The Voynich Manuscript is one of the most mystical documents in the world. Scientists recently revealed a surprising point, helping to decode this 600-year-old book.

Voynich Manuscript. – Photo source: vtv.vn

“The Voynich Manuscript” is one of the most mysterious books in the world

Known around the years 1404-1438. The name of the book is named after Mr. Wilfrid Voynich, a Polish antique book dealer who bought it in Italy in 1912.

Michael Wilfrid Voynich discovered the mysterious manuscript above. – Photo: Khoahoc.tv

Voynich consists of 240 pages of leather, written in a very difficult language, containing many drawings of objects such as trees, ancient laboratory equipment, and astrological symbols related to many fields such as medicine. , biology, chemistry, space…

The entire book uses about 23-40 different characters, and different types of illustrations show that the text is divided into six chapters. The first chapter, a maximum of 130 pages long, is a chapter on botany, which contains detailed descriptions of 113 types of flowering plants, but these plant species are also unknown.

The second chapter is a 26-page astrological chart, with a large number of circles and concentric figures, and several zodiac signs. The third chapter is about biological science, mainly featuring a drawing of several nude women playing in a tubing pool.

A page of the mysterious Michael Wilfrid Voynich manuscript. – Photo: Khoahoc.tv

Chapter 4, Cosmic Philosophy, has impressive inserts with pie charts showing certain properties of the universe. The fifth chapter is pharmaceuticals, with more than 100 drawings of minor herbs, rhizomes, medicinal powders, tinctures and medicines. The last chapter is called Stars, which is the most mysterious part, consisting of 23 paragraphs, divided into short paragraphs, each paragraph marked with a star. Some illustrations in the book can be seen influenced by culture. Eastern.

About a hundred years later, the book was sold to the Roman Emperor Rudolf II by the youngest son of an English astrologer. But then it passed into the hands of many different alchemists, until it was discovered by Voynich, and this book is considered to have the name.

During this period, many scientists, biologists, pharmacists and others became obsessed with it. Many people think it was written in some kind of code, but no one has found a way to decode it. Some people feel that it uses a constructed language, meaning one that is intentionally programmed and invented rather than naturally formed.

Another theory is that it was a hoax, the manuscript could have been completed at any time after the invention of parchment, and the author’s intention is also possible.

Some linguists even searched for the text recorded in this book. Although they did not find a match with existing languages ​​​in the world, they knew that it was not written at random. naturally follows the rules of strong language and logic development.

But what kind of text is it? The first person to claim to have cracked the Voynich manuscript appeared in 1921. Newbold, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States, claimed that the letters in the Voynich manuscript contained small strokes that were only visible when examined. zoom in and these strokes are ancient Greek abbreviations.

Based on cipher readings, Newbold concluded that the manuscript was written by 13th-century philosopher Bacon to describe his discoveries, such as the microscope. But within a decade, opponents had refuted Newbold’s claim, proving that the supposed small strokes in the letters were actually natural cracks in the ink.

Later, during World War I and World War II, many famous cryptographers also wanted to decode this book but they could not do it. In the past, the best cryptographers, including Alan Turing, were still unable to explain the messages recorded in the complex code in this Medieval book. British mathematical genius Alan Turing was the one who successfully decoded the Enigma machine – the device used by the Nazis to encode important messages such as combat intentions, ship locations, and war start times. pandemic…

Alan Turing is one of the most famous mathematicians and cryptographers in history. Britanica photo.

Many different experts say that the Voynich manuscript is “the most mysterious text in the world”. According to many people’s interpretation, it contains codes, magic, messages from aliens…

Dr. Chaicher, a linguist at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, consulted various medieval manuscripts and used Arabic to decipher the mysterious meanings in the manuscripts. He claimed to have successfully deciphered the Code of this book, this manuscript written in Proto-Romanic language. Proto-Romance languages ​​​​were common in the Mediterranean during the Middle Ages.

The manuscript is currently stored at Yale University, in the Beinecke library dedicated to rare books. The above research by Gerard Cheshire was published in the journal Romance Studies.

Having established the language used, Dr. Cheshire can now begin to understand the content of the manuscript. What it reveals, he added, is even more amazing than our myths and fantasies have come to expect. Dr. Cheshire had plans to translate the entire manuscript. However, this can take quite a while because the manuscript is quite long.