The Voynich Manuscript Has Resisted Every Codebreaker for 600 Years
Its vellum dates to the early 1400s. Its script matches no known language. And its plants, stars and bathing figures still have no agreed meaning.
Carbon dating of the manuscript’s vellum points to the early 15th century, which ruled out several theories that it was a later forgery. The book, now held at Yale’s Beinecke Library, is filled with an unknown script and illustrations of unidentifiable plants, astronomical diagrams and circular charts that some readers compare to zodiac wheels.
Cryptographers, linguists and, more recently, AI researchers have all proposed solutions. None has been accepted. For anyone drawn to the unexplained, that’s the appeal: a book that insists on being read slowly.