• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Voynich Manuscript dated

Olowkow said:
I prefer this solution. An 8-10 year old Leonardo da Vinci just having fun.
http://www.edithsherwood.com/voynich_decoded/index.php
Click to expand...
The theory that there is an anagram element to the text reminds me of those who try to find hidden meanings from Nostradamus or the Bible codes when we have no assurance that such meanings were ever planted. Let's see, if we move this letter here, and drop that one there, and substitute this one over there, we find an amazing hidden word! It seems quite far fetched, and no actual examples are given.

I can certainly go for DevilsAdvocate's theory of a hoax prepared to sell to a rich benefactor, which might justify the expensive material used. But my theory of a rich, artistic and slightly eccentric person doing it themselves as a fun fantasy exercise with no nefarious motive fits, too. I don't know how we could tilt the scale towards one or the other unless something more comes to light.
 
Sherman Bay said:
The theory that there is an anagram element to the text reminds me of those who try to find hidden meanings from Nostradamus or the Bible codes when we have no assurance that such meanings were ever planted. Let's see, if we move this letter here, and drop that one there, and substitute this one over there, we find an amazing hidden word! It seems quite far fetched, and no actual examples are given.
Click to expand...
Try clicking "next" a few times. I thought the examples were pretty interesting. The script is even reminiscent of the "mirror writing" in a way.
 
Last edited:
Olowkow said:
Try clicking "next" a few times. I thought the examples were pretty interesting. The script is even reminiscent of the "mirror writing" in a way.
Click to expand...
I looked at those pages long ago (that site's been referenced before). I can't make much sense of it. I can only guess that the author is trying to match Voynich text with names for known plants or animals, but many have "?" after them. It looks like a fishing expedition, and I find it less than convincing of anything other than guesswork. If it's reminiscent of anything, it's attempts to interpret Nostradamus by making millions of comparisons and crowing about just the ones that seem to match.
 
ben m said:
If you're dedicated, I think it's possible to fake parchment/papyrus/ink/whatever from any era you like.

Build a reasonably-airtight greenhouse. Flush it, not with regular air, but with CO2 from an coal-furnace exhaust. That's pure 12C, no 14C, and will appear too-old-to-measure in a spectrometer. Grow a supply of plants in this greenhouse; now you've got 14C-depleted plant material (paper, papyrus?). Raise a goat for a few years on a strict diet of 14-C-depleted plants and you've got raw materials for fake "old" parchment.

Oak galls might be a challenge.
Click to expand...

You've given this some thought, haven't you? With any particular end in mind? ;)
 
DevilsAdvocate said:
If it is the work of a madman, it is a madman with some significant scholarly knowledge and some wealth and prestige and time.
Click to expand...

Perhaps a madman whose wealthy and influential family had him put away in a monastery, out of sight but kept happy? Madness in the family is a bummer in the marriage-market.
 
nvidiot said:
Considering I've only known of the existence for a very short time my opinion on the subject matters little. But a scientific treatise in code to avoid wide distribution amongst those who would compete with the writer seems good to me.
Click to expand...

We know a fair bit about cryptography from that erea. If that was what was going on we would have broken the code by now.
 
Sherman Bay said:
I can certainly go for DevilsAdvocate's theory of a hoax prepared to sell to a rich benefactor, which might justify the expensive material used. But my theory of a rich, artistic and slightly eccentric person doing it themselves as a fun fantasy exercise with no nefarious motive fits, too. I don't know how we could tilt the scale towards one or the other unless something more comes to light.
Click to expand...

Apart from "slightly eccentric", I find that reasonable. I lean more towards my paranoid, obsessive, somewhere-on-the-Asperger-spectrum, locked-away-in-a-tower hypothesis, but then I would :).

Had it been a hoax produced for the Cabinet of Curiosities market it would surely have been referenced earlier. The point of owning such things is to show them off, after all.
 
DevilsAdvocate said:
Yeah, Sherwood has a pretty good theory. The idea of a link to someone famous as Da Vinci seems unlikely, but it is certainly plausible.
Click to expand...

Her hypothesis is pretty out there, but I find it so appealing as a thought experiment, just imagining a 10 year old da Vinci already using his genius in this way. For me, the drawings and the thrust of the entire work somehow suggest a kid just experimenting, or playing, much as the older Leonardo did with his mirrored writing. No one really knows for sure why he did that...maybe just because he could.

The plant drawings have an almost childlike fascination or caricature suggesting elevated importance about them, while the script looks too practiced or mature for a kid. But, if it was in fact Leonardo...who knows? He must have been quite a kid.
 
