The Mystery Of The Voynich Manuscript (New)

Scientific American ^ | 6-28-2004 | Gordon Rugg

[blam]

The Mystery of the Voynich Manuscript

New analysis of a famously cryptic medieval document suggests that it contains nothing but gibberish

By Gordon Rugg

Image: BEINECKE RARE BOOK AND MANUSCRIPT LIBRARY, YALE UNIVERSITY

STRANGE IMAGES of heavenly spheres, fantastic plants and nude women adorn the pages of the Voynich manuscript, which is written in an odd script that does not match that of any known language. The manuscript now resides at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. Overview/A Medieval Mystery

In 1912 Wilfrid Voynich, an American rare-book dealer, made the find of a lifetime in the library of a Jesuit college near Rome: a manuscript some 230 pages long, written in an unusual script and richly illustrated with bizarre images of plants, heavenly spheres and bathing women. Voynich immediately recognized the importance of his new acquisition. Although it superficially resembled the handbook of a medieval alchemist or herbalist, the manuscript appeared to be written entirely in code. Features in the illustrations, such as hairstyles, suggested that the book was produced sometime between 1470 and 1500, and a 17th-century letter accompanying the manuscript stated that it had been purchased by Rudolph II, the Holy Roman Emperor, in 1586. During the 1600s, at least two scholars apparently tried to decipher the manuscript, and then it disappeared for nearly 250 years until Voynich unearthed it. Voynich asked the leading cryptographers of his day to decode the odd script, which did not match that of any known language. But despite 90 years of effort by some of the world's best code breakers, no one has been able to decipher Voynichese, as the script has become known. The nature and origin of the manuscript remain a mystery. The failure of the code-breaking attempts has raised the suspicion that there may not be any cipher to crack. Voynichese may contain no message at all, and the manuscript may simply be an elaborate hoax.

Critics of this hypothesis have argued that Voynichese is too complex to be nonsense. How could a medieval hoaxer produce 230 pages of script with so many subtle regularities in the structure and distribution of the words? But I have recently discovered that one can replicate many of the remarkable features of Voynichese using a simple coding tool that was available in the 16th century. The text generated by this technique looks much like Voynichese, but it is merely gibberish, with no hidden message. This finding does not prove that the Voynich manuscript is a hoax, but it does bolster the long-held theory that an English adventurer named Edward Kelley may have concocted the document to defraud Rudolph II. (The emperor reportedly paid a sum of 600 ducats--equivalent to about $50,000 today--for the manuscript.)

Image: NINA FINKEL
A VOYNICHESE PRIMER

Perhaps more important, I believe that the methods used in this analysis of the Voynich mystery can be applied to difficult questions in other areas. Tackling this hoary puzzle requires expertise in several fields, including cryptography, linguistics and medieval history. As a researcher into expert reasoning--the study of the processes used to solve complex problems--I saw my work on the Voynich manuscript as an informal test of an approach that could be used to identify new ways of tackling long-standing scientific questions. The key step is determining the strengths and weaknesses of the expertise in the relevant fields. Baby God's Eye? The first purported decryption of the Voynich manuscript came in 1921. William R. Newbold, a professor of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, claimed that each character in the Voynich script contained tiny pen strokes that could be seen only under magnification and that these strokes formed an ancient Greek shorthand. Based on his reading of the code, Newbold declared that the Voynich manuscript had been written by 13th-century philosopher-scientist Roger Bacon and described discoveries such as the invention of the microscope. Within a decade, however, critics debunked Newbold's solution by showing that the alleged microscopic features of the letters were actually natural cracks in the ink.

The Voynich manuscript appeared to be either an unusual code, an unknown language or a sophisticated hoax.

Newbold's attempt was just the start of a string of failures. In the 1940s amateur code breakers Joseph M. Feely and Leonell C. Strong used substitution ciphers that assigned Roman letters to the characters in Voynichese, but the purported translations made little sense. At the end of World War II the U.S. military cryptographers who cracked the Japanese Imperial Navy's codes passed some spare time tackling ciphertexts--encrypted texts--from antiquity. The team deciphered every one except the Voynich manuscript.

[blam]

Scientific American did a hit piece on GWB last month so, I cancelled my subscription...anyway.

