{"it":{"id":"W11A17","kind":"artifact","sub":"Authenticated","name":"Voynich manuscript","place":"New Haven","mat":"vellum, iron-gall ink","dims":"102 parchment leaves, 225 x 160 mm; 18 gatherings (Beinecke)","loc":"Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale, MS 408","acc":"MS 408","find":"bought by Wilfrid Voynich 1912 near Rome (Villa Mondragone per University of Arizona; Villa Torlonia per Zandbergen 2023)","flag":"genuine medieval (text undeciphered)","src":[89,90,91,463],"lat":41.311,"lon":-72.927,"tags":[],"sum":"In 1912 the book dealer Wilfrid Voynich bought a manuscript near Rome that is full of drawings of unknown plants, star diagrams and bathing figures, written in a script no one can read. In 2009 Greg Hodgins of the University of Arizona dated four samples of its parchment to 1404 to 1438. It is now Beinecke MS 408 at Yale.","why":"Radiocarbon dating put the parchment about a century earlier than the library's older estimate; the script has never been read.","nfacts":2,"nsrc":6,"yt":"Run word-frequency stats on a transcription.","rel":["W17A02","W11A26"],"hook":"The Voynich manuscript turned up near Rome in 1912. Nobody has read a sentence since.","date":"parchment 1404 to 1438 (radiocarbon, 95.4%)"},"S":{"89":["Wikipedia Voynich manuscript","https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Voynich_manuscript&oldid=1382394496"],"90":["Hodgins 2009 NSF-Arizona AMS letter to Yale","https://voynich.nu/papers/Carbon_GH_2009.pdf"],"91":["Zandbergen, Voynich radiocarbon page","https://voynich.nu/extra/carbon.html"],"463":["Wikipedia: Voynich manuscript","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript"]},"rec":{"id":"W11A17","alias":[],"ms":[{"a":"dimensions","v":"23.5x16.2x5","u":"cm","unc":"","by":"","yr":"","m":"","b":"S","t":"MEASUREMENT","id":"W11M050","s":["W11S22"],"c":"Wikipedia Voynich manuscript","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Voynich_manuscript&oldid=1382394496"},{"a":"quires","v":"18","u":"count","unc":"","by":"","yr":"","m":"codicology","b":"S","t":"MEASUREMENT","id":"W11M051","s":["W11S22"],"c":"Wikipedia Voynich manuscript","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Voynich_manuscript&oldid=1382394496"}],"lab":[{"k":"Materials","v":"calf vellum; inks C, Fe, S, K, Ca with trace Cu, Zn (EDS 2009)","b":"S","s":["W11S22"],"url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Voynich_manuscript&oldid=1382394496"},{"k":"Lab test","mat":"Radiocarbon parchment, 4 folios combined","v":"516 +/- 18 14C yr BP","m":"AMS radiocarbon","by":"Hodgins, NSF-Arizona AMS 2009","b":"V","s":["W11S23","W11S34","W11S115"],"url":"https://voynich.nu/papers/Carbon_GH_2009.pdf"},{"k":"Lab test","mat":"Calibrated date (95.4%)","v":"1404-1438 AD","m":"AMS + IntCal04","by":"Hodgins 2009","b":"V","s":["W11S23","W11S24","W11S22","W11S115"],"url":"https://voynich.nu/papers/Carbon_GH_2009.pdf"},{"k":"Lab test","mat":"Ink elemental","v":"C, Fe, S, K, Ca major; Cu, Zn trace","m":"EDS","by":"McCrone Associates (per wiki) 2009","b":"S","s":["W11S22"],"url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Voynich_manuscript&oldid=1382394496"}],"eng":[],"ori":[],"gaps":[],"dat":[],"aa":[{"id":"AA170","a":"Alien/unknown language","who":"various","main":"Vellum 1404-1438 (95.4%); inks typical medieval","ms":"W11S22;W11S23;W11S34","st":"unresolved","n":"","nl":"1"}],"ac":[],"me":[],"ci":[],"cq":[],"sd":[],"art":{"claimed_anomaly":"Alien/unknown language","mainstream_reading":"Vellum 1404-1438 (95.4%); inks typical medieval","provenance_flag":"genuine medieval (text undeciphered)","current_location":"Beinecke Library, Yale","find_circumstances":"acquired by Wilfrid Voynich 1912","claimant":"various","status":"unresolved","dimensions":"23.5 x 16.2 x 5 cm; 18 quires","material":"vellum, iron-gall ink","date":"","culture":"","museum_accession":"MS 408","b":"V","s":["W11S22","W11S23","W11S34"]},"sub":[],"src":[{"id":"W11S22","t":"Wikipedia Voynich manuscript","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Voynich_manuscript&oldid=1382394496"},{"id":"W11S23","t":"Hodgins, NSF-Arizona AMS 2009","u":"https://voynich.nu/papers/Carbon_GH_2009.pdf"},{"id":"W11S34","t":"Zandbergen, Voynich radiocarbon page","u":"https://voynich.nu/extra/carbon.html"},{"id":"W11S115","t":"Hodgins 17 Feb 2009 letter to Yale (mirror), Voynich AMS results AA84047-50","u":"https://www.voynich.nu/papers/Carbon_GH_2009.pdf"},{"id":"W11S24","t":"UANews 2011 (archived)","u":"https://web.archive.org/web/20150404164910/http:/uanews.org/story/ua-experts-determine-age-book-nobody-can-read"},{"id":null,"t":"Wikipedia: Voynich manuscript","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript"},{"id":"VW11A17-7","t":"voynich.nu: Radiocarbon dating of the Voynich MS","u":"http://www.voynich.nu/extra/carbon.html"},{"id":"VW11A17-8","t":"UANews (2011): UA experts determine age of book nobody can read (archived)","u":"https://web.archive.org/web/20150404164910/http://uanews.org/story/ua-experts-determine-age-book-nobody-can-read"}],"qs":["Wartime codebreakers who cracked military ciphers failed to read the Voynich manuscript. What does that tell you about whoever wrote it?","If the Voynich were deciphered tomorrow, what do you think it would turn out to be: medicine, secrets, or nothing at all?"],"gal":[{"src":"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/Voynich_Manuscript_%2832%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Voynich_Manuscript_(32).jpg","title":"Voynich Manuscript (32).jpg","lic":"Public domain","licurl":"","by":"Unknown authorUnknown author","cap":"A page from the mysterious Voynich manuscript, which is undeciphered to this day."},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e0/Feuerhexe.jpg/1280px-Feuerhexe.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Feuerhexe.jpg","title":"Feuerhexe.jpg","lic":"Public domain","licurl":"","by":"Unknown authorUnknown author","cap":"Feuerhexe aus Johannes <de Fontana>: Bellicorum instrumentorum liber cum figuris - BSB Cod.icon. 242, Bl. 63v"},{"src":"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Jan_Marcus_Marci_00.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jan_Marcus_Marci_00.jpg","title":"Jan Marcus Marci 00.jpg","lic":"Public domain","licurl":"","by":"Johann Balzer","cap":"Jan Marek Marci (1595—1667)"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ed/Micha%C5%82_Wojnicz_w%C5%9Br%C3%B3d_ksi%C4%85%C5%BCek_w_swoim_antykwariacie_na_Soho_Square.jpg/1280px-Micha%C5%82_Wojnicz_w%C5%9Br%C3%B3d_ksi%C4%85%C5%BCek_w_swoim_antykwariacie_na_Soho_Square.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Micha%C5%82_Wojnicz_w%C5%9Br%C3%B3d_ksi%C4%85%C5%BCek_w_swoim_antykwariacie_na_Soho_Square.jpg","title":"Michał Wojnicz wśród książek w swoim antykwariacie na Soho Square.jpg","lic":"Public domain","licurl":"","by":"Unknown authorUnknown author","cap":"Mr. Voynich among his books in Soho Square"},{"src":"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Roger_Bacon_in_his_observatory_at_Merton_College%2C_Oxford._Oi_Wellcome_M0001840.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Roger_Bacon_in_his_observatory_at_Merton_College,_Oxford._Oi_Wellcome_M0001840.jpg","title":"Roger Bacon in his observatory at Merton College, Oxford. Oi Wellcome M0001840.jpg","lic":"CC BY 4.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0","by":"Unknown","cap":"Roger Bacon in his observatory at Merton College, Oxford. Oil painting by Ernest Board. Iconographic Collections Keywords: Ernest Board"}],"article":{"id":"W11A17","mode":"rewrite-plus-quick-research","research":"quick","title":"The Voynich manuscript: a book no one can read","dek":"A small illustrated book in an unknown script has beaten every code breaker for over a century. Radiocarbon tests in 2009 dated its parchment to the early 1400s, and new archive work in 2023 changed the story of where it was found.","byline":"The Nommo","updated":"1 Nov 2026","sections":[{"h":"The strangest true fact","p":["An emperor is said to have paid 600 gold ducats for a book that nobody, then or now, has been able to read [3].","That book now sits in Yale’s rare book library, and every page of its strange script has defied the people who have tried to crack it [2] [3]."]},{"h":"What it is and why it matters","p":["The Voynich manuscript is a small parchment book filled with drawings and text in an unidentified script, catalogued at Yale as Beinecke MS 408 [3].","Its drawings fall into six parts, starting with a botanical section showing 113 unidentified plant species [3].","Then come an astronomical part with 25 star diagrams, a “biological” section of small female nudes in pools and tubes, a large fold out sheet of nine medallions, a pharmaceutical section with drawings of jars and more than 100 medicinal herbs and roots, and a final block of continuous text marked with stars [3].","The library notes that several people have claimed to decipher it, but that for the most part the text remains an unsolved puzzle [3].","It matters because it sits where art history, cryptography and the history of science meet, and because it has become a test case for anyone who claims to have broken a lost code [2] [3]."]},{"h":"Key data","p":["The Beinecke description gives 102 parchment leaves, including several large fold outs, measuring 225 by 160 millimetres [3].","Its collation runs through eighteen gatherings, numbered I to XVIII, with several leaves missing [3].","Greg Hodgins of the Arizona radiocarbon lab cut four samples from the edges of leaves 8, 26, 47 and 68 on 15 January 2009 [1].","He told University of Arizona News that each piece was about 1 by 6 millimetres [2].","The four results clustered tightly, giving a combined radiocarbon age of 516 plus or minus 18 years before 1950 [1].","Calibrated, that means a 95.4 percent probability that the parchment dates from 1404 to 1438 [1].","The older Beinecke description places the book at the end of the 15th or during the 16th century, and adds that plants identified by some as New World species would mean it could not have been written before 1493 [3].","The radiocarbon date sits about a century earlier than that, and the University of Arizona said it pushed the book back by 100 years [2]."]},{"h":"How it was found","p":["The University of Arizona account says the book dealer Wilfrid Voynich found the manuscript in 1912 at the Villa Mondragone near Rome, in a chest of books offered for sale by the Jesuits [2].","The Beinecke description says he acquired it in 1912 from the Jesuit College at Frascati near Rome [3].","Zandbergen, drawing on a recent Italian study of Vatican archives, concludes that the book was kept not at Villa Mondragone but at Villa Torlonia in Castel Gandolfo [4].","He adds that Voynich did not discover the collection himself, as he always claimed, but was invited by its owners to buy part of it under a promise of strict secrecy [4].","Before that, the library traces the book to Emperor Rudolf II, then to Jacobus Horcicky de Tepenecz, whose erased name shows up under ultraviolet light on the first page [3].","In 1666 the scholar Johannes Marcus Marci sent it to Athanasius Kircher in Rome, hoping he could decipher it [3].","Voynich spent the rest of his life trying to read it and died 18 years after the purchase without success [2].","The dealer Hans Kraus bought it from the estate of Ethel Voynich and gave it to the Beinecke Library in 1969 [3]."]},{"h":"The strongest cases, mainstream and alternative","p":["Early in the 20th century the favoured idea was that the English friar Roger Bacon wrote it, an idea the library says rests on themes in the drawings [3].","The library also reports that it is very likely Rudolf got it from the English astrologer John Dee, whose page numbers appear on each leaf [3].","Marci’s 1666 letter records that Rudolf believed the author was the Englishman Roger Bacon, while Marci himself held back his judgment [3].","Hodgins himself warned that the tests dated the parchment, not when it was written on [1].","The second big question is whether the script hides a real language, a cipher, or nothing at all, and the radiocarbon result makes a modern forgery by Voynich very hard to defend [1] [2].","Hodgins told the university that the colours were consistent with the Renaissance palette and that there was nothing suspicious in them [2]."]