It
appears that the Voynich Manuscript is well on the road to full
decipherment. It also appears to be what
we thought it was which is some form of herbal.
It always fitted the time and place in which knowledge was often encoded
to some degree and made generally opaque to the untrained.
I
look forward to reading the final text as it is likely a useful document to
compare to other sources then and even later.
It
appears that the Aztec language speculation will likely be limited to specific
names which is likely good. We will take
it.
This also may turn out to be a cropper in the end.
600
year old mystery manuscript decoded by University of Bedfordshire professor
Fri
14th February, 2014
AN
award-winning professor from the University has followed in the footsteps of
Indiana Jones by cracking the code of a 600 year old manuscript, deemed as ‘the
most mysterious’ document in the world.
Stephen Bax, Professor of Applied Linguistics,
has just become the first professional linguist to crack the code of the
Voynich manuscript using an analytical approach.
The world-renowned manuscript is full of
illustrations of exotic plants, stars, and mysterious human figures, as well as
many pages written in an unknown text.
Up until now the 15th century
cryptic work has baffled scholars, cryptographers and codebreakers who have
failed to read a single letter of the script or any word of the text.
Over time it has attained an infamous
reputation, even featuring in the latest hit computer game Assassin’s Creed, as
well as in the Indiana Jones novels, when Indiana decoded the Voynich and used
it to find the ‘Philosopher's Stone’.
However in reality no one has come close to
revealing the Voynich’s true messages.
Many grand theories have been proposed. Some
suggest it was the work of Leonardo da Vinci as a boy, or secret Cathars, or
the lost tribe of Israel, or most recently Aztecs … some have even proclaimed
it was done by aliens!
Professor Bax however has begun to unlock the
mystery meanings of the Voynich manuscript using his wide knowledge of
mediaeval manuscripts and his familiarity with Semitic languages such as
Arabic. Using careful linguistic analysis he is working on the script letter by
letter.
“I hit on the idea of
identifying proper names in the text, following historic approaches which
successfully deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs and other mystery scripts, and I
then used those names to work out part of the script,” explained Professor
Bax, who is to give his
inaugural lecture as a professor at the University later this month.
“The manuscript has a lot of illustrations of
stars and plants. I was able to identify some of these, with their names, by
looking at mediaeval herbal manuscripts in Arabic and other languages, and I
then made a start on a decoding, with some exciting results.”
Among the words he has identified is the term
for Taurus, alongside a picture of seven stars which seem to be the Pleiades,
and also the word KANTAIRON alongside a picture of the plant Centaury, a known
mediaeval herb, as well as a number of other plants.
Although Professor Bax’s decoding is still
only partial, it has generated a lot of excitement in the world of codebreaking
and linguistics because it could prove a crucial breakthrough for an eventual
full decipherment.
“My aim in reporting on my findings at this
stage is to encourage other linguists to work with me to decode the whole
script using the same approach, though it still won’t be easy. That way we can
finally understand what the mysterious authors were trying to tell us,” he
added.
“But already my research shows conclusively
that the manuscript is not a hoax, as some have claimed, and is probably a
treatise on nature, perhaps in a Near Eastern or Asian language.”
Find out more about
his work at the University's Centre for Research in English Language Learning
and Assessment (CRELLA) and also on his personal website www.stephenbax.net
Professor Bax, who was
recently awarded the 2014 TESOL International Distinguished Researcher Award
for his work on eye-tracking and reading, will discuss this and other research
at his inaugural
professional lecture at the University’s Luton campus on Tuesday 25 February at
6pm.
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