Undeciphered Voynich manuscript may have been bound out of order, study finds
Experts argue that the mysterious Voynich manuscript was incorrectly bound — a discovery that "moves the ball" in finally deciphering the 15th-century document.
The Voynich manuscript, a mysterious and undeciphered medieval codex, has perplexed experts for over a century. New research suggests that the manuscript's pages were bound incorrectly in the 15th century, leading to the pages being out of order. The document, made up of parchment leaves with about 38,000 words of a unique script called Voynichese, was initially owned by a Holy Roman emperor and later purchased by Wilhelm Voynich in 1912.
It has been in the collection of Yale University's rare book library since 1969. Experts have been unable to decipher the manuscript, attributing the difficulty to its physical structure and the apparent misuse of binding. According to the study published in the journal Digital Medievalist, the manuscript was likely intended to be a series of loose bifolia (rectangular sheets of parchment) that were never meant to be bound together.
This new hypothesis, based on a latent semantic analysis of the document, resolves several puzzling aspects of the manuscript, such as inconsistently written pages and images crossing the gutter. While a definitive translation remains elusive, the researchers are optimistic that the manuscript's true meaning may eventually be uncovered.
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