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Centuries-old mysterious text, decoded at last?
By TJ DIMACALI, GMA News
According to cryptoanalyst John Tiltman, the Voynich manuscript was supposedly "discovered in a chest in an ancient castle in Southern Europe" in 1912 but contained a letter that puts its existence at least as far back as 1666, when it was given to Fr. Athanasius Kircher, with the hopes that the Jesuit scholar and polymath could decipher its writing.
However, in the intervening centuries, the text has proven undecipherable—until now.
However, in the intervening centuries, the text has proven undecipherable—until now.
Stephen Bax, a Professor of Applied Linguistics at the UK's University of Bedfordshire, claims to have succeeded—or at least made headway—where his predecessors had failed.
“The (Voynich) manuscript has a lot of illustrations of stars and plants. I was able to identify some of these, with their names, by looking at mediaeval herbal manuscripts in Arabic and other languages, and I then made a start on a decoding, with some exciting results,” he said in a press release.
“I hit on the idea of identifying proper names in the text, following historic approaches which successfully deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs and other mystery scripts, and I then used those names to work out part of the script,” Bax explained.
Known history of the Voynich manuscript
Painstakingly written and drawn on vellum parchment, the Voynich manuscript languished in a Jesuit villa in Italy until it was found and purchased in 1912 by Polish bibliophile Wilfrid Michael Voynich.
The book has since been estimated to be some 600 years old, carbon-dated to the early Renaissance between 1404 and 1438.
Painstakingly written and drawn on vellum parchment, the Voynich manuscript languished in a Jesuit villa in Italy until it was found and purchased in 1912 by Polish bibliophile Wilfrid Michael Voynich.
The book has since been estimated to be some 600 years old, carbon-dated to the early Renaissance between 1404 and 1438.
Apart from these facts, however, little else is known about the book because it is written in a unique and unknown writing system that has proven extremely difficult to decipher—so much so that the Voynich manuscript has gained a cult following in pop culture.
"Over time it has attained an infamous reputation, even featuring in the latest hit computer game Assassin’s Creed, as well as in the Indiana Jones novels, when Indiana decoded the Voynich and used it to find the ‘Philosopher's Stone’," notes the University of Bedfordshire in its press release. — GMA News
