* * * * *
                                        
                  The Most Mysterious Manuscript in the World
                                        
> The Voynich Manuscript is considered to be “The Most Mysterious Manuscript
> in the World”. To this day this medieval artifact resists all efforts at
> translation. It is either an ingenious hoax or an unbreakable cipher.
> 
> The manuscript is named after its discoverer, the American antique book
> dealer and collector, Wilfrid M. Voynich, who discovered it in 1912,
> amongst a collection of ancient manuscripts kept in villa Mondragone in
> Frascati, near Rome, which had been by then turned into a Jesuit College
> (closed in 1953).
> 
> Based on the evidence of the calligraphy, the drawings, the vellum, and the
> pigments, Wilfrid Voynich estimated that the Manuscript was created in the
> late 13th century. The manuscript is small, seven by ten inches, but thick,
> nearly 235 pages. It is written in an unknown script of which there is no
> known other instance in the world. It is abundantly illustrated with
> awkward coloured drawings of:
> 
> * unidentified plants;
> * what seems to be herbal recipes;
> * tiny naked women frolicking in bathtubs connected by intricate plumbing
>   looking more like anatomical parts than hydraulic contraptions;
> * mysterious charts in which some have seem astronomical objects seen
>   through a telescope, some live cells seen through a microscope;
> * charts into which you may see a strange calendar of zodiacal signs,
>   populated by tiny naked people in rubbish bins.
> 
> No one really knows the origins of the manuscript. The experts believe it
> is European They believe it was written between the 15th and 17th
> centuries.
> 

“World Mysteries—Voynich Manuscript [1]”

If it's a hoax, it's a very good hoax, as well as a very old hoax (possibly
dating from the 15^th to the 17^th centuries). If not, then who knows what
this manuscript is all about.

Update on Wednesday, Debtember 31^st

Slashdot [2] links to a Nature article [3] claiming that the Voynich
Manuscript is a hoax.

Talk about your synchronicity …


[1] http://www.world-/
[2] http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/12/31/0117210&mode=flat&t
[3] http://www.nature.com/nsu/031215/031215-5.html

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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