Can You Read This?

Voynich

If you can, you’re set to solve a fascinating historical mystery, which some have termed "the Holy Grail of cryptology"!

The mystery is known as the Voynich Manuscript.

It was revealed by the Russian-American bookdealer Wilfrid Voynich in 1912 and currently resides in a library at Yale University.

It appears to be 500 years old and is written in a form of writing (presumed to be a code) that nobody can read.

Many pages of the Voynich manuscript appear to involve botany, like this one:

Voynich2

Others have illustrations dealing with astronomy, anatomy, and some passages appear to offer recipes.

The text appears to be about 35,000 words long, make up of an alphabet of 20-30 characters (plus a few dozen irregular characters occurring only once or twice apiece).

Textual analysis reveals pattern regularities that suggest it’s in a real language.

Some people think it’s a hoax.

If you crack it, be sure and give me credit in your Author’s Introduction for having put you on to it.

LEARN MORE, SEEKER OF MYSTERY!

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

17 thoughts on “Can You Read This?”

  3. Oh Jimmy that’s an easy one. I thought you would have cracked it right off the bat. I would tell you, but you would be kicking yourself for not figuring it out on your own. 😉

  6. Well, that took a while, but I cracked the the first part:
    Ash nazg durbatulûk
    Ash nazg gimbatul
    Ash nazg thrakatulûk
    Agh burzum-ishi krimpatul

  7. So . . . is this that DaVinci code I’ve been hearing so much about?
    (Sorry, R.V. already did a LOTR joke!)

  10. The top page says: “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!”
    Which in English reads: “In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming”
    The bottom page, the one with the flower, is an ad for “Roundup Weed and Grass Killer”

  13. What I’d like to ask those who believe this is not a hoax is, *why* is this so hard to decifer?

  14. Wouldn’t it be a fairly simple matter to input it into a computer and have the computer attempt to translate/break the code?

  15. I think the decoding problem comes from assuming that the texts are all related. They’re not. It’s just a collection of papers gathered up like the pile of papers that sits next to my telephone.
    1 page begins:
    Congratulations on the purchase of your new gas grill. Here are the assembly instructions…
    another page says:
    Klatu Barata Nictu
    And yet another begins:
    Disputation of Muhammed Achmed Ali Luther
    on the Power and Efficacy of Pilgrimages to Mecca(1517)
    And there is one page that is obviously separated from it’s counterpart. All it says is:
    So the rabbi says, “No, I said Yarmulke”!

  16. At first I thought it was a hoax but now, after reading the Wikipedia link Jimmy posted, I’m firmly convinced that these pages are examples of an early form of wallpaper. It’s actually quite well-known in the design world.
    In fact, I saw Hildy do an homage to this on a recent episode of Trading Spaces! It was quite . . . fetching.

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