Hi r/history, this is Emma from the Guardian. We wanted to share a story we published this week about new research on a medieval manuscript that has confounded scholars for centuries. It reveals that everyone may have been reading the pages of the Voynich manuscript in the wrong order.
From our story:
It has been called the world’s most mysterious manuscript: a medieval set of pages filled with botanical drawings, astronomical diagrams, pictures of nude women and indecipherable text. Claimed at various times to be a book in a lost language, a musical score, an instruction manual or just an elaborate hoax, the so-called Voynich manuscript’s true meaning has defied cryptographers and codebreakers for centuries.
Now, new research offers an explanation for why a scholarly consensus over this enduring puzzle has been so hard to come by: not only because its truth is so profoundly mysterious – but because everyone has been reading its pages in the wrong order.
In an article published in peer-reviewed journal Digital Medievalist, Colin Layfield and Lisa Fagin Davis argue that the manuscript’s folded sheets may have originally been piled on top of each other as “singulions” – like a stack of Christmas cards – but were mis-bound in a more typical “nested” arrangement at some point in the mid to late 15th century.
While their finding does not immediately de-code the script, written in what has commonly become known as “Voynichese”, the authors say their finding radically changes our idea of the manuscript’s function.
“There are a lot of people who wanted the Voynich to have been created by one mad genius working in their attic in medieval London or wherever,” said Davis.
“In fact, the evidence suggests we’re talking about a more communal object, perhaps a set of booklets through which information was passed down from one generation to the next – the ‘lone genius’ idea is kind of out of the door.”
The manuscript’s unknown provenance has piqued scholarly interest ever since it surfaced in book collectors’ records in the 17th century. When it was bought in 1912 by Wilfrid Voynich, a Polish revolutionary and book dealer with a shop on London’s Soho Square, it was thought to be a scientific diary written by the 13th-century polymath Roger Bacon. Others have credited the codex to Leonardo da Vinci.
> the 'lone genius' idea is kind of out of the door.
I can accept the fact that nobody has thought of changing the order, but sounds very hard to believe that there would be several authors and nobody would have notice the variation of writing and "vocabulary", that would be one of the first tests anybody would run on any mysterious book. One person copying the whole book could explain a uniform writing, but a variation on the "vocabulary" and "grammar" would still be visible. The book has probably been through so many statically linguistic tests by now ...
It's been pretty well known in the voynich community for a while now that the ordering if the pages is funky. I don't know why we're pretending here this is some new revelation
Because there’s a difference between “the order of pages in this untranslatable manuscript might be slightly off” and “hey we’re pretty sure we know how to actually order the pages now”
But don’t let that stop you from feeling some sense of superiority
There was some TikTok person who claimed that it was some book about creating life with menstrual blood, and that the only reason why we didn't know earlier is because women didn't look at the book before (ignoring actual female scholarship). She is basically a grifter trying to sell merch
If this ends up being the case that'd be really cool. I've written it off as just some overanalyzed artistic conlang with illustrations made as someone's art project, but maybe there's something to it.
He didn’t say it should be obvious but that it should have been noticed way sooner. It should have. This book has been analyzed back and forth. It’d be like saying oh no one noticed the page numbers aren’t in order after 1000 students were told to tell us everything they could about the book.
>“Our hypothesis fixes a lot of problems with the structure of the manuscripts in a really elegant way”, said Davis, an expert on medieval handwriting.
Dear The Guardian, Instead of posing article titles as a question or a mystery that's still unsolved, please just state what the result is. It's a thesis. You state exactly what the thing is up front. THEN you give supporting statements and evidence. Then you restate the conclusion based on the evidence. Don't try to coax me in. Hit me over the head with it. Get to the point. It's not history mystery hour. It's one small finding after another.
If you look at the graphic, it looks a lot like a simple and very common way to join folded papers. Considering we still have no clue what is going on there, it's not unlikely that neither did whoever bound it in the first place.
