Sunday, August 21, 2016

"Spanish publisher clones world's most mysterious book"

Yahoo NewsIt's one of the world's most mysterious books, a centuries-old manuscript written in an unknown or coded language that no one -- not even the best cryptographers -- has cracked.
Scholars have spent their lives puzzling over the Voynich Manuscript, whose intriguing mix of elegant writing and drawings of strange plants and naked women has some believing it holds magical powers...
"Touching the Voynich is an experience," says Juan Jose Garcia, sitting on the top floor of a book museum in the quaint centre of Burgos where Siloe's office is, a few paved streets away from the city's famed Gothic cathedral.
"It's a book that has such an aura of mystery that when you see it for the first time... it fills you with an emotion that is very hard to describe."...
The manuscript is named after antiquarian Wilfrid Voynich who bought it around 1912 from a collection of books belonging to the Jesuits in Italy, and eventually propelled it into the public eye.
Theories abound about who wrote it and what it means...
Its content is even more mysterious...
 
The plants drawn have never been identified, the astronomical charts don't reveal much and neither do the women.
Does the book hold the key to eternal youth? Or is it a mere collection of herbal medicine and recipes?
Scores have tried to decode the Voynich, including top cryptologists such as William Friedman who helped break Japan's "Purple" cipher during World War II. (read the whole thing)

7 comments:

Mumpsimus said...

That's one of my favorite Old Mysterious Things.

chickelit said...

Suppose it's just Jackie Treehorn sketches?

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Or something in the 'Kilroy was here' vane.

Chip Ahoy said...

when you see it for the first time... it fills you with an emotion that is very hard to describe.

Let's try:
Incredulity
skepticism
disbelief
pity
being nonplussed
obtuseness
hilarity
amusement
bemusement
hostility
distain
superiority
contempt
vituperation
facetiousness
vitriol
apoplexy
distaste
lunacy
ridicule
spite
rage
mortification
resentment
irritation
fantasy
dreamworld
gothic romance
day dreaming
regular dreaming
fever dreaming
delusion
shock
mockery
scorn
repugnance
haughtiness
pessimism
distrust
suspicion
cynicism
indignation
outrage
sarcasm

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

It has plants and women...

I'm going with the earliest draft of the origin of the species.

The writer was not keen on birds. Not a bird watcher.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Anyone with two eyes can clearly see, birds ability to fly unduly influenced Darwin.

Methadras said...

Run it through a cryptography program and let the algorithm have at it and see what pops out. I'll bet you it's just as gibberish-y as it's encoded writing.