VIDEO: The Book No One Can Read – Voynich Manuscript

The Voynich Manuscript has been dubbed as the “the most mysterious manuscript in the world”.

It is considered a book or manuscript codex that has long remained a mystery.

According to Wikipedia, the codicology, or physical characteristics of the manuscript, are studied by various researchers. The manuscript measures 23.5 by 16.2 by 5 centimetres, with hundreds of vellum pages collected into eighteen quires (units of 25 pages).

The total number of pages is around 240, but the exact number depends on how the manuscript’s unusual foldouts are counted. The quires have been numbered from 1 to 20 in various locations, using numerals consistent with the 1400s, and the top righthand corner of each recto (righthand) page has been numbered from 1 to 116, using numerals of a later date.

From the various numbering gaps in the quires and pages, it seems likely that in the past the manuscript had at least 272 pages in 20 quires, some of which were already missing when Wilfrid Voynich acquired the manuscript in 1912.

There is strong evidence that many of the book’s bifolios were reordered at various points in its history, and that the original page order may well have been quite different from what it is today.

Radiocarbon dating of samples from various parts of the manuscript was performed at the University of Arizona in 2009. The results were consistent for all samples tested and indicated a date for the parchment between 1404 and 1438.

Protein testing in 2014 revealed that the parchment was made from calf skin, and multispectral analysis showed that it was unwritten on before the manuscript was created. The parchment was created with care, but deficiencies exist and the quality is assessed as average, at best.

Some folios are thicker than the usual parchment thickness, such as bifolios 42 and 47.

The goat skin binding and covers are not original to the book but date to its possession by the Collegio Romano. Insect holes are present on the first and last folios of the manuscript in the current order and suggest that a wooden cover was present before the later covers, and discolouring on the edges points to a tanned leather inside cover.

Many pages contain substantial drawings or charts which are colored with paint. Based on modern analysis using polarized light microscopy (PLM), it has been determined that a quill pen and iron gall ink were used for the text and figure outlines; the colored paint was applied (somewhat crudely) to the figures, possibly at a later date.

The ink of the drawings, text and page and quire numbers had similar microscopic characteristics. Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) performed in 2009 revealed that the inks contained major amounts of iron, sulfur, potassium, calcium and carbon and trace amounts of copper and occasionally zinc.

EDS did not show the presence of lead, while X-ray Diffraction (XRD) identified potassium lead oxide, potassium hydrogen sulphate and syngenite in one of the samples tested. The similarity between the drawing inks and text inks suggested a contemporaneous origin.

The blue, clear (or white), red-brown, and green paints of the manuscript have been analyzed using PLM, XRD, EDS, and scanning electron microscopy (SEM).