About 10 years ago, several leaves from the mysterious Voynich Manuscript were scanned using multispectral imaging. Analyzed Those scans and I posted the resultsand Downloadable Image SetsFagin Davis has written an article about deciphering the manuscript on his blog, Manuscript Road Trip. The main discovery is the addition of three lines of text to the first page, which may be an early attempt at deciphering the manuscript. Questions have long swirled about whether the manuscript is genuine or an elaborate forgery, but Fagin Davis has concluded that it is unlikely to be a forgery and is a genuine medieval document.
As I said before, The Voynich Manuscript It is a 15th-century medieval handwritten document, written between 1404 and 1438, that was purchased in 1912 by Polish book dealer and antiquarian Wilfrid Voynich (hence the name Voynich). In addition to strange handwriting in an unknown language or code, the book is full of strange images of alien plants, nude women, strange objects, and astrological symbols. It is currently housed in the Beinecke Library of Rare Books and Manuscripts at Yale University. The author could have been Roger Bacon, Elizabethan astrologer/alchemist John Dee, or possibly Voynich himself.
There are many competing theories about what the Voynich Manuscript is. Based on the fragments that have been deciphered reliably so far, it is probably an outline of herbal remedies and astrological interpretations. Many others also claim to have deciphered the document, making it virtually its own field of medieval studies. Professional and amateur codebreakers (including codebreakers from both world wars) have pored over the document in an attempt to solve its mystery.
The most questionable claim is one made in 2017 by historical researcher and television writer Nicholas Gibbs. Long article Gibbs reported how he cracked the code in The Times Literary Supplement. Gibbs claimed to have discovered that the Voynich Manuscript was a women’s health manual, and that its strange characters were actually just a collection of Latin abbreviations giving medicine recipes. He provided a translation of two lines from the text to “prove” his claim. Unfortunately, experts say, his analysis mixed up what we already knew with things he couldn’t possibly prove.
Fagin-Davis has been one of Gibbs’ most vocal critics, and she also did not mince words in criticising allegations made in 2019 by Gerald Cheshire, an honorary research fellow at the University of Bristol. His own solutionCheshire claims that the mysterious writing is “Calligraphic Proto-Romance” and that the manuscript is Summarised It was created by Dominican nuns as a reference on behalf of Queen Maria of Castile of Aragon. “Sorry, folks, there is no such thing as a ‘Proto-Romance language,'” Fagin Davis tweeted at the time. “This is just wishful thinking, circular, self-fulfilling nonsense.” Two days after the initial announcement of Cheshire’s “breakthrough,” the University of Bristol A statement was issued We retract our original press release.
Multispectral Secrets Revealed
According to Feigin-Davis, the Beinke Library gave permission to the imaging team in 2014. Lazarus Project take Multispectral imagery Ten pages of the Voynich Manuscript were copied for the purpose of posting online. For various reasons, the images were not made public. A few weeks ago, Feigin Davis emailed Lazarus Project member Roger Easton at Rochester Institute of Technology, asking if he could review the images, and he agreed.
Multispectral imaging is useful for analyzing delicate medieval manuscripts, for example, because it can reveal a variety of information, including faded or rewritten characters. Different materials have different ways of reflecting and absorbing certain frequencies of light. For example, medieval inks contained more iron, which allowed them to penetrate deeper into the surface of parchment. So even if the ink is scraped off or fades over time, the molecular bonds remain, and their traces fluoresce under ultraviolet light. This imaging technique is already being used to analyze ancient manuscripts. The Palimpsest of Archimedesas well as other relics.