The Voynich Manuscript is one of the most obsessed-over historical enigmas. A medieval book dating from the late 15th or 16th century, its strange, flowing script has never been deciphered, its origins never determined. The 113 plant illustrations it contains seem to depict no flora found on Earth, and throughout its vellum pages are visuals of the cosmos, a small army of naked women cavorting through pools of water, and the arcane alphabet that has so frustrated linguists and cryptographers.
Hi-resolution (2900×3700, JPG, TIFF) scans of the
Voynich manuscript from The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library is one of the world's largest libraries devoted entirely to rare books and manuscripts and is Yale's principal repository for literary archives, early manuscripts, and rare books. The Beinecke Library's robust collections are used to create new scholarship by researchers from around the world.
The manuscript’s curious, convoluted history is described in detail on historian
René Zandbergen’s website.
![[ uploaded image ]](/up/14-11/07-40-voynich-03.jpg)
The manuscript is not written to convey some knowledge. It was designed specially to mimic a book. To sell it and have a profit.
So, my vision of events and motivations of participants:
- bookseller received an order from a wealthy customer to bring him a really rare book.
- bookseller hired a team of scribes and illustrators.
- scribes performed the order: created really unique book.
- happy customer put the rare manuscript in an exotic unknown language on the shelf.
Motivation of the customer: to replenish his collection — he does this usually, it is customary for him to do so.
Motivation of the bookseller: a commerce, getting profit by executing the orders — he does this usually, it is customary for him to do so.
Motivation of the scribes and illustrators (as we see, not the best — the quality is average, closer to the poor): execute their order to get paid — they does this usually, it is customary for them to do so.
To write a fully fictitious book in fictitious language with easy floral illustrations
A floral motifs in medieval books is a separate topic for discussion, and huge; briefly to say that it is nothing easier than this kind of illustrations.
partly borrowed and 'creatively reworked' from multiple sources — is much easier than:
- write a normal new book;
- or invent it logically and creatively, and to perform diligently, as Luigi Serafini;
- or rewrite something exotic for Europe, like rare books in Arabic, Hebrew or Persian;
- or travel the country, looking for the real rare book — only to find it costs too much.
So, we need to trace that team of copyists, on the basis of chemical & handwriting & graphical analysis. Search for other similar scripting and illustrative style in other manuscripts of that time. It's much easies than analyse the (perhaps intentionally senseless) characters.
Full article in Russian.