Shelton 1 Natalie Shelton Ms.

Gillhespy ENC 1102 23 April 2013 The Voynich Manuscript: Full of Information or Complete Gibberish? In 1912, while looking through a library located in a Jesuit college near Rome, Wilfrid Voynich made an amazing discovery. He stumbled upon the book now known as the Voynich Manuscript, which is a tome compiled of detailed illustrations of plants, mystical creatures, and astrological signs, and about 230 pages of un-decodable writing (Rugg 104). Ever since Voynich found the book, he knew it was very important and immediately gave it to the most qualified cryptanalysts to work on decoding it (Rugg 104). It has confused the minds of many of the worlds greatest cryptanalysts for nearly a hundred years, who could not decode a single word (Campbell). But, is there really something to decode or is it all just a very elaborate trick? According to my research, the Voynich Manuscript is nothing but a hoax and it is full of nothing but gibberish. In the case of the Voynich Manuscript, experts in their fields have studied the drawings, cypher, and language and the facts that they have found point to the manuscript being a hoax. Inside the Voynich Manuscript are many pages of elaborate illustrations, most of which do not appear to symbolize something real (Schmeh 1). According to Schmeh, most of the drawings in the document are of plants, that are believed by some to be used in alchemy and pharmaceutical needs, and astrological signs, but there are some that are baleneological and cosmological drawings as well (1). Botanist Hugh ONeill claims that he identified two of the illustrations as sunflowers and capsicum, but this is just his opinion and cannot be proven

Shelton 2 without a doubt to be true (Schmeh 2). However, many of the drawings that are in the book remain unidentifiable to experts in their fields, which leaves 124 other drawings of plants alone that are not possible to identify simply because they most likely do not exist (Schmeh 2). Schmeh observes, while looking at the astrological pages, that some drawings can be identified as the popular Zodiac signs, such as Taurus and Virgo, but most are unobservable and therefore do not exist in our sky (2). These pictures, then, appear to be just figments of the authors imagination and not ingredients to recipes for alchemists or pharmacists or constellations in the night sky as scholars have argued. The validity of the drawings could raise the question of whether or not anything in the Voynich Manuscript is real. The cypher in the manuscript has been studied ever since the 15th century except when it was lost for 250 years. According to Rugg, no one from then or this day and age have any idea what information is contained within the pages of the mysterious document (104). If none of the best cryptanalysts can figure out anything about the cypher, is there really anything to decode? Campbell states that, Rugg showed that it would be possible to create a nonsense similar to that found in the manuscript using techniques known to 16th-century cryptographers (104). Rugg explains that it is possible that the hoaxer could have used the Cardan grille, presented by Girolamo Cardano. With the Cardan grille, one would create a table that contains columns of prefixes, midfixes, and suffixes and would then place a card with three holes cut in it over the table to select the syllables for the new language (109). This technique is most likely what the author of the Voynich Manuscript used because it does not allow certain characters to be placed next to each other, a key feature of the language in the text. Also, Rugg declares that there are many subtle regularities in the structure and distribution of the words that make it seem like complete nonsense (104).

Shelton 3 Rugg himself tested this theory to prove that it is a made up language. He made a Cardan grille of his own in order to see if he could replicate the language of Voynichese. After making the tables and cutting out the cards, he was able to create 1,000 to 2,000 words. However, when making his new language able to be deciphered, there was much less repetition of words than there is with Voynichese. So, with all the repetition of words in the Voynich Manuscript, it is not possible to decode them and put together a sentence that actually has meaning. However, his experiment showed that it is very possible that the author of the manuscript used the Cardan grille to create a new language and make it seem like the words in it actually mean something when they are really just a very organized hoax, designed to trick and confuse (Rugg 109). Cryptanalysts can study the statistical properties of the writing to see if it would follow that of a real language or not. According to Andreas Schinner the statistical properties of the script are that of nonsense (Campbell). For example, the frequencies of letters and words can be studied. In the language of the Voynich Manuscript, Voynichese, it is not possible for it to be scripted from any European language, which is where it is believed to be from, because it does not contain any two or ten letter words, and the letters within each word does not answer known language patterns (Schmeh 2). Most of the words have five to six characters, with very few containing any more or less than that. This kind of distribution is extremely unusual in a human language. In almost all human languages, the distribution of word lengths is broader and asymmetric, with a higher occurrence of relatively long words (Rugg 105). Author Robert Williams believes that the language of the manuscript could be stemmed from the Greek language. He conducted an experiment to prove this hypothesis. First, he counted how many words were on the three pages that he was using for the study, which came out to 1853 words. Next, he subtracted the 1018 words that were repeated on those pages, which left

