9/28/2023 0 Comments Voynich manuscript coverResulting letter frequency analyses reveal that the text in the Voynich Manuscript is closely connected to both Latin and Italian. The nature of the Voynich Manuscript, along with existing transcriptions of its writing, promote the use of data mining and machine learning techniques to find underlying patterns in its text. That is the. MS 408, also known as the Voynich Manuscript, has perplexed readers for centuries due to its strange writing and illustrations of plants, symbols, and human figures. Hořčický used a title of nobility that he received in 1608, so the signature must date from between that year and his death in 1622. Marci lived in Prague, where Rudolf had held court, and the possibility of a link to Rudolf is further strengthened by the signature on the opening page, faded now to invisibility under ordinary light, of Jacobus Hořčický de Tepenec, physician to the emperor. According to Marci’s letter, which accompanied the manuscript and has been preserved with it to the present day, it was rumored to have belonged to the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (1552–1612), who was known for his interest in science and the occult. The earliest known reference to the manuscript comes in 1665, when a scientist named Johannes Marcus Marci sent it as a gift to the Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher. In theory the manuscript could be later, but this requires us to assume that the parchment sat around for an unknown length of time before being used. Chemical analysis shows the inks and pigments used are at least consistent with that date. ![]() Only with regard to its date can we speak with relative confidence: radiocarbon tests conducted in 2009 yield a 95 percent probability that the parchment on which the manuscript is written originated between 14. We have, in short, no idea what the manuscript says or depicts, who wrote and/or illustrated it, or where or why it was made. The pictures are juxtaposed, and often closely interwoven, with ‘‘text’’ of unknown import, written in an unknown script. What the manu- 1 4 8 T R I L L I N G Y script shows are plants with no counterpart in nature, things resembling star charts but corresponding to no known astronomical or astrological scheme, naked women enmeshed in a bizarre and alien plumbing system (some do appear to be bathing), and what seem to be recipes involving plants as unfamiliar as those of the first category. These designations can mislead by suggesting that we have some notion of what the images actually depict we do not. Scholars divide the illustrations into four groups by their resemblance to known subject matter: herbal, astrological, balneological (having to do with healing baths), and pharmacological. Reproduced courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Librar y, Yale University manuscript originally consisted of 116 leaves of calfskin parchment (numbered in a later hand), a few of which are now missing. Harkness (Yale University Press, 304 pp., $50) 1 4 7 R From the Voynich Manuscript, folio 33 verso. ![]() Named after Wilfrid Voynich, the colorful rare-book dealer who bought and publicized it in 1912, the T h e V o y n i c h M a n u s c r i p t, edited by Raymond Clemens, with an introduction by Deborah E. The ‘‘story’’ of the Voynich manuscript still lacks an ending, six hundred years after it began. An unsolved mystery is an unfinished story. We speak, almost teleologically, of a mystery ‘‘waiting’’ to be solved. In the myth of ancient Crete, the hero is Theseus, who finds his way through the labyrinth, not Daedalus, who designed it. In our conventional system, mystery is static, resolution is dynamic, and dynamism is heroic. The modern world, or at least the modern West, rejects that archetype. We can at least imagine a culture in which the creation of the mystery, not its resolution, is celebrated: the treasure so cleverly hidden that it is never found. The hidden treasure found, the impenetrable cipher decrypted, the cold case cracked at last a√ord both intellectual and emotional satisfaction. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:ġ 4 6 Y T H E U N K N O W N I S S T I L L W I N N I N G T H E V O Y N I C H M A N U S C R I P T J A M E S T R I L L I N G Everyone loves a mystery – and the person who solves it.
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