VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT SOLVED CRACK

While he expounded his theory in the much-respected Times Literary Supplement, that didnвЂ™t guarantee it a rapturous reception. Gibbs based his argument on the images of bathing women and the repeated use of signs of the Zodiac, both of which were regularly employed in medical treatises in medieval Europe. The illustrations in the Voynich Manuscript are wondrous, but their meaning has left scholars confused and divided (Photo by Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) But then, as the centenary of VoynichвЂ™s discovery of the book approached, science threw a big bucket of cold water on the theories. Others have thrown their weight behind the theory that John Dee вЂ“ who was astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I вЂ“ and the alchemist Edward Kelley conceived the text as an elaborate Tudor hoax. Voynichologists have argued that the textвЂ™s roots lie in tongues ranging from Old Cornish and Old Turkish to the Aztec language of Nahuatl. вЂњMy favourite is that it is the illustrated diary of a teenage space alien who left it behind on Earth,вЂќ Ray Clemens, curator at the Beinecke Library, told BBC News in 2014. A whole host of candidates have been put forward as potential authors. Voynich himself called his discovery the вЂњRoger Bacon cypher manuscriptвЂќ. MarciвЂ™s missive tells us the manuscript could have been the handiwork of the 13th-century philosopher and alchemist Roger Bacon. Cuneiform: 6 things you (probably) didnвЂ™t know about the worldвЂ™s oldest writing system.The book then came into the possession of Marci himself, who sent it on to a Jesuit scholar called Athanasius Kircher in the hope that he could succeed where Baresch had failed. Its next owner was apparently a Prague-based alchemist called Georg Baresch who, Marci tells us, вЂњdevoted unflagging toilвЂќ to the quest of deciphering the text and вЂњrelinquished hope only with his lifeвЂќ. The correspondence, written in 1665 by imperial physician Johannes Marcus Marci, claimed that the manuscript had once belonged to the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, who reigned from 1576 to 1612. Unusual things found in medieval manuscriptsДЄppended to the manuscript, and no doubt firing VoynichвЂ™s imagination further still, was a letter that appeared to shed some light on the documentвЂ™s history.Voynich, it appears, instantly realised that he had chanced upon something very special. There, he established a second-hand book shop that was patronised by the man who would become Sydney Reilly, вЂAce of SpiesвЂ™.Д«ut it was in a Jesuit seminary outside Rome in 1912 вЂ“ during a book-buying expedition вЂ“ that Voynich apparently discovered the manuscript to which he would give his name. Born in what is now Lithuania in 1865, he got himself arrested for his socialist activities and imprisoned in Siberia, only to escape and make his way to London. To say that he led a colourful life is something of an understatement.

VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT SOLVED CRACK

The gifted William Friedman вЂ“ chief cryptoanalyst in the US ArmyвЂ™s Signal Intelligence Service вЂ“ spent 30 years trying to crack the secrets, without success.ДЄt the heart of this wordy whodunnit was a Polish-Lithuanian book dealer with revolutionary tendencies and famous friends: a man called Wilfrid Voynich. Written in an unknown script with an alphabet that appears nowhere else other than in the pages of this manuscript, it has thus far proved utterly indecipherable.Д«rilliant wartime cryptologists including Alan Turing, FBI operatives (apparently fearing the text may contain communist propaganda), respected medievalists, mathematic and scientific scholars, skilled linguistsвЂ¦ theyвЂ™ve all been left stumped by the Voynich Manuscript. Yet itвЂ™s the text that has proved most puzzling to the great and the good of the academic world. Brilliant wartime cryptologists including Alan Turing, FBI operatives, respected medievalists, mathematic and scientific scholars, skilled linguists.

Voynich manuscript solved