The Voynich Manuscript.
This page, the so-called Voynich Manuscript, has often been called the most mysterious book in the world. Located today in the Yale University Rare Books Library, it is written in an unknown language and character set and is illustrated with strange plants and animals. Widely presumed to be a code, it has never been deciphered, though not for lack of trying. Up through the end of the last century it was thought to be a book of Magick, mentioned several times by Crowley, and studied as one of the great unknown books of power. Today it is thought to be an herbalist from the Middle Ages, but encoded for some unknown reason. Perhaps an herbalist of imaginary plants, few of the illustrations refer to any known, or often even possible, plants. Modern computer analysis of the manuscript tells us that the language used has a low entropy, perhaps like a Polynesian language, and distinct from European languages or randomly constructed lists of characters.
So, here we have a manuscript of considerable mystery, and a colored past, that has resisted the best cryptographic attacks of this century. Interesting, isn't it? There's a lot more information about the Voynich out there--many books on cryptograpy mention it for example. Check out your library.
From the cryptography FAQ file:
9.7. What about the Voynich manuscript?
The Voynich manuscript is an elaborately lettered and illustrated
document, in a script never deciphered. It has been handed down for
centuries by a line of art collectors and has uncertain origination.
Much speculation and attention has been focused on its potential
meaning.
nelson@reed.edu (Nelson Minar) says there is a mailing list on the
subject. The address to write to subscribe to the VMS mailing list
is:
the ftp archive is: rand.org:/pub/voynich
There's all sorts of information about the manuscript itself, of
course. A good bibliography can be found on the ftp site. [KAH67]
gives a good introduction.
The ASCII-ized (Currier Notation) Voynich Text.
Currier Paper
f79 of the Voynich Manuscript.
