Voynich manuscript

Voynich manuscript
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
A floral illustration on page 32; the colors are still vibrant
Also known as	Beinecke MS 408
Type	codex
Date	early 15th century 1404–1438
Place of origin	possibly Northern Italy
Language(s)	unknown possibly natural or constructed language very small number of words was found in Latin language and High German language
Scribe(s)	unknown
Author(s)	unknown suggested: Roger Bacon, Wilfrid Voynich himself, Jakub Sinapius of Tepenec, Athanasius Kircher, Raphael Mnishovsky, Antonio Averlino Filarete, Cornelis Drebbel, Anthony Ascham etc.
Compiled by	unknown
Illuminated by	unknown
Patron	unknown
Dedicated to	unknown
Material	vellum (type of the parchment from a tanned mammal skin)
Size	≈ 23,5 cm × 16,2 cm × 5 cm
Format	one column in the page body, with slightly indented right margin and with paragraph divisions, and often with stars in the left margin; the rest of the manuscript appears in the form of graphics i.e. diagrams or markings for certain parts related to illustrations; the manuscript contains foldable parts
Condition	partially damaged and incomplete; 240 out of 272 pages found (≈ 88%) i.e. 18 out of 20 quires found (272 pages i.e. 20 quires is the smallest estimated number, and it contains > 170.000 characters)
Script	unknown possibly it is an invented script very small number of words found in Latin script
Contents	herbal, astronomical, biological, cosmological and pharmaceutical sections + section with recipes
Illumination(s)	color ink, a bit crude, was used for painting the figures, probably later than the time of creation of the text and the outlines themselves
Additions	–
Exemplar(s)	two manuscript copies which Baresch sent twice to Kircher in Rome
Previously kept	? → Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor → Jakub of Tepenec → Georg Baresch → Athanasius Kircher (copies) → Jan Marek Marci (Joannes Marcus Marci) → rector of Charles University in Prague → Athanasius Kircher → Pieter Jan Beckx → Wilfrid Voynich → Ethel Voynich → Anne Nill → Hans Peter Kraus → Yale
Discovered	earliest information about the existence comes from a letter that was found inside the covers of the manuscript, and it was written in either 1665 or 1666
Accession	MS 408
Other	famous cryptography case which has not been solved/deciphered to this day i.e. meaning of the content is still not discovered

The Voynich manuscript is an illustrated codex hand-written in an unknown writing system. The vellum on which it is written has been carbon-dated to the early 15th century (1404–1438), and it may have been composed in Northern Italy during the Italian Renaissance. The manuscript is named after Wilfrid Voynich, a Polish book dealer who purchased it in 1912.

Some of the pages are missing, with around 240 remaining. The text is written from left to right, and most of the pages have illustrations or diagrams. Some pages are foldable sheets.

The Voynich manuscript has been studied by many professional and amateur cryptographers, including American and British codebreakers from both World War I and World War II. No one has yet succeeded in deciphering the text, and it has become a famous case in the history of cryptography. The mystery of the meaning and origin of the manuscript has excited the popular imagination, making the manuscript the subject of novels and speculation. None of the many hypotheses proposed over the last hundred years has yet been independently verified.

The Voynich manuscript was donated by Hans P. Kraus to Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in 1969, where it is catalogued under call number MS 408.

The codicology, or physical characteristics of the manuscript, are studied by various researchers. The manuscript measures 23.5 by 16.2 by 5 centimetres (9.3 by 6.4 by 2.0 in), with hundreds of vellum pages collected into eighteen quires (units of 25 pages). The total number of pages is around 240, but the exact number depends on how the manuscript's unusual foldouts are counted. The quires have been numbered from 1 to 20 in various locations, using numerals consistent with the 1400s, and the top righthand corner of each recto (righthand) page has been numbered from 1 to 116, using numerals of a later date. From the various numbering gaps in the quires and pages, it seems likely that in the past the manuscript had at least 272 pages in 20 quires, some of which were already missing when Wilfrid Voynich acquired the manuscript in 1912. There is strong evidence that many of the book's were reordered at various points in its history, and that the original page order may well have been quite different from what it is today.