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The Voynich Manuscript Decoded?

I give examples to show that the code used in the Voynich

Manuscript is probably a series of Italian word anagrams written in a

fancy embellished script. This code, that has been confusing scholars

for nearly a century, is therefore not as complicated as it first appears.

 A ll attempts over the past century to decode this mysterious

manuscript have met with failure. This is probably due to the initial

error made by Voynich and his followers attributing the authorship of

the manuscript to Roger Bacon, the !th century British scientist,

mon" and scholar. #s I showed in a previous paper on my

$ebsite, The Voynich Manuscript, was the author left handed%, Roger

Bacon could not have written this manuscript and I suggested that a

young &around ' to ( years old) *eonardo da Vinci was a li"ely

author. +sing this premise I proceeded to consider what would be

reuired to decode this manuscript and reached the following

conclusions-

. etermine the language used in writing the manuscript

/. 0orrelate the Voynich alphabet with the modern 1nglish

alphabet

!. ecipher the code

If *eonardo da Vinci was the author of the VM, he would have used

the language of ante, i.e. medieval Italian, so I have assumed the VM

language to be Italian. I initially used Rene 2andbergen3s basic 1V#

characters&i) as a starting point to correlate the VM letters with the

1nglish alphabet, while ta"ing into account that the Italian alphabetonly uses / letters. *ater in my studies I had to modify some of the

1V# correlations. #s the best code brea"ers, using powerful

computers, were unable to decipher the code, it did not appear li"ely

that I could brea" the code. I am however addicted of solving 4umbles

and playing Text Twist and this made me consider a different

approach. $hen I examined the VM script, I noticed that there were

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very few corrections, and the writing, though slow, had the

appearance of easy fluidity. # complicated code would reuire ma"ing

a preliminary copy using for example a slate for a scratch pad. 5aper

was expensive in the 6th century. To produce a /(( page manuscript

under these conditions would be a very tedious tas". The encodingmust have been simple, easy and direct. 7ordon Rugg&ii) has

suggested that the VM is nothing but a meaningless 8umble of letters9

I wondered whether he was not correct, with one modification, only

the individual words were 8umbled, i.e. anagrams. I was further

encouraged when loo"ing at the last page, :olio ;v of the VM to find

that the top line on this page is-

The Italian alphabet does not use the letter <. *eonardo used this

letter as shorthand for ver.&iii) This line may be interpreted as follows-

Povere leter rimon mist(e) ispero

$hich translates into 1nglish as follows-

Plain letter reassemble mixed inspire

This brief sentence indicated that the use of anagrams should be

investigated. This was further supported by reading $i"ipedia3s report

that anagrams were popular throughout 1urope during the Middle #ges

and that some =th century astronomers, while engaged in verification

of their discoveries, used anagrams to hide their ideas. Thus 7alileo

announced his discovery that Venus had phases li"e the Moon in the

form of an anagram. >imilarly Robert ?oo"e in ;;( first published

?oo"e3s *aw in the form of an anagram.

 W ord anagrams do not always offer a uniue solution and an

exact correlation between the 1V# characters and the 1nglish alphabet

has not been established, therefore, to test this @anagram hypothesis3

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as precisely as possible, I used the single words found on many of the

herbal pages. Most of these drawings are so poor that the author of

the manuscript obviously considered it necessary to identify the

rootsAplants with names. I therefore used these single words to help

modify the 1V# alphabet &shown below) based on the plantAroot nameobtained from the subseuent translated Italian anagram. This

resulted for the most part in a usable correspondence between the VM

and 1nglish alphabets which when once established was used for

deciphering all subseuent anagrams. I uibble a little here for at this

time I have not been able to identify all the / letters of the VM Italian

alphabet &8,",w,x, and y excluded). The letters ?, , 2 and a single T

have not been identified and there may also be some letter

combinations li"e that used for tl that need to be identified. The ll

combination may represent either one or two l3s. *etters li"e o and a,when they occur at the end of a word, have a tail and can easily be

confused with a g, which has a curved tail. Cther letters li"e m,n,r and

u, when they occur at the end of a word have a curlicue. It is difficult

to interpret words that have a number of c3s and e3s. These anagrams

are best solved by trial and error. The letters I used from the VM and

their 1nglish euivalent are shown in the table below-

+sing this basic alphabet I have identified a number of plants, herbs

and vegetables from the herbal pages. I was not able to decipher all

the words, due no doubt to the fact that many of the plants around

6((Dplus years ago probably had common names that have since

fallen into disuse. In addition modification in the spelling of some

words may have occurred ma"ing it difficult for someone li"e myself,

who does not read or spea" Italian, to decipher these words.

Iused an Internet site, @Italian #nagram ictionary,3 to help me

unscramble the words and translate the anagrams into 1nglish. The

boo" @The Botanical 7ardens of 5adua 6E6D

FF63 &iv) helped identify some of the common names used for plants in

Italy in the ;th century. Gou can 8udge from the examples given

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below, whether this #nagram 0ode has been successful deciphering

this limited selection from the Voynich Manuscript. I hope some of you

who read medieval Italian will help decipher more of the manuscript so

we can finally learn the mysteries, if any, that this manuscript is

hiding.

 W hen I gave this manuscript a final reading, I suddenly

remembered that an Brown in his boo" @The a Vinci 0ode3 made use

of anagrams. It will be ironic if *eonardo da Vinci is established as the

author of the Voynich Manuscript and it is accepted that he used

anagrams for his code. I doubt however that the Voynich Manuscript

will have much to say about Mary Magdelene or the 5riory of >ion, but

that remains to be seen.

The pages that follow contain sections of the Voynich Manuscript

with words that have been decoded using the anagram method. The

first line of typed text above the Voynich handwritten text is the

modern 1nglish interpretation of the letters. The second line is an

Italian anagram of these letters. The third line is the anagram

translated into 1nglish.

 

I. ↑ bac"Hennedy, 7. and 0hurchill, R., /((;, The Voynich

Manuscript, Inner Traditions, Rochester Vermont, p./E!.

II. ↑ bac"ibid p./E6.

III. ↑ bac"Richter, 4.5., F=(, The oteboo"s of *eonardo da Vinci,

vol I, over 5ublications, ew Gor", p.DE.

IV. ↑ bac"1d. Minelli, #., Marsilio, FF6, p. /(=D/E.

:olio FFr Top >ection

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:olio FFr >econd >ection

:olio FFr Third >ection

:olio FFr Bottom >ection

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:rom :olio ''r Top >ection

:rom :olio ''v Top *eft >ection

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:rom :olio ''v Top *eft >ection

:rom :olio ''v >econd *eft >ection

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:rom :olio ''v Bottom Right >ection

:rom :olio ''v Bottom *eft and Top Middle >ections

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:rom :olio (/r

:rom :olio (/r

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