Scientist breaks the code of the mysterious manuscript of Voynich

One scientist succeeded where countless cryptographers, linguists, and computer programs failed. He cracked the code of one of the most famous mysterious texts in the world, the Voynich manuscript.

Although the purpose and meaning of this manuscript has eluded scholars for more than a century, it took Dr. Gerard Cheshire just two weeks, using a combination of ingenuity and lateral thinking , to determine the language and writing system of this world-famous incomprehensible document.

The Voynich manuscript is a medieval, manuscript and illustrated text that dates from the mid-15th century through carbon analysis.

It is named after Wilfried Wojnicz, a Polish merchant and antique collector who acquired the manuscript in 1912.

It is now stored at Yale University, where it is listed under code MS408 in the Beinecke Library of Rare Books and Manuscripts .

Among those who tried to crack the manuscript code were Alan Turing and his colleagues from Bletchley Park. The FBI also tried to crack it during the Cold War, perhaps thinking it could be communist propaganda.

Dr. Cheshire, a research fellow at the University of Bristol, described how he successfully deciphered the code for the manuscript and, at the same time, discovered the only example of the Proto-Roman language.

“I experienced several inspirations during the decryption of the code, after which I felt uncertainty and excitement when I realized the magnitude of the achievement, from the point of view of importance for linguistics and discoveries about the origin and contents of the manuscript,” he said.

“What she reveals is even more surprising than the myths and fantasies that she generated.”

“For example, the manuscript was compiled by Dominican nuns as a reference for Mary of Castile, Queen of Aragon , who was the cousin of Catherine of Aragon .”

"It is also not an exaggeration to say that this work is one of the most important events to date in Roman linguistics."



“The manuscript is written in the Protoromanian language - the ancestor of those dialects of this language family that are now spoken in Portugal, France, Spain and other countries. It was used everywhere in the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages, but almost no one wrote on it, since Latin remained the language of the nobility, church and state. Therefore, this language has disappeared without a trace, ”the scientist said.

Now the language and writing of the manuscript are described, the pages of the manuscript were open to scientists, this is true, linguistic and informative content.

Dr. Cheshire also explained in terms of linguistics what made this manuscript so unusual.

“She uses a dead tongue . His alphabet is a combination of unfamiliar and more familiar characters. ”

“It does not include punctuation marks, although some letters have options for indicating punctuation or phonetic accents,” he said.

All letters are lowercase and there are no double consonants. There are diphthongs, trifthongs, complex vowels of four or even five elements to reduce phonetic components. Also includes a few words and abbreviations in Latin.

The next step is to use the knowledge gained for the complete translation of the manuscript and the preparation of the lexicon. Dr. Cheshire acknowledged that this would require some time and funding, as the manuscript consists of more than two hundred pages.

“Now the language and writing of the manuscript are described, the pages of the manuscript were open to scientists, this is true, linguistic and informative content,” he added.

Document “Language and Writing MS408 (Voynich Manuscript)” published in the journal “Romance Studies”

Scan of the Voynich Manuscript