Has Anyone Figured Out the Voynich Manuscript? 🕵️‍♂️ (2025)

Imagine holding a book so mysterious that it has baffled the world’s greatest cryptographers, linguists, and historians for over 600 years. The Voynich manuscript is exactly that—a medieval enigma filled with strange plants, bizarre diagrams, and an indecipherable script known only as “Voynichese.” Despite countless attempts, no one has definitively cracked its code. But why has this manuscript resisted all efforts to understand it? And what are the most compelling clues uncovered so far?

In this deep dive, we at History Hidden™ unravel the tangled history, explore the wildest authorship theories, and examine the latest scientific analyses and AI-driven attempts to decode this perplexing artifact. From the mysterious nudes bathing in green pools to the cryptic star charts, we’ll guide you through the labyrinth of facts, theories, and controversies. Stick around to discover the 10 most fascinating decipherment claims and why the Voynich manuscript remains history’s ultimate unsolved puzzle.

Key Takeaways

  • The Voynich manuscript is a genuine 15th-century artifact, confirmed by radiocarbon dating and pigment analysis.
  • Its text, written in an unknown script dubbed “Voynichese,” exhibits linguistic patterns suggesting it’s not random gibberish.
  • Despite over a century of intense study, no one has yet produced a universally accepted decipherment.
  • The manuscript’s authorship remains a mystery, with theories ranging from a Renaissance polymath to an elaborate hoax.
  • Modern technologies like AI and multispectral imaging have provided new insights but have not cracked the code.
  • The manuscript continues to inspire popular culture, from novels to video games, fueling fascination worldwide.

Ready to join the quest? Let’s explore every twist and turn of this captivating historical riddle!

Table of Contents

Ahem, gather ’round, history sleuths! Welcome to History Hidden™, where we, your intrepid team of historical detectives, peel back the dusty layers of time to reveal the juicy secrets underneath. Today, we’re tackling the big one, the Everest of enigmas, the one puzzle that has left the world’s greatest minds scratching their heads for centuries: Has anyone figured out the Voynich manuscript?

Let’s dive headfirst into the beautiful madness of this medieval mystery.

⚡️ Quick Tips and Facts About the Voynich Manuscript

Before we get lost in the weeds (and trust us, there are some very strange weeds in this book), let’s get our bearings. If you’re new to this whole affair, our comprehensive guide to the Voynich Manuscript is a great place to start. For the rest of you, here are the cold, hard, and utterly bizarre facts.

Fact Category The Lowdown
What It Is A 240-page, 15th-century illustrated codex handwritten in a completely unknown script and language.
Current Location Safely tucked away at Yale University’s
Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
Age ✅ Authentically Old! Radiocarbon dating of the vellum (calfskin) pages places its creation between 1404 and 1438.
The Big Mystery ❌ Still Undeciphered. Despite centuries of effort from top cryptographers, linguists, and AI, no one has definitively cracked the code.
Contents It’s a wild ride: otherworldly plants, astrological charts, cosmological diagrams, and lots of miniature nude women bathing in green liquid.
The Language Nicknamed “Voynichese,” it has linguistic patterns (like word frequency) that suggest it’s a real language, not just gibberish.
The Name It’s named after Wilfrid Voynich, the Polish-American rare book dealer who “rediscovered” it in 1912.

📜 Unveiling the Mystery: The History and Origins of the Voynich Manuscript

Every good mystery needs a shadowy past, and the Voynich manuscript does not disappoint. Its known history is a connect-the-dots puzzle with most of the dots missing.

From Emperor’s Treasure to Jesuit Secret

The manuscript first surfaces in the historical record in the 17th century, in the hands of a Prague alchemist named Georg Baresch. Baffled by his “Sphynx,” he sent a sample to the Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher in Rome, a man famous for claiming he could decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs (spoiler: he couldn’t).

Before Baresch, the trail gets murky. A letter found with the manuscript suggests it was once owned by Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, a known collector of curiosities and occult paraphernalia, who may have bought it for a hefty 600 gold ducats, believing it was the work of the 13th-century friar Roger Bacon. This theory has since been debunked by carbon dating, as Bacon was long gone by the early 15th century. Some even whisper that the notorious English astrologer and occultist John Dee sold it to the emperor.

After Baresch, the manuscript passed to his friend Johannes Marcus Marci, who then sent the whole book to Kircher in 1665 or 1666. And then… poof. It vanished for over 200 years, likely sitting quietly in a Jesuit library in Rome.

Wilfrid Voynich Steps In

Enter our man Wilfrid Voynich in 1912. He acquired the book from a collection being secretly sold by the Society of Jesus. From that moment on, the manuscript became his obsession and his namesake, launching it into the global spotlight where it has remained ever since. It was eventually donated to Yale’s Beinecke Library in 1969.

🔍 What Is the Voynich Manuscript? A Detailed Description of Its Content and Structure

So what’s actually in this thing? At first glance, it looks like a medieval scientific or magical text. But the closer you look, the weirder it gets. Scholars have divided its roughly 240 vellum pages into six sections based on the lively, if provincial, illustrations.

  • 🌿 The Herbal Section: This is the largest section, filled with drawings of 113 plants that are… well, unidentifiable. They look like a botanist’s fever dream, combining roots, leaves, and flowers from different species, or perhaps species that don’t exist at all.
  • ✨ The Astronomical and Astrological Section: Here you’ll find astral charts, suns and moons with faces, and zodiac symbols like Pisces and Taurus. But it’s all slightly off from known traditions.
  • 🛁 The Balneological (Bathing) Section: This is where it gets really strange. It’s packed with drawings of miniature nude women, most with swollen bellies, bathing and interacting with a bizarre network of interconnected tubes and capsules filled with green or blue fluid.
  • 🌌 The Cosmological Section: This part features elaborate circular diagrams, often across large fold-out pages, that are impossible to interpret. Are they maps of strange lands, or diagrams of the heavens? No one knows.
  • 💊 The Pharmaceutical Section: More plants! This section shows over 100 species of medicinal herbs and roots, often depicted alongside apothecary jars.
  • 📜 The Recipes Section: The final section is continuous text, with star-like flowers in the margins marking different entries, leading many to believe these are recipes or instructions.

The script itself, “Voynichese,” flows from left to right and appears to have an alphabet of 20-25 characters. The words seem to follow linguistic rules, which has led most experts to believe it’s not just random scribbles.

🧩 Voynich Manuscript Authorship Theories: Who Could Have Written It?

Ah, the million-dollar question! If we knew who wrote it, we might know why. The theories are as wild and varied as the manuscript’s illustrations.

  • A Forgotten Genius? Could it be the work of an unknown polymath with expertise in botany, astrology, and medicine? Perhaps someone from Northern Italy during the Renaissance, as stylistic analysis suggests.
  • A Cunning Hoaxer? Some argue the whole thing is a brilliant, meaningless forgery created to fool a wealthy patron like Emperor Rudolf II. Maybe it was a scam by John Dee or the occultist Edward Kelley.
  • A Collaborative Effort? Recent paleographic analysis by experts like Dr. Lisa Fagin Davis suggests that at least five different scribes worked on the manuscript, making it a collaborative project. This complicates the “lone genius” or “lone hoaxer” theories.
  • Aliens?! 👽 Yes, of course, some people think it’s an alien artifact. While we at History Hidden™ love a good out-of-this-world story, there’s zero evidence for this.

The truth is, without a translation, the author remains a ghost.

🗣️ Decoding the Enigma: Language and Script Hypotheses of the Voynich Manuscript

So, if it’s not gibberish, what is it? Linguists and cryptographers have thrown everything but the kitchen sink at this problem. The main camps of thought are:

  1. A Natural Language in Code (Cipher): This is a popular theory. The idea is that the author took a known language (like Latin, Hebrew, or a dialect of Italian) and encrypted it using a cipher.

    • Simple Substitution? ❌ Unlikely. Statistical analysis shows the patterns don’t match a simple one-to-one letter replacement.
    • More Complex Cipher? Possibly. Maybe a polyalphabetic cipher or something involving anagrams. However, even legendary codebreakers from WWII, like William and Elizebeth Friedman, couldn’t crack it.

  2. A Lost or Unknown Natural Language: Could “Voynichese” be a real language that has simply been lost to time, written in its own unique script? This would explain the linguistic patterns. The problem is, it doesn’t match any known language family.

  3. A Constructed Language (Conlang): This theory posits that the author invented an entire language from scratch, like J.R.R. Tolkien did with Elvish. If true, it would be one of the earliest and most complex examples of a conlang in history.

  4. A Sophisticated Hoax: The “hoax” theory is always lurking. Some researchers argue that the text was generated using some kind of algorithm or template to create text that looks like a language but has no meaning. Experiments have shown that humans trying to write meaningless text can accidentally create some of the same statistical oddities found in the manuscript.

Linguistic analysis has revealed some fascinating quirks. For example, the “entropy” of the text (a measure of its predictability) is unusually low, meaning character sequences are more repetitive than in most natural languages. This could be a clue to the type of cipher used, or it could be evidence of a hoax. The mystery continues!

💡 10 Most Fascinating Decipherment Claims and Attempts on the Voynich Manuscript

Oh, the claims! They come and go like the seasons. As the tech publication Ars Technica once quipped, “Another day, another dubious claim that someone has decoded the Voynich Manuscript.” Here are some of the most memorable attempts, none of which have been accepted by the broader academic community.

  1. William Newbold (1921): A University of Pennsylvania professor who claimed the text was a Latin cipher by Roger Bacon. His theory was based on seeing microscopic patterns in the pen strokes, which were later shown to be just natural cracking of the ink.
  2. Joseph Martin Feely (1943): Claimed it was a form of abbreviated Latin, but his work was widely dismissed.
  3. Leo Levitov (1987): Argued it was a constructed language, a mix of Flemish, Old French, and Old High German, created for a specific religious ritual. This theory has not gained traction.
  4. Arthur Tucker & Rexford Talbert (2013): This botanist-and-IT-specialist duo claimed the plants were from 16th-century Mexico, suggesting the text was an extinct dialect of the Nahuatl language.
  5. Stephen Bax (2014): A linguist who proposed a tentative, partial decipherment, identifying a few words like “Taurus” and “juniper” by linking them to the illustrations. His approach was cautious but remains unproven.
  6. Nicholas Gibbs (2017): A television writer who declared the manuscript was a women’s health manual written in a form of abbreviated Latin. Medieval scholars quickly debunked his claims, calling his translations “nonsense.”
  7. Greg Kondrak & Bradley Hauer (2018): Researchers at the University of Alberta used AI to analyze the text. Their algorithm suggested the underlying language was Hebrew and the text was scrambled using alphagrams (shuffling letters alphabetically). However, when they translated the first sentence, it was grammatically correct but nonsensical.
  8. Gerard Cheshire (2019): A research assistant who claimed it was written in a “proto-Romance” language. His paper was published and then swiftly retracted by the university after intense criticism from medievalists who called his methods circular and his conclusions unsubstantiated.
  9. Rainer Hannig (2020): A German Egyptologist who argued the language was based on Hebrew. While he produced some translations, experts in both cryptography and Hebrew linguistics rejected his methodology as inconsistent and his results as unconvincing.
  10. Keagan Brewer & Michelle L. Lewis (2024): In a new theory, these Australian researchers proposed that the manuscript is primarily about sex and gynecology, suggesting its central illustration depicts conception. They argue the text was deliberately obscured due to the sensitive nature of “women’s secrets” at the time. This is a thematic interpretation, not a linguistic decipherment, but it adds another layer to the puzzle.

🔬 Scientific Analyses and Modern Technologies Used to Study the Voynich Manuscript

While the codebreakers have been stumped, the scientists have given us some of our only solid facts about the manuscript.

Carbon-14 Dating: Nailing Down the “When”

In 2009, the University of Arizona performed accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon dating on four different vellum samples from the book. The results were consistent: the calfskin was prepared between 1404 and 1438. This was a huge breakthrough! It definitively proved the manuscript was a genuine 15th-century artifact, torpedoing any theories that it was a modern forgery by Wilfrid Voynich himself.

Ink and Pigment Analysis: What’s It Made Of?

But what about the ink? Could the book be old, but the writing new? Analysis by McCrone Associates found that the pigments were consistent with materials available in that historical period. The ink is primarily iron gall ink, which was common. However, this analysis couldn’t confirm when the ink was applied, leaving a tiny window open for debate. Most experts, however, believe it’s highly probable the text and illustrations were created shortly after the vellum was made.

Multispectral Imaging: Seeing the Invisible

More recently, advanced imaging techniques are revealing new secrets. In 2014, the Lazarus Project used multispectral imaging on several pages. In 2024, researcher Lisa Fagin Davis announced that these scans revealed previously hidden marginal notes on the first page, likely written by 17th-century owner Johannes Marcus Marci in an attempt to decrypt the text himself! This shows that the struggle to understand this book is nearly as old as its known history.

📚 Voynich Manuscript Facsimiles and Where to Find Them

You don’t have to fly to Yale to get your hands on this mystery. Thanks to high-quality reproductions, you can pore over every bizarre detail yourself. The most acclaimed version is the official facsimile published by Yale University Press.

This edition is a stunning, full-size reproduction, complete with the manuscript’s unique fold-out pages. It also includes essays from various experts, offering insights from historical, cryptographic, and alchemical perspectives. It’s the closest most of us will ever get to the real thing.

Other publishers, like Siloe, have also created exquisite, limited-edition facsimiles for serious collectors.

A mystery this good is bound to leak into the wider world of stories and art. The Voynich manuscript has become a touchstone for the weird and unexplained, a piece of real-world Folklore and Legends.

  • In Literature: The manuscript’s allure has captivated authors for years. It plays a central role in the All Souls fantasy trilogy by Deborah Harkness, who also wrote the introduction to the Yale facsimile. Novelist Natalka Burian also cited it as a major inspiration for her book Daughters of the Wild.
  • In Video Games: The manuscript’s aesthetic and mystery have influenced numerous games, including the popular RPG Assassin’s Creed.
  • On Screen: It has been the subject of countless documentaries and has been referenced in TV shows that delve into historical mysteries and the paranormal.

It serves as a perfect MacGuffin—an object of desire that drives a plot forward, its true nature less important than the quest to understand it.

🕵️‍♂️ Why Has No One Definitively Cracked the Voynich Manuscript? Challenges and Controversies

So, why the centuries-long logjam? What makes this manuscript so stubbornly resistant to interpretation?

  • It’s a “Hard Problem”: As described in the video we’ve featured, the manuscript presents a fundamental contradiction. Some parts have the statistical feel of a real, structured language, while other parts contain bizarre repetitions and patterns unlike any known human language. A successful theory has to explain both aspects.
  • No “Rosetta Stone”: The biggest hurdle is the complete lack of a “crib” or a parallel text. With Egyptian hieroglyphs, the Rosetta Stone provided the same text in a known language (Greek), giving scholars a key. The Voynich manuscript has no such key.
  • Circular Reasoning: Many proposed solutions fall into a trap of circular logic. A researcher assumes a language, finds a way to make a few words fit, and then declares the whole thing solved. As seen with the Cheshire and Hannig claims, these “solutions” quickly fall apart under expert scrutiny.
  • Is it a Language at All? The constant debate over whether it’s a cipher, a conlang, or a hoax means researchers are pulling in completely different directions. You can’t agree on a translation if you can’t even agree on what you’re trying to translate.

This lack of context makes it, as cryptanalyst Elizabeth Friedman said, a source of “utter frustration” for anyone who tries to solve it.

🧠 Expert Insights: What Cryptographers and Historians Say About the Manuscript

Here at History Hidden™, we always turn to the experts. And when it comes to the Voynich manuscript, the experts are cautiously fascinated.

Claire Bowern, Professor of Linguistics at Yale University:

“The Voynich manuscript looks like it should be easy to read and straightforward to understand… It’s very hard to work with because there are so many unknowns: any theory relies on so many assumptions that it’s all too easy to get lost in speculation.”

Bowern and other linguists have shown that while the text has some properties of natural language, it also has highly unusual patterns, like its very low character entropy. This suggests that if it is a cipher of a natural language, it’s a very strange one.

Dr. Lisa Fagin Davis, Executive Director of the Medieval Academy of America:
A leading expert who has examined the manuscript in person multiple times, Davis is a crucial voice of reason in the often-sensationalized world of Voynich theories. She consistently debunks amateur claims that lack rigorous methodology, such as her rejection of Rainer Hannig’s Hebrew theory, noting that his simple substitution doesn’t account for the text’s known statistical properties. Her paleographic work identifying the five different scribes has been a major contribution to understanding the manuscript’s physical creation.

The consensus among serious scholars is clear: the manuscript is a genuine 15th-century artifact, its text follows complex rules, and no proposed decipherment has yet met the standards of academic proof. The mystery, for now, remains beautifully and stubbornly intact.

🏁 Conclusion: Has Anyone Figured Out the Voynich Manuscript?

After centuries of intrigue, countless theories, and the best minds from cryptographers to linguists throwing everything at it, the Voynich manuscript remains an enigma wrapped in parchment. Our deep dive at History Hidden™ reveals a fascinating truth: while many have claimed breakthroughs, none have yet delivered a universally accepted decipherment. The manuscript’s authentic 15th-century origin, confirmed by radiocarbon dating and pigment analysis, grounds it firmly in history—but its language, script, and purpose continue to evade definitive understanding.

Is it a lost language? A complex cipher? A sophisticated hoax? Or perhaps a medieval compendium of knowledge encoded for secrecy? The answer is still out there, tantalizingly close yet frustratingly elusive.

What we can say with confidence:

  • The manuscript is not random gibberish; it exhibits linguistic patterns consistent with meaningful text.
  • It was likely created by multiple scribes, indicating a collaborative or workshop origin.
  • Despite numerous claims, no decipherment has passed rigorous academic scrutiny.
  • Modern technology has opened new avenues but also highlighted the manuscript’s complexity.

So, has anyone figured it out? Not yet. But the quest continues, and each new study brings us a step closer to unraveling one of history’s most beguiling puzzles. If you’re captivated by mysteries that defy time, the Voynich manuscript is your ultimate intellectual playground.

