That's right, welcome to this week's research notes! Hope you enjoyed this week's episode on the Voynich Manuscript.
Now you may remember, our story begins in Villa Mondragone
Here's what it looks like today! Yes that's right here's where the Popes of old would come to kick it uh... pope-style. And more importantly manufacture sexy calendars at an alarming rate.
We're talking yer basic sexy priest calendar:
Yer curveball sexy calendar - the X-ray calendar:
And of course not forgetting the popular sexy calendar sexy calendar:
Oooooh mama.
But unfortunately none of these absolute gold-mine ideas could keep that hulking great villa above water, and they had to pawn off some manuscripts.
But good thing they did! Otherwise we'd never have seen the Voynich manuscript and Kit would have had to find a different topic this week.
Now the man that we've named the manuscript after is Voynich himself, the polish book collector.
Here's what he looked like;
Is the book massive or is he tiny? We may never know.
I mean, if anyone looks like a dusty old book collector, it's this guy.
But I guess anyone could look like that, just get some old timey glasses and grow a beard or whatever. Actually let's try this out.
Wow. Holy shit is that what I look like? That's depressing. Also, it's a heatwave, OK?
But what I'm saying is let's just throw some old timey gear on there... maybe a little sepia-tone... maybe lose the vest.
Hell yeah! Now we're getting somewhere! With a look like that I could probably even bag myself a Malermi Bible. (Doesn't mean Jesus' name was changed to Rory).
Now let's cut to the chase, here are images from the actual manuscript.
And I highly encourage looking at the original for yourself here! You can read the whole damn thing!
https://ia802608.us.archive.org/18/items/TheVoynichManuscript/Voynich_Manuscript.pdf
Now if you're like me, or (even if he won't admit it) Rory, you won't know what on earth that thing says.
But don't worry! the greatest minds available at the time didn't either.
I mentioned on the pod that world war II code breakers set to work on it, but were eventually stumped. And to give you a feel for how hard it must be - these were the same people who broke the Japanese purple code. Lesser known than the German enigma, but every bit as puzzling.
There's an awesome run-down about how the US broke the code here, including details of Will Friedman, who tried to break the Voynich.
Additionally here's an original headline from whenever the manuscript was first carbon dated.
https://uanews.arizona.edu/story/ua-experts-determine-age-of-book-nobody-can-read
Now, like I mentioned on the pod, you may have seen articles like this:
But let me be clear! The manuscript has not been decoded. This article does a pretty good rundown of how and why!
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/1/16959454/voynich-manuscript-mystery-ai-decoded-debunked
So we're really only left with one remaining explanation.
...
..
.
An. Alien. Diary.
Look I don't know why they'd still be using pencils and paper. It was the 1400s. It probably went down something like this:
ohhhhhhhhh *bass boosted music*
Then he probably got ejected into space, and some couple-million years later his diary AKA Voynich Manuscript floated down to Italy and was discovered by Emperor Rudolph.
What's that? none of that makes any sense? Well how about you come up with a better theory?! Leave it in a comment below!
And for anyone who is stuck on the Artemis Fowl books like Rory mentioned (they are children's books so I'm not sure why he kept talking about his translating abilities) you can read those fairy translations here.
And if you want to read more on this case, you can do a lot worse than the sites belooooow!
BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22975809
A paranormal news site: https://www.allaboutparanormal.com/post/134013839744/the-voynich-manuscript
A pretty heavy academic paper!: https://web.archive.org/web/20111018025101/https://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/tech_journals/Voynich_Manuscript_Mysterious.pdf
Music featured on this episode
Wii Channel hip hop remix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NY2t4nZ6ZE&frags=pl%2Cwn
Halo theme tune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jXTBAGv9ZQ
Indiana Jones theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bTpp8PQSog&frags=pl%2Cwn
Harry Potter theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Htaj3o3JD8I&frags=pl%2Cwn
Everything else: http://www.purple-planet.com
Hope you enjoyed this week's episode! If you want to know anything else about this one, let us know in a comment below. Otherwise we'll see you next week for another brand new paranormal tale!
Love, k&r