Chris Gore: Cryptography: The Voynich Manuscript
The Voynich Manuscript is a handwritten book from the early 1400s. The author of the book is unknown, as is the purpose. It is written in some sort of cyphertext which has yet to be decoded in spite of centuries of effort. You can download a PDF of it that I found some time ago and take a look at it. Nobody knows what language it is written in, but various things strongly suggest that it actually is a natural human language, instead of just a hoax full of nonsense.
Useful Links
- Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
- This is a library at Yale University, and they are the current owners of the original Voynich Manuscript itself. They officially refer to it as "Beinecke MS 408", should you ever choose to contact or visit them.
- Beinecke Library images of the manuscript
- This is a link to the scans of the manuscript available on the Beinecke Library's website.
- Archive.org's page on the Voynich Manuscript
- Archive.org has the manuscript available in several formats for download.
- René Zandbergen's Voynich site
- Zandbergen's site is one of the most thorough websites out there on this manuscript. It is quite in-depth and one of the more reliable websites out there, avoiding going into the realm of tinfoil and staying academic in nature.
- Voynich Central.com
- This site has very high resolution scans of the manuscript available for viewing.
- Wikipedia's page on the Voynich Manuscript
- This serves as a good short introduction to the text and its history.