Shelton 4 838 words in total. The next step was to put the words in order by their first letter and then their length, with the highest number of letters first going down to the lowest number. After doing this, he found that the language contains 23 letters. Williams then uses the number of letters and converts them to percentages, which he also does for other languages. Based on his percentages, the language of the Voynich Manuscript is very similar to that of Greek. Some of the letter percentages are almost exactly the same, with some not far off, but many of the letters are not close. After going through all of this intense research, Wiliams states, I suspect that the entire manuscript is nonsense, a crazed work of scientific fantasy by a disordered mind. It is probably not worth the effort of decipherment. His research shows that the author could have used a real language to use as a basis for his new language, but that does not mean that the new language means anything. Wiliams did not realize just how right he could be when he said that the manuscript is a crazed workby a disordered mind. It is believed by some that the author of the manuscript was schizophrenic (Rugg 34). Inside the Voynich Manuscript, some of the words are repeated in succession many times, some back to back up to five times (Schmeh 2). For example, from folio 78R of the manuscript reads: qokedy qokedy dal qokedy qokdey (Rugg 107). If the manuscript ever was decoded, it would be the same words and letters repeated many times making no sense at all. This strange repetition of the same word over and over is not found in any language known today, making it unlikely that this Voynichese language is a human language or any language at all for that matter (Rugg 107). People suffering from schizophrenia often go on rants that make no sense to the people listening, which would explain why words are repeated many times. This repetition of words may have made sense to the author, but would certainly not make any sense if someone were to decode the message. If the author was indeed

Shelton 5 schizophrenic, then this book could just be some of his illogical speeches put to paper and not any valuable information. The Voynich Manuscript is believed by many to just be an elaborate hoax. Their beliefs are based on the fact that some of the items in the drawings contained in the manuscript do not exist, facts on the cypher point to a hoax, and because statistics on the words and letters in the document are consistent to that of complete nonsense. So what does all this mean? Well, the manuscript cannot hold any information in the code since there is nothing there to actually decode. Because of this, the belief that the manuscript holds some meaning is completely ridiculous. However, despite all this research and information, some individuals still cling to the belief that there could be some valuable information hidden in the cypher text. A breakthrough in the study of the manuscript would be needed to be sure which side is correct. But until that time comes, I believe that the manuscript is just an elaborate hoax based on the facts that I have just laid out.

Shelton 6

Works Cited Campbell, MacGregor. "The Voynich Manuscript." New Scientist 210.2813 (2011): 44. MAS Ultra - School Edition. Web. 25 Mar. 2013. Rugg, Gordon. "An Elegant Hoax? A Possible Solution to the Voynich Manuscript." Cryptologia 28.1 (2004): 31-46. ProQuest Central. Web. 22 Apr. 2013. Rugg, Gordon. "The Mystery of the Voynich Manuscript." Scientific American 291.1 (2004): 104-09. Scientific American Online. Web. 1 Apr. 2013. Schmeh, Klaus. "The Voynich manuscript: the book nobody can read: for almost 100 years, experts and amateur researchers have tried to solve the riddle of a handwritten book, referred to as the 'Voynich manuscript,' composed in an unknown script. The numerous theories about this remarkable document are contradictory and range from plausible to adventurous." Skeptical Inquirer Jan.-Feb. 2011: 46+. General OneFile. Web. 1 Apr. 2013. Wiliams, Robert L. "A Note of the Vonynich Manuscript." Cryptologia 23.4 (1999): 305. ProQuest. Web. 25 Mar. 2013.