The Voynich manuscript

Abstract

The Voynich Manuscript has been dubbed ‘The most mysterious manuscript in the world’ by John Matthews Manly in his Harper’s Magazine article from 1921. The manuscript itself is fairly plain from the outside; it’s slightly larger than a typical paperback book with a plain cover. Inside is where the mystery begins with its 240 pages, most of which have intriguing, and sometimes bizarre, illustrations and a completely unknown script that, to this day, has baffled decipherment despite some of the top minds in the field attempting to do so. The illustrations seem to fit into several broad categories generally accepted as herbal, astronomical, balneological, cosmo logical and pharmaceutical.