The Voynich manuscript is indeed a real mystery. My personal suspicion is that it is a 15th century piece of nonsense designed to get a load of money from the gullible. Just why would someone trying to impart important information write it in a very hard to break code? Doesn't that defeat the purpose in writing a manuscript containing imporrtant information. Esspecially if you factor in just why would someone write in code? Just what would they be hiding? After all in the later middle ages all sorts of manuscripts containing allegedly secret knowledge circulated in languages people could understand. It strikes me as the way the the manuscript was written seems designed to make it more secret and mysterious and thus up the price. It is possible that the manuscript is in fact some sort of complete nonsense meaning nothing. Given the nature of the manuscript I suspect if the code really means anything it is typical middle ages magical, esoteric lore. In other words new age like crap.
 
Pacal said:
The Voynich manuscript is indeed a real mystery. My personal suspicion is that it is a 15th century piece of nonsense designed to get a load of money from the gullible. Just why would someone trying to impart important information write it in a very hard to break code? Doesn't that defeat the purpose in writing a manuscript containing imporrtant information. Esspecially if you factor in just why would someone write in code? Just what would they be hiding? After all in the later middle ages all sorts of manuscripts containing allegedly secret knowledge circulated in languages people could understand. It strikes me as the way the the manuscript was written seems designed to make it more secret and mysterious and thus up the price. It is possible that the manuscript is in fact some sort of complete nonsense meaning nothing. Given the nature of the manuscript I suspect if the code really means anything it is typical middle ages magical, esoteric lore. In other words new age like crap.
Click to expand...

I agree. Someone created something that would look like a magical, esoteric lore book without actually being one (by which I mean, of course, not that there are "real" magic books but that this one wasn't written by someone who believed it was real)....a con man (or woman) who needed a convincing prop to pretend to be a magician or alchemist or scholar. Find a rich patron, do some cold reading, give them some peeps of your mysterious grimoire of demonic wisdom, and earn a nice living doing it.

It sounds like an awfully G.K. Chesteron, Father Brown thing to say, but one reason a code might be unbreakable is to conceal the fact that is has no real meaning behind it. The point of the book is that it has no meaning to be read.
 
During my brief fascination with the subject I recall reading about entropy measures on the text that suggest it’s too well-organised to be random gibberish but not quite variable enough to be related to any European language we know about.

It does look a bit like one of the attempts being made around then to discover the ‘universal language’ that would be the one spoke pre-Babel – some of these included whole new typographies.
 
CapelDodger said:
Apart from "slightly eccentric", I find that reasonable. I lean more towards my paranoid, obsessive, somewhere-on-the-Asperger-spectrum, locked-away-in-a-tower hypothesis, but then I would :).
Click to expand...
We seem to agree on the thesis, but we haven't yet agreed on the level of berserkosity necessary. :)
Had it been a hoax produced for the Cabinet of Curiosities market it would surely have been referenced earlier. The point of owning such things is to show them off, after all.
Click to expand...
That doesn't sound like a sound argument. I know people who scribble and doodle in their diaries, and they would be appalled if the world saw what they did.

What if the writer met with an untimely end before the project was finished? That would explain both the extreme effort and the lack of publicity.

It's interesting to speculate.
 
I have a couple of questions I'm too lazy to research:

-Has the manuscript been fully decoded?

-If so, is it what it looks to be, a biology book of some sort?

-Has anyone 'proven' when it was created?
 
King of the Americas said:
I have a couple of questions I'm too lazy to research:
Click to expand...

King of the Americas said:
-Has the manuscript been fully decoded?
Click to expand...
No. Not at all.

King of the Americas said:
-If so, is it what it looks to be, a biology book of some sort?
Click to expand...
It appears to be a book on plants, astronomy, astrology, medicine, potions, and alchemy.

King of the Americas said:
-Has anyone 'proven' when it was created?
Click to expand...
The topic of the thread is the dating of the manuscript. The University of Arizona radiocarbon dating puts it at 1404 to 1438 with 95% confidence. This is consistent with other dating anayisys including analysis of the drwaings, although most other datings have suggested it could be as late as 1550 (or possibly even later 1500s).
 
DevilsAdvocate said:
No. Not at all.

It appears to be a book on plants, astronomy, astrology, medicine, potions, and alchemy.

The topic of the thread is the dating of the manuscript. The University of Arizona radiocarbon dating puts it at 1404 to 1438 with 95% confidence. This is consistent with other dating anayisys including analysis of the drwaings, although most other datings have suggested it could be as late as 1550 (or possibly even later 1500s).
Click to expand...

Thank you for the information.

Is has NOT been decoded...? Not at all...?

Do you know if it CAN be decoded? I mean, are the decoders saying they're on it, with potential leads or is everyone completely stumped indicating it is all just made up gibberish?

Several of the pictures I've seen look like ripe opium pods. Are the plants known, or are they just made-up images intended to go hand in hand with the made up gibberish?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom