Given the absence of any recognizable language patterns, some theorize that each character represents a symbol, not a letter. This coded language implies that the manuscript's content was meant to be concealed. In 2018, researchers employing artificial intelligence deduced that the text was likely Hebrew and composed of alphagrams: anagrams with letters ordered alphabetically. However, using Google Translate to interpret the Hebrew language, they were only able to discern individual words relating to images on the page, not any coherent meaning from the seemingly nonsensical sentences.
A 2019 study offers an alternative hypothesis, proposing that the manuscript was created by and for women, which might account for previous failures to comprehend the text. Dr. Gerard Cheshire, the study's author, argues that the language isn't coded but rather written in a proto-Romance dialect, a precursor to many modern European languages. Nonetheless, this conclusion faces opposition from other Voynich experts who assert that Cheshire is molding his findings to fit his theory, relying on the identification of individual words instead of complete sentences to support his proto-Romance language assumption.
The roughly A5-sized book is bound in what has been described as a Renaissance version of a paperback, with some believing that its blank cover is a way of hiding its cryptic contents. In one of the creepiest (but not entirely unusual) practices in history, the pages of the manuscript are made from the hides of at least 14 cows. While the language presented in the book has yet to be deciphered, the numerous colorful illustrations seem to divide the manuscript into six distinct sections: botany, astronomy and astrology, biology, cosmology, pharmacy, and entire pages of text believed to be recipes. The botany section, the largest "chapter" in the book, contains 113 detailed drawings of seemingly unrecognizable plant species, while the astronomy and astrology pages show the arrangement of the planets and images that appear to depict the various zodiac signs. There are also illustrations of women bathing in colorful liquids that sometimes appear to be intertwined and connected by tubes. This biological section of the book led to a brief conclusion in 2017 that the manuscript was about women's health, but that theory was quickly debunked. The elaborate story behind the book begins in 15th century Europe. It is believed to have been first possessed by the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II of Germany during his reign between 1576 and 1611, and according to some reports, the manuscript was purchased by John Dee for 600 ducats.Dee, a mathematician and astronomer, is said to have possessed the manuscript as part of a collection of works by the 13th-century English philosopher Roger Bacon. According to sources, some believed the book-including Rudolph II-was written by Bacon, but radiocarbon dating refuted this claim by placing the book's production about 300 years after Bacon's death in 1292. Subsequently, the book was apparently given by Rudolph II to the emperor's personal physician, Jacobus Horcicky de Tepenecz. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that the book was examined under ultraviolet light; a message can be seen on one page of the manuscript that reads "Jacobi de Tepenecz". The next known exchange occurred in 1666, when the Bohemian physician Johannes Marcus Marci of Cronland gave the book to the German Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher, just a year before his death. The Jesuit College near Rome is where Wilfrid Voynich found the book 246 years later. After Voynich's death in 1930, the manuscript was purchased from his estate by bookseller Hans P. Kraus, who donated it to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University in 1969. While the original book remains under lock and key, the library has a realistic printed replica on display and open to the public. Printed versions of the manuscript are also available for purchase online if you feel like trying to decipher its mysterious ramblings.
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