"Spanish publisher clones world's most mysterious book"

Yahoo News:  It'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)