Summary: Genuine mysteries are so very rare, but here is an artifact of an unknown language, an unknown botany, an unknown madness, an unknown world.<br> -The Voice before the Void<br> “Voynich manuscript”<br> Wikipedia<br> The Voynich manuscript is an illustrated codex hand-written in an unknown writing system. The vellum on which it is written has been carbon-dated to the early 15th century (1404–1438), and it may have been composed in Northern Italy during the Italian Renaissance. The manuscript is named after Wilfrid Voynich, a Polish book dealer who purchased it in 1912.<br> <a href="https://i2.wp.com/www.thevoicebeforethevoid.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Voynich-manuscript-undeciphered-untranslated-unknown-language-mystery-tome-grimoire-rare-medieval-codex-book-Beinecke-Library-Yale-University-page-181-folio-102-recto-weird-plants.jpg?ssl=1"></a>Some of the pages are missing, with around 240 still remaining. The text is written from left to right, and most of the pages have illustrations or diagrams. Some pages are foldable sheets.<br> The Voynich manuscript has been studied by many professional and amateur cryptographers, including American and British codebreakers from both World War I and World War II. No one has yet succeeded in deciphering the text, and it has become a famous case in the history of cryptography. The mystery of the meaning and origin of the manuscript has excited the popular imagination, making the manuscript the subject of novels and speculation. None of the many hypotheses proposed over the last hundred years has yet been independently verified.<br> The Voynich manuscript was donated by Hans P. Kraus to Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in 1969, where it is catalogued under call number MS 408.<br> 1. Description<br> Codicology<br> 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.<br> Parchment, covers, and binding<br> Protein testing revealed the paper (parchment) was made from calf skin, and multispectral analysis in 2014 showed the parchment was unwritten before the manuscript was created. While the parchment was created with care, deficiencies exist, and the quality is assessed as average at best.<br> Some folios are thicker than the usual parchment thickness, for example bifolios 42 and 47.<br> The goat skin binding and covers are not original to the book but date to during its possession by the Collegio Romano. Insect holes, present on the first and last folios of the manuscript in the current order, suggest a wooden cover was present earlier to the later covers and discolouring on the edges points to a tanned leather inside cover.<br> Ink<br> 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,