},{"h":"What is still unexplained","p":["No one knows who wrote the book, where, or in what language [3].","Hodgins pointed to the text’s strange habits, such as repeated words and single letters swapped in a sequence [2].","Hodgins said that dating the inks directly “is actually really difficult to do” [2].","Could ink dating one day narrow the gap between the parchment and the writing?"]},{"h":"Related places","p":["Rongorongo from Rapa Nui is another script that no one can read. Could the Voynich text and rongorongo share any method of attack?","The Phaistos Disc from Crete is a single object stamped with signs that are still undeciphered."]},{"h":"A last thought","p":["Marci wrote to Kircher in 1666 that only Kircher could read such riddles [3].","More than three and a half centuries later, the riddle still has no reader."]}],"sources":[{"n":1,"text":"Hodgins, Greg, letter to Christine McCarthy, Yale University Library, “Dating Results for Voynich Manuscript Parchment Leaves 8, 26, 47 and 68”, NSF Arizona AMS Laboratory, 17 February 2009, laboratory report hosted at voynich.nu (university laboratory, primary)","url":"https://voynich.nu/papers/Carbon_GH_2009.pdf"},{"n":2,"text":"Stolte, Daniel, “UA Experts Determine Age of Book ‘Nobody Can Read’”, UANews, University of Arizona, 9 February 2011, archived copy via the Internet Archive (university)","url":"https://web.archive.org/web/20150404164910/http://uanews.org/story/ua-experts-determine-age-book-nobody-can-read"},{"n":3,"text":"Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, “Beinecke MS 408, Cipher Manuscript”, catalogue description of pre 1600 manuscripts (museum and library catalogue)","url":"https://pre1600ms.beinecke.library.yale.edu/docs/pre1600.ms408.htm"},{"n":4,"text":"Zandbergen, René, “Wilfrid Voynich’s acquisition of the Voynich MS, not in Villa Mondragone”, 12 September 2023, research paper hosted at voynich.nu (secondary, independent researcher summarising Vatican archive work)","url":"https://www.voynich.nu/papers/Acquisition_RZ_2023.pdf"}],"source_note":"Record figures checked against opened sources. Kept: Beinecke MS 408; four samples from leaves 8, 26, 47 and 68; 1404 to 1438 at 95.4 percent probability; the 1912 find and Voynich’s death 18 years later; the Hodgins quote on inks; 18 quires (from the Beinecke collation, I to XVIII). The record’s 23.5 x 16.2 x 5 cm is cut because the Yale catalogue page holding it did not open; the Beinecke description’s 225 x 160 mm is used instead. Villa Mondragone (University of Arizona, 2011) is set beside Villa Torlonia in Castel Gandolfo (Zandbergen, 2023). The Beinecke date of the late 15th or 16th century is set beside the radiocarbon date. Wikipedia sources from the record are dropped.","related":["W17A02","W11A26"]}},"img":null,"md":null,"hh":[{"v":"1404–1438","h":"Carbon date of its vellum","s":[198]},{"v":"~240","u":"pages","h":"Pages, with evidence some are missing","s":[198]},{"v":"Undeciphered","h":"Written in a script, “Voynichese”, that no one has deciphered","s":[198]},{"v":"23.5 x 16.2 x 5 cm","h":"Recorded dimensions: 23.5 x 16.2 x 5 cm; 18 quires","s":[199]}],"hs":{"198":["Wikipedia: Voynich manuscript (and sources cited there)","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript"],"199":["Wikipedia Voynich manuscript","https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Voynich_manuscript&oldid=1382394496"]},"lh":{"s":"img/h/W11A17.webp","w":1143,"h":1536,"o":"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/Voynich_Manuscript_%2832%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled"}}