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Discover the story of Wilfrid Michael Voynich, this bibliophile who bought a mysterious manuscript that no one has been able to decipher.
The story we are about to tell you is not that of this brave Wilfrid Voynich, but rather that of the said mysterious manuscript bought in 1912 at the Roman College.
By doing some research on the Voynich manuscript in various search engines, one quickly finds oneself in the middle of a general Eureka! The manuscript would have been decrypted! But what is really the case?
Since 1912, the year it came into Voynich's hands, the eponymous manuscript (which you can flip through here) has sparked curiosity.
Anonymous author, possible dating between 1404 and 1438 (following a carbon 14 analysis in 2011), unknown country of origin and incomprehensible language... An enigma that would delight many genealogists (and investigators in their spare time!).
Within this vellum codex, we find text divided into sections, glyphs, as well as numerous illustrations, plants, astronomical and astrological drawings, nudes, castles and dragons, and much more... The hypotheses are many as to the content of this manuscript. Between herbarium, alchemy guide or astrology, medical recipe book, many speculate on this subject.
The analyses have been extensive and numerous, many means have been employed to try to decipher the manuscript and uncover its smallest secrets.
They all allow for hypotheses about the exact dating of the manuscript and the ink, about whether the manuscript could have been altered, whether it could have been written by several authors, which could explain the difficulty of translating the language (or languages) used.
The language itself is what seems to be the key element of this mystery. It is no longer a matter of being a good paleographer, but rather an excellent cryptanalyst! Indeed, some claim that although the language seems to be European, it was intentionally encrypted to hide its meaning. Be that as it may, cryptological and linguistic analyses have not made it possible to make these texts readable, let alone clearly identify the author(s) (Voynich himself was suspected of having created the manuscript to make money on this mystery – this hypothesis was quickly refuted since the manuscript is mentioned for the first time in 1639).
The years pass, and in 2014, 2016, and 2017, a few scholars claim to have decrypted this manuscript – but without convincing their audiences with short and sometimes very loose translations of the language.
And if the discussions now focus on a treatise on medicine for gynecology and female aesthetics, we still lack formal proof on the subject!
In 2018 – this time it's two Canadians passionate about computer science who would have put an end to 600 years of absolute mystery – or at least, an artificial intelligence. They focused on creating algorithms (tested on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 380 languages (no more, no less!)) that allowed them to suggest that the text is mostly written in Hebrew and that it was encrypted in alphagrams.
And how do you translate Hebrew if you don't speak the language? You use Google Translate, of course... In any case, that's what they did, and Bingo! The sentence made sense: "she made recommendations to the priest, to the man of the house, to me and to the people" and by translating other words ("air", "light", "farmer"), these Canadians think that the famous Voynich manuscript would actually be a botanical guide. Once again, not all of the manuscript has been translated and opinions still diverge...