Wilfrid Michael Voynich and his manuscript - work or hoax?
Discover the story of Wilfrid Michael Voynich, this bibliophile who bought a mysterious manuscript who can decrypt.
The story we are going to tell you is not that of this brave Wilfrid Voynich, but rather that of mysterious manuscript bought in 1912 from Roman college.
By doing some research on Voynich's manuscript in different research engines, we quickly find ourselves in the middle of a Euréka! General: The manuscript would have been decrypted! But what about, really?
Curious facts and many hypotheses
Since 1912, the year of his arrival in the hands of Voynich, the eponymous manuscript (which you can leaf through here) arouses curiosity.
Anonymous author, possible dating between 1404 and 1438 (after a carbon 14 analysis in 2011), a country of unknown origin and incomprehensible language ... An enigma that could delight many genealogists (and investigators in their spare time!).
We identify within this codex by vellum: from the text divided into sections, glyphs But also many illustrations, plants, astronomical and astrological drawings, nudes, castles and dragons, and many others ... The hypotheses are great as to the bottom of the content of this manuscript. Between herbarium, alchemy or astrology guide, a book of medical recipes, many speculate on this subject.
Tedious analyzes
The analyzes have been large and numerous, many means have been implemented to try to decipher the manuscript and obtain the slightest secrets.
They all make it possible to propose hypotheses as to the exact dating of the manuscript and the ink, on the fact that the manuscript could have been retouched, that it could have been written by several authors which could explain the difficulty of translation of language (or languages) used.
Le langage justement, c’est ce qui semble être l’élément clé de tout ce mystère. Il ne s’agit donc plus here d’être un bon paléographe, mais plutôt un excellent cryptanalyste ! En effet, certains affirment que bien que le langage semble être européen, il aurait été volontairement crypté pour en cacher le sens. Toujours est-il que les analyses cryptologiques et linguistiques n’ont pas permis de rendre lisibles ces textes et encore moins d’en identifier clairement le ou les auteurs (Voynich ayant été lui même soupçonné d’avoir créé le manuscrit pour gagner de l’argent sur ce mystère – cette hypothèse a très vite été réfutée puisque l’on entend parler du manuscrit pour la première fois en 1639).
Décrypté grâce à… Google ?
The years pass and in 2014, 2016 and 2017 some scholars claim to have deciphered this manuscript - but without convincing their audiences with short and sometimes very free translations of language.
And if the discussions are now focusing on a medicine treaty for gynecology and female aesthetics, we always lack formal evidence as to the bottom of the subject!
Rebelote en 2018 – cette fois-ci ce sont deux Canadiens férus d’informatique qui auraient mis un terme à 600 ans de mystère absolu – ou du moins, une intelligence artifhereelle. They looked at the creation of algorithms (testés sur la Déclaration Universelle des Droits de l’Homme en 380 langues (pas plus, pas moins!)) qui leur ont permis d’avancer que le texte serait en majorité écrit en hébreu et qu’il était crypté en alphagrams.
And how do you translate Hebrew when you don't speak the language? We use Google Translation, of course ... In any case, that's what they did, and Bingo! The sentence made sense: "She made recommendations to the priest, the man of the house, to me and to the people" and by translating other words ("air", "light", "farmer") These Canadians think that the famous voynich manuscript would actually be a botanical guide. Again, the whole manuscript has not been translated and the opinions are still diverging ...