It has been called the world’s most mysterious manuscript: a medieval set of pages filled with botanical drawings, astronomical diagrams, pictures of nude women, and indecipherable text. At various times it has been claimed to be a book in a lost language, a musical score, an instruction manual, or simply an elaborate hoax. The true meaning of the so-called Voynich manuscript has baffled cryptographers and codebreakers for centuries.
Now, new research offers an explanation for why a scholarly consensus on this enduring puzzle has been so hard to reach: not only because its truth is so deeply mysterious, but because everyone has been reading its pages in the wrong order.
In an article published in the peer-reviewed journal Digital Medievalist, Colin Layfield and Lisa Fagin Davis argue that the manuscript’s folded sheets may originally have been stacked on top of each other as “singulions”—like a pile of Christmas cards—but were incorrectly bound in a more typical “nested” arrangement sometime in the mid-to-late 15th century.
While their finding does not immediately decode the script, written in what is commonly known as “Voynichese,” the authors say it radically changes our understanding of the manuscript’s purpose.
“There are a lot of people who wanted the Voynich to have been created by one mad genius working in their attic in medieval London or wherever,” said Davis. “In fact, the evidence suggests we’re talking about a more communal object, perhaps a set of booklets through which information was passed down from one generation to the next—the ‘lone genius’ idea is kind of out the door.”
The manuscript’s unknown origins have intrigued scholars ever since it appeared in book collectors’ records in the 17th century. When Wilfrid Voynich, a Polish revolutionary and book dealer with a shop on London’s Soho Square, bought it in 1912, it was thought to be a scientific diary written by the 13th-century polymath Roger Bacon. Others have attributed the codex to Leonardo da Vinci.
Recent chemical analyses of the manuscript, which is held at Yale University, have carbon-dated its parchment to between 1404 and 1438, ruling out these famous authors.
Some scholars have argued that the text of the Voynich manuscript is nothing more than gibberish intended as a hoax or forgery, though recent linguistic analysis suggests it is more likely written in a natural, if still unidentified, language.
In 2019, a biology research assistant at the University of Bristol claimed the manuscript was written in a “calligraphic proto-Romance” language, but the findings were later disputed, and the university removed a reference to the claims from its website.
For their article “Singulion Structure and the Voynich Manuscript,” Layfield and Davis used a numerical analysis tool to compare blocks of text and found that many of the attached pages scored highly for coherence even when there were many intervening pages, suggesting the manuscript had been misbound.
There were also visual clues suggesting the pages were meant to be read in a different order. In the current binding, some illustrations of streams or pipes run into the gutter—the blank space along the inner margins where pages are bound—but don’t fully match the pictures on the opposite page. “Once you treat them as loose pages stacked together, all these artistic anomalies suddenly join up,” said Layfield, a senior lecturer in information systems at the University of Malta.
“Our hypothesis fixes a lot of problems with the structure of the manuscript in a really elegant way,” said Davis, an expert on medieval handwriting.
She said the only other known medieval manuscripts she has found preservQurans from North Africa were bound together in a single volume, likely intended to be handed out as small booklets for instruction. “I think it’s likely we are looking similarly at an object that was made by a community that wanted to pass its knowledge forward,” said Davis, adding that her hypothesis was supported by paleographical analysis suggesting the manuscript was written by up to five different scribes. View image in fullscreen The quality control operator of the Spanish publishing outfit Siloe Luis Miguel works on cloning the illustrated codex hand-written manuscript Voynich in Burgos in 2016. Photograph: César Manso/AFP/Getty Images Some of the drawings in the manuscript resemble the female reproductive system, while others hint at herbal lore and astrology. “When you put all of this together, it starts to feel like a book of women’s folk knowledge that’s being preserved,” she said. “But you cannot prove that yet.” As to the mystery of the manuscript’s language, Davis said it wasn’t out of the question that there would have been other manuscripts written in Voynichese. “The problem is that so few manuscripts have survived from the middle ages, because they weren’t bound. The irony is that whoever mis-bound this manuscript still did us a huge favour by ensuring its survival.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs about the Voynich Manuscript the medieval document that has puzzled scholars for centuries
What is the Voynich Manuscript
It is a mysterious handwritten book from the 15th century It is filled with strange text and bizarre illustrations of plants astrological symbols and naked figures
Why is it called the Voynich Manuscript
It is named after Wilfrid Voynich a book dealer who bought it in 1912 He is the one who brought it to the worlds attention
Where is it now
It is kept at Yale Universitys Beinecke Rare Book Manuscript Library in the United States
What makes the manuscript so mysterious
No one knows what the text says The language the alphabet and the illustrations do not match any known culture or language
Has anyone translated it yet
No Despite many attempts by professional cryptographers linguists and amateur codebreakers no one has successfully translated the text
What is the wrong way scholars might be reading it
For centuries scholars have assumed the text is a code or a lost language The wrong way theory suggests they should stop looking for a language and look at it as something else like a complex puzzle or visual art
Is the manuscript a hoax
Some people think it is a hoax meaning it was created as a joke or to trick people Others believe it is a real book with real information We still dont know for sure
What are the strange illustrations in the book
The book has several sections
Botanical Drawings of plants that dont exist in the real world
Astronomical Circular diagrams that look like astrology or astronomy
Biological Drawings of small figures mostly women in pools of liquid
Pharmaceutical Drawings of jars and roots
Who created the manuscript
We dont know Carbon dating shows the parchment was made between 1404 and 1438 Some think it was a single author while others think it was a group
Why do people think we are reading it wrong
Because every attempt to read it as a language or code has failed The wrong way idea suggests the text might not be a language at all It might be a meaningless string of symbols designed to look