Ready to dive deeper or even own a piece of this mystery? Here are some top-tier resources and facsimiles that bring the Voynich manuscript to your fingertips:

  • The Voynich Manuscript (Facsimile Edition) – Yale University Press:
    Amazon | Yale University Press Official Website | Etsy

  • The Friar and the Cipher: Roger Bacon and the Unsolved Mystery of the Most Unusual Manuscript in the World by Lawrence & Nancy Goldstone
    Amazon

  • The Curse of the Voynich by Nicholas John Pelling
    Amazon

  • The Cipher of Roger Bacon by William Romaine Newbold
    Amazon

  • Voynich Manuscript Digital Collection – Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library
    Beinecke Library

❓ Frequently Asked Questions About the Voynich Manuscript

What is the latest research on the Voynich manuscript?

Recent research has focused on multispectral imaging to uncover hidden annotations and on statistical linguistic analysis to understand the text’s structure. Paleographers like Dr. Lisa Fagin Davis have identified multiple scribes, suggesting a collaborative origin. AI-driven studies, such as those by Greg Kondrak and Bradley Hauer, have attempted to link the text to Hebrew, but these remain unproven. The manuscript’s age and materials are firmly established, but its meaning remains elusive.

Are there any credible theories about the Voynich manuscript’s language?

Yes, several credible hypotheses exist:

  • Ciphered Natural Language: The manuscript might be a complex cipher of Latin, Hebrew, or an extinct European language.
  • Constructed Language: It could be an invented language with its own grammar and vocabulary.
  • Lost Natural Language: Some propose it’s a genuine but now-extinct language written in a unique script.

No theory has yet been conclusively proven, but linguistic analyses strongly suggest the text is not random.

Has artificial intelligence been used to decode the Voynich manuscript?

✅ AI and machine learning have been applied to analyze the text’s patterns and attempt translations. For example, Kondrak and Hauer’s 2018 study used AI to propose Hebrew as the underlying language. However, AI has not cracked the code; it has only helped narrow down possibilities and identify linguistic features. The complexity and uniqueness of the manuscript still challenge even the most advanced algorithms.

What historical clues have been uncovered from the Voynich manuscript?

  • Radiocarbon dating dates the vellum to the early 15th century.
  • Ink and pigment analysis confirms materials consistent with that era.
  • Ownership inscriptions link it to Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, John Dee, and the Jesuits.
  • Marginalia and handwriting analysis reveal multiple scribes.
  • The botanical illustrations do not match known plants, suggesting either lost species or symbolic imagery.

Who has made the most progress in deciphering the Voynich manuscript?

While no one has definitively deciphered it, linguists like Stephen Bax have made cautious progress by identifying probable words linked to illustrations. Paleographers like Lisa Fagin Davis have advanced understanding of the manuscript’s physical creation and provenance. Cryptographers such as William Friedman laid foundational work in the early 20th century. AI researchers have recently contributed new analytical tools, but the breakthrough remains elusive.

Could the Voynich manuscript be a hoax or a coded diary?

Both are possibilities:

  • Hoax Theory: Some argue it was created to deceive a wealthy patron, with meaningless text designed to look like a language.
  • Coded Diary or Scientific Text: Others believe it’s a genuine, secretive compendium of knowledge, possibly a diary or herbal guide encoded for privacy.

Scientific analysis supports authenticity of materials and age, but the manuscript’s purpose remains speculative.

  • Created in Northern Italy or Central Europe during the early Renaissance.
  • Commissioned by or for Emperor Rudolf II or an occultist like John Dee.
  • Produced by a workshop of scribes specializing in cryptic or esoteric knowledge.
  • Possibly linked to alchemical, astrological, or herbal traditions of the time.

At History Hidden™, we believe the Voynich manuscript is a testament to human curiosity and the enduring allure of the unknown. Whether you’re a scholar, a cryptography enthusiast, or a lover of mysteries, this manuscript invites you to join the quest. Who knows? Maybe you will be the one to finally crack the code. Until then, keep your magnifying glass handy and your mind open! 🔍✨

Jacob
Jacob

As the editor, Jacob leads History Hidden’s experienced research and writing team, as their research separates legend from evidence and brings the past’s biggest mysteries to life. Jacob's experience as both a professional magician and engineer helps him separate the fact from fiction, and unmask the truth. Under their direction, the team of historians explores lost civilizations, folklore and cryptids, biblical mysteries, pirates’ hoards, ancient artifacts, and long-standing historical puzzles—always with engaging narratives grounded in careful sourcing.

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