[nuconvert]

Pong

[Thumper1960]

Can't decipher it.

It must be gibberish.

Mystery solved.

Uh huh.

[ScottFromSpokane]

New analysis of a famously cryptic medieval document suggests that it contains nothing but gibberish

So, it's the medieval version of Kerry Kampaign talking points, then?

[RightWhale]

If Scientific American can't figure out something, it wouldn't be the first time.

[kingofrock]

i was sold when they said it had drawings of nude women

[gcruse]

Critics of this hypothesis have argued that Voynichese is too complex to be nonsense.

Complexity equals intelligibility?  Sounds like a bunch of creationists.
Hitler's diary was too interesting to be a hoax, until it was.
The Protocols of Zion are too detailed to be a crock, but they are.

[ScottFromSpokane]

An example from folio 78R of the manuscript reads: qokedy qokedy dal qokedy qokedy.

I had a car that sounded like that.

[KamperKen]

What exactly was the 'hit piece' that Scientific American published? I understand that they're behind all the left wing pseudoscientific causes like human-induced global warming.

[Groutrig]

"Within a decade, however, critics debunked Newbold's solution by showing that the alleged microscopic features of the letters were actually natural cracks in the ink."

I guess it's not all it's cracked-up to be.

[ClearCase_guy]

This absence of evidence does not prove that the manuscript was a hoax, but my work shows that the construction of a hoax as complex as the Voynich manuscript was indeed feasible. This explanation dovetails with several intriguing historical facts: Elizabethan scholar John Dee and his disreputable associate Edward Kelley visited the court of Rudolf II during the 1580s. Kelley was a notorious forger, mystic and alchemist who was familiar with Cardan grilles. Some experts on the Voynich manuscript have long suspected that Kelley was the author.

I don't find this convincing. Why? Because Dee and Kelley are known to have created fascinating works -- in a created language ("Enochian") and with a unique alphabet. But their manuscripts can be easily deciphered and do NOT contain gibberish.

So -- if you have something which cannot be deciphered, and which appears to be gibberish and which uses a completely different unique alphabet -- why ascribe it to Kelley and Dee? Because they are convenient? Is that science? And why assume its gibberish, just because you can't figure it out? Is that science?

[swilhelm73]

I don't buy it.

The argument is that there was a way to create repetitive gibberish in the time we believe the book to be written. One of the people associated with the book probably knew of this method, this combined with the inability to translate means it is just gibberish?

Here's a thought. What if is a series of encoded mantras. One would expect extreme repetition. Consider the "Hari Krishna" mantra;

Hari Krishna, Hari Krishna, Hari Hari, Krishna Krishna. Hari Rama, Hari Rama, Rama Rama, Krishna Krishna

Or perhaps even simpler, what if it is a short message encoded several different ways again and again?

Overall, I think that the common modern view that those in the past were idiots is rearing its ugly head here. We moderns can't translate it, and those idiots certainly couldn't have created a code we can't crack, so it must be mere gibberish.

[Joee]

Bet it's the location of the Lost Dutchman!

[Jalapeno]

I had a car that sounded like that.

I think that's proof they had alien technology in ancient times!

[Paradox]

Nice bit of work here actually, in the James Randi style. When trying to prove that something is NOT a hoax, get a good hoaxer to try to get the same results! Randi has debunked many psychics. Anyways, this guy goes and generates a code that is similar to Voynich. Does it prove that its a hoax? No, just that it COULD be, which contradicts the opinions of various researchers in the past. I'm not ready to call it a hoax yet, but I think its time to start sharpening ole Occams Razor.

[fso301]

This absence of evidence does not prove that the manuscript was a hoax, but my work shows that the construction of a hoax as complex as the Voynich manuscript was indeed feasible.

So, he doesn't claim the manuscript to be a hoax, just that it was possible in the era to have constructed a hoax of such sophistication.

[IncPen]

Ok... I admit it.

I wrote it.

I gave it to Al Gore and he turned it in as his thesis at Divinity School.

[Alouette]

I'm waiting for the Dan Brown novel to come out.

[facedown]

bump

[gdc314]

I'm not sure the experts ever decyphered the script found on Easter Island either...very interesting stuff.
gdc314