Mankind has always tried to encrypt secrets, military communications, love letters, forbidden knowledge, and most secret texts are eventually deciphered, but of all the cryptic writings in history, one stands out. This is the most mysterious book in the world, written in strange letters by an unknown author and wonderfully illustrated with cryptic images. For centuries it has resisted attempts to demystify it. Now, for the first time, experts have analyzed the inks, pigments and parchment of the Voynich manuscript.
What secrets lie between these lines? Who wrote it and why? At U.S. military intelligence headquarters, experts managed to decipher what the Japanese called the purple code. The head of the service, William Frederick Friedman, is one of the world’s top cryptographers. For practice between jobs, Friedman and his team deciphered ancient cryptic texts. One by one the ciphers were broken, but one book, the Voynich manuscript, stubbornly resisted all attempts to decipher it. Enraged, the cryptographer gave up. It was the only cipher they couldn’t break.
The roughly 200-page manuscript with strange symbols has been a mystery for decades. In the early 20th century, an antique dealer from New York visited the Villa Mondragon near Rome in search of valuable books. His name is Wilfried Voynich. Villa Mondragon houses many historical documents of the Jesuit school. Wilfrid Voynich has been granted access to a suitcase from the estate of Athanasius Kircher, one of the most famous scholars of the 17th century.
Among the many manuscripts, there is an unusual book in this case. Voynich bought the manuscript and spent the rest of his life trying to decipher it. He died without even finding a solution remotely. After Voynich’s death, the manuscript ended up in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. Libraries are rich in literary treasures, but perhaps none are more famous than the Voynich Manuscript. Rene Zandbergen is one of the leading experts on the Voynich manuscript and has been working on it for many years.
When René first saw the image of the pages of the Voynich manuscript, he immediately thought it was something he could decipher, it was something he could read, but it has been proven wrong over the years so he can’t. Don’t read it like many before him.
