Bax connected a word that appeared to label a picture of a juniper plant with an annotation that appeared to read "oror" and noted the similarity between the word and the Arabic and Hebrew word for the same plant, "arar." He moved on in a similar manner, finding connections between known languages and the mystifying manuscript text that seemingly allowed him to decode words such as "taurus" and "coriander" in the 600-year-old document. Champollion searched for the known names of pharaohs to put symbols against sounds Bax took words in the manuscript that appeared to annotate specific drawings - seven plants and one constellation - and connected them to the names of things that seemed similar in other languages.
There's a huge history of Voynich manuscript scholarship, speculation, and contention - and Bax's take on the origins of the manuscript is just the latest in a centuries-old debate.īax's method of deciphering the 10 words and 14 sounds was similar to that used by Jean-François Champollion and Thomas Young, who were the first to decode Egyptian hieroglyphics. He speculated that they may have died out, possibly as a result of war. Speaking informally in a question and answer session on Reddit, he said he thought it was probably written in an "invented script, probably by a small group trying to study and pass on knowledge." That group, he said, was based "maybe in a region not far from Europe" such as Turkey, Iran, or the Caucasus. Professor Bax believes the manuscript - which is available online to read at the Yale Beinecke Library's website - is as old as its carbon-dating suggests. Or it could've been a philosophical experiment, or a work of art or, according to theoretical physicist Andreas Schinner, put together by an "an autistic monk, who subconsciously followed a strange mathematical algorithm in his head." Or aliens wrote it. Ten years ago news reports appeared suggesting the document was a hoax, written 100 years after its carbon-dated vellum suggests.
#Secret manuscripts professional
There is no default, accepted theory to explain the manuscript's provenance, and any theory that gains traction is usually disproven or disregarded by the huge community of amateur and professional Voynich scholars. But there are discrepancies with this origin theory: the sunflowers shown in the manuscript's pages, for example, didn't grow in Europe during the 15th century. It's a codex illustrated with strange figures and sketched plants that has been carbon-dated to between 14, and it could've come from Renaissance Italy.
#Secret manuscripts full
Bax says they are a "springboard for the full decoding and eventual decipherment of the manuscript as a whole."Īlmost everything we believe we know about the Voynich manuscript we don't really know for sure. If his deductions are correct, they'd be the first words to be deciphered in the manuscript since Voynich rediscovered the book last century. Bax, a professor in applied linguistics at the University of Bedford, announced last week that he has provisionally decoded 10 words and identified the approximate sound values for 14 symbols included in the manuscript. Of them, Professor Stephen Bax is perhaps the closest to having a claim to making some progress.
Few claim to even understand any of its words. None have come up with a full cipher for the Voynich manuscript's strange text. Botanists have identified the plants sketched within its aged pages and attempted to cross-reference their ancient and modern names.
#Secret manuscripts code
Cryptographers have tried to crack its code linguists have tried to decipher its base language.
Since the manuscript was brought to the public's attention in 1912 - when antique book collector Wilfrid Voynich bought it in Italy - experts from a range of fields have tried their hardest to make sense of it. It seems to be there to annotate the pictures, to explain their purpose, but there's a problem: the text in the 600-year-old book doesn't make any sense. Over the page, more naked women stand in the openings of ornate horns, seemingly suspended by jets of water and using their hands to support pipes, or archways, or rainbows.Īll around these pictures - above, below, to the left and right, sometimes in gaps where the pictures connect with each other - you'll find text. Inside the bath, knee-deep in a green liquid, squat 16 naked women. A pipe leads into it, another pipe leads away. Around two-thirds of the way into the aged vellum pages of the Voynich manuscript, you'll find a line drawing of a bath.
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