A History of the World: Volume II- 1500 to Present. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1960.
Zimmer, C. (2013, December 5). Baffling 400,000-Year-Old Clue to Human Origins. New York Times, p. A10(L). Retrieved from http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/scic/NewsDetailsPage/NewsDetailsWindow
Impey, Chris. How It Began: A Time-traveler's Guide to the Universe. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. 123+. Print.
Arguably one of the most important discoveries made regarding the historical and cultural study of ancient Egypt is the translation of the writing form known as hieroglyphics. This language, lost for thousands of years, formed a tantalizing challenge to a young Jean François who committed his life to its translation. Scholars such as Sylvestre de Sacy had attempted to translate the Rosetta Stone before Champollion, but after painstaking and unfruitful work, they abandoned it (Giblin 32). Champollion’s breakthrough with hieroglyphics on the Rosetta Stone opened up new possibilities to study and understand ancient Egypt like never before, and modern Egyptology was born.
A recent theory is that the parchment was recovered from an earlier work and then a forger used modern ink to draw a fake map. Carbon-14 dating has put the origins of the parchment to the mid 1400’s. It is very hard to come to a definitive conclusion from the available evidence as both sides offer strong arguments. In my own opinion, the map is more likely authentic than a forgery. However, the controversy surrounding the map has not yet been settled.
Franz Delitzsch, A New Commentary on Genesis: Vol. I (New York: Scribner & Welford, 1889), p. 409.
Grame, Theodore. "History and evolution." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d. Web. 19 June 2014. .
Hailed as the archaeological find of modern times they were made out of papyrus or animal skins called gevil and written right to left with no punctuation. In fact there were no spaces between words they simply ran together. Written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek using ink made from carbon black and white pigments and using birds feathers as writing implements.
Allen, Leslie H., Bryan and Darrow at Dayton; the record and documents of the "Bible-evolution trial,". 2nd ed. New York: Russell & Russell, 1967.