Somewhere in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University sits one of the most puzzling objects in human history.
It is a handwritten book. About 240 pages. Made of vellum which is animal skin. It dates to the early 1400s based on carbon dating.
It is written entirely in a language that nobody has ever been able to read.
What the Voynich Manuscript Contains
The book is organized into sections. Some sections appear to be about plants and show detailed illustrations of plants that do not match any known species. Some sections show astronomical diagrams including what look like zodiac symbols. Some sections show women bathing in pools connected by tubes and pipes. Some sections appear to be recipes or instructions for something.
Every page is dense with text written in a flowing script that looks purposeful and organized. It has clear patterns. It has what look like spaces between words. It has what look like paragraphs and sections. It looks like a real language written by someone who knew what they were saying.
Nobody has been able to figure out what any of it says.
The manuscript was discovered by book dealer Wilfrid Voynich in 1912 among a collection of old books in a Jesuit college in Italy. He published news of its existence and the puzzle has captivated researchers, codebreakers, and historians ever since.
Who Has Tried to Decode It
This is not for lack of effort. Some of the best codebreakers in history have worked on the Voynich Manuscript.
During World War Two codebreakers who cracked Nazi and Japanese military codes tried to decode it and failed.
Linguists have analyzed its structure and found that it follows patterns similar to natural languages. The distribution of characters and word lengths resembles real language rather than random noise. That means it is probably not gibberish.
Computer analysis has identified patterns that some researchers believe correspond to known languages. Some researchers have claimed to have decoded portions. None of those claimed decodings have been accepted by the wider scholarly community.
As recently as the early 2020s researchers were still publishing papers proposing new theories about the manuscript's origin and meaning.
What People Think It Is
There are several main theories.
One is that it is a genuine manuscript written in a real but now extinct language or dialect. A natural language that has simply left no other traces that would allow comparison.
One is that it is an artificial language invented by the author. A constructed system of communication known only to a small group that has since died out.
One is that it is an elaborate hoax. A skilled forger creating a convincing looking but meaningless manuscript, possibly to sell to a wealthy collector.
One is that it is a cipher. A known language disguised by a substitution or encoding system complex enough that it has not yet been cracked.
Nobody knows. After more than a century of serious scholarly effort the Voynich Manuscript remains exactly as mysterious as it was when Voynich found it in 1912.
The original is at Yale. High resolution digital scans are available online for anyone to look at. The puzzle is still open. Nobody has solved it yet.
Maybe you will.
Robert Lee Beers III is a writer and digital preservation advocate based in North Charleston South Carolina.
