Once considered untranslatable, a university professor from Bedfordshire believes he may have started to crack the Voynich manuscript.
The 600-year-old manuscript , named after book dealer Wilfrid Voynich who bought it in 1912, was carbon dated to some time in the 1400s. It was probably created during the Italian Renaissance. The manuscript details various plants, stars and notes that have thus far proved to be uncrackable.
As it's proved untranslatable, the manuscript has so far widely been considered a very well-done hoax. The text contains over 170,000 glyphs and it is believed an alphabet of just 30 characters would account for the majority of the glyphs. The language pattern also closely resembles patterns of natural, human languages.
The text is divided into sections, which judging by the illustrations, includes botany, astronomy, human biology, recipes and medicine.
However, Bedfordshire linguistics professor Stephen Bax believes he has made a start on it after identifying some proper nouns in the text and finally laying to rest those rumours of it being a hoax.
Bar's technique involved identifying proper nouns, primarily through identifying the stars and plants; similar to how hieroglyphics have been decoded. From there, he used the nouns as a key for deciphering the other characters.
Among some things deciphered are the constellation of Taurus and the word "Kantairon", used to identify the medieval herb.
The Voynich looks likely to be a traveller's journal through some foreign land, especially due to the astronomy section, which he would have used to guide him by the stars positions. The use of a coded language is still a mystery, though? Could it be that the author wanted to keep a secret? Or that he was part of an ancient society whose language has not been discovered, yet?
Bax hopes his work will encourage other linguists and cryptologists to join in and help decode the manuscript.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
