#Voynich manuscript high resolution series#
One of the more famous pictures is of a series of rather surprised looking (and possibly pregnant) naked women supporting individual pieces of what looks like a plumbing or irrigation system. On other pages, naked women lounge in tubs holding stars aloft while admiring a nice goat. These are sometimes accompanied by jars that a doctor of the day would have used to dispense rudimentary drugs.Īnother section features many astronomical designs with stars and moons sometimes arranged in spirals and circles, complete with notations. There are also pictures showing just parts of plants, perhaps indicating medicinal or culinary value. There are a handful that botanists think they've identified, but given the rough nature of the drawings it's impossible to be certain. Many others look like the author copied and pasted various portions of multiple plants to make up altogether new species. There are spindly vines that appear to morph into human organs or faces. The pictures within the manuscript have a hallucinatory quality that seems to detach them from reality, particularly the dozens of plants that grace the pages. Those kinds of structures would've been challenging - but not impossible - to fake, particularly back in the 1400s.Īnd then, of course, there are the illustrations. There's also a particular character that's seen only in the first lines of particular paragraphs. There are patterns in the characters that seem to follow a structure that's similar to known languages.įor instance, there are words scattered through the paragraphs in ways that mimic other languages. But it's not just random characters strewn throughout the pages. Researchers don't understand the script at all, so they can't even say for sure that the script makes up what we would call words or sentences. All of that hard work resulted in an intriguing - and indecipherable - stream of script and artwork that baffles everyone. After careful handwriting analysis, researchers think that at least two and perhaps up to eight people did the bulk of the writing, and they likely put at least a few months of labor into making their masterpiece. They are made from vellum, which hundreds of years ago was derived from specially treated calf's skin. There seem to be gaps in book, though, and experts think the number of pages once totaled more than 270. It measures about 9 inches (23 centimeters) tall by 6 inches (16 centimeters) wide, and it contains 246 pages. Its ancient parchment has sparked gigantic controversy, but the book itself is actually pretty small. You can visit the library's website to view high-resolution images of the document in its entirety. The pages passed through a few more hands before finding a permanent home in the Yale University library in 1969. None succeeded, but his efforts brought him a fame of sorts, forever linking his name to the manuscript. He spent years attempting to determine the book's origins and sought out experts he thought might able to decipher its contents. Then in 1912, a book dealer named Wilfrid Voynich bought the manuscript in Italy.
Thanks to Marci, the book likely ended up in Kircher's personal library, but for the next two centuries it disappeared from history. Mnishovsky claimed that Rudolf II purchased the book and that the author was most likely Renaissance man and Franciscan friar Roger Bacon. Marci was acquainted with Raphael Mnishovsky, who served Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia, who himself loved to collect obscure and weird things. In a letter, he offered a tantalizing (but impossible to prove) fragment about the book's history. After Baresch's death, the manuscript went to a friend by the name of Jan Marek Marci. Kircher had a reputation for unraveling hieroglyphics and mysteries, but for reasons that are unclear, Baresch never sent the tome to him.
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