What is the Voynich manuscript, and why can't anyone read it?

The Voynich manuscript, formally Beinecke MS 408, is an illustrated codex handwritten in an unidentified script nicknamed Voynichese. It has about 240 pages, and some pages appear to be missing. No one has demonstrably deciphered it. It is named after Wilfrid Voynich, the Polish-American bookseller who bought it in 1912, and it has been held at Yale's Beinecke Library since 1969. [1] [2]

Although the text cannot be read, the drawings suggest its subjects. Yale's description lists six sections: plant specimens, astronomical and astrological drawings, bathing scenes, cosmological medallions, pharmaceutical drawings of herbs and roots, and unillustrated text that may be recipes, each entry marked with a star-like flower. Many of the illustrations are crudely coloured, and some pages fold out into larger sheets. [2] [1]

Claire Bowern, a Yale linguist, notes that the book contains familiar topics such as stars and plants but presents them in unfamiliar ways. Handwriting analysis indicates that five people collaborated on writing it. [3]

Radiocarbon dating led by the University of Arizona places the vellum in the early 1400s (1404 to 1438), and experts generally agree it is not a modern forgery. Because parchment may sit unused for a time, the writing could be somewhat later, possibly the early 1500s. Yale describes it as produced in Central Europe in the late fifteenth or the sixteenth century, while Wikipedia says stylistic analysis suggests Italy. The place of origin is therefore not settled. [4] [2] [1]

Yale names Emperor Rudolph II as the first confirmed owner, while Wikipedia names the Prague alchemist Georg Baresch; the sources differ here. Yale calls the old link to Roger Bacon pure speculation and says the suggested ownership by John Dee is seriously doubted. In 1666 the manuscript was sent to the Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher, and Voynich bought it from a Jesuit college near Rome in 1912. [2] [1]

Researchers have proposed several explanations. One is a natural language written in an unusual script. Another is a constructed language. A third is a cipher or other cryptography. Others suggest a hoax, a reference compendium, glossolalia, or a work of fiction. Wikipedia says scholars currently lack the translation and context needed to properly entertain or eliminate any of these. [1]

Statistical studies give mixed signals. A computational linguistics survey found that word length and frequency distributions, apparent morphology and page-level topics resemble natural language, while the lack of repeated bigrams and the distribution of letters at line edges are unusual. Researcher René Zandbergen, quoted by Live Science, says the writing acts like a language in some ways and not in others, so it could be gibberish or a very good code. Codebreakers including William and Elizebeth Friedman and John Tiltman failed to crack it, and claimed decipherments have not been convincing or independently verified. [5] [4] [1]