Alas this is all speculation, because there iis simply no hard data to either support or rule out anything.
It's not a common way to bind medieval manuscripts at all: most are bound in quires and then the quires are bound together. As the article notes, the only other manuscripts bound as singulions are North African Qurans.
I think we both mean the same thing, though I might have phrased it better.
The way they were (incorrectly) joined is the common/simple one.
It's quite plausible some unknown book binder didn't know of singulions (and the cryptic nature of the scripts wouldn't be much help here). So he decided to bind them the way he bound everything else.
When Chretien de Troyes died they went through his papers and put together his last work, the Perceval, that he had left unfinished.
But they didn’t realize those papers actually held two different works: the Perceval and the Gawain. It seems obvious in hindsight - in the mixed story there are two Easter celebrations during a single year, for example - but they made the mistake nonetheless. A similar mistake could have been made with the Voynich Manuscript.
[OP] guardian | 11 hours ago
Hi r/history, this is Emma from the Guardian. We wanted to share a story we published this week about new research on a medieval manuscript that has confounded scholars for centuries. It reveals that everyone may have been reading the pages of the Voynich manuscript in the wrong order.
From our story:
It has been called the world’s most mysterious manuscript: a medieval set of pages filled with botanical drawings, astronomical diagrams, pictures of nude women and indecipherable text. Claimed at various times to be a book in a lost language, a musical score, an instruction manual or just an elaborate hoax, the so-called Voynich manuscript’s true meaning has defied cryptographers and codebreakers for centuries.
Now, new research offers an explanation for why a scholarly consensus over this enduring puzzle has been so hard to come by: not only because its truth is so profoundly mysterious – but because everyone has been reading its pages in the wrong order.
In an article published in peer-reviewed journal Digital Medievalist, Colin Layfield and Lisa Fagin Davis argue that the manuscript’s folded sheets may have originally been piled on top of each other as “singulions” – like a stack of Christmas cards – but were mis-bound in a more typical “nested” arrangement at some point in the mid to late 15th century.
While their finding does not immediately de-code the script, written in what has commonly become known as “Voynichese”, the authors say their finding radically changes our idea of the manuscript’s function.
“There are a lot of people who wanted the Voynich to have been created by one mad genius working in their attic in medieval London or wherever,” said Davis.
“In fact, the evidence suggests we’re talking about a more communal object, perhaps a set of booklets through which information was passed down from one generation to the next – the ‘lone genius’ idea is kind of out of the door.”
The manuscript’s unknown provenance has piqued scholarly interest ever since it surfaced in book collectors’ records in the 17th century. When it was bought in 1912 by Wilfrid Voynich, a Polish revolutionary and book dealer with a shop on London’s Soho Square, it was thought to be a scientific diary written by the 13th-century polymath Roger Bacon. Others have credited the codex to Leonardo da Vinci.
You can read the full story for free at this link.
surferbutthole | 10 hours ago
I love that you're posting this and also being transparent about who you are
Well done !
mytextgoeshere | 8 hours ago
This is really cool! Thanks for sharing!
SteveCake | 10 hours ago
This is cool- I did not think there was anything left with Voynich that hadn't been considered.
arllt89 | 6 hours ago
> the 'lone genius' idea is kind of out of the door.
I can accept the fact that nobody has thought of changing the order, but sounds very hard to believe that there would be several authors and nobody would have notice the variation of writing and "vocabulary", that would be one of the first tests anybody would run on any mysterious book. One person copying the whole book could explain a uniform writing, but a variation on the "vocabulary" and "grammar" would still be visible. The book has probably been through so many statically linguistic tests by now ...
sinckstar | 3 hours ago
It's been pretty well known in the voynich community for a while now that the ordering if the pages is funky. I don't know why we're pretending here this is some new revelation
TheRecognized | 3 hours ago
Because there’s a difference between “the order of pages in this untranslatable manuscript might be slightly off” and “hey we’re pretty sure we know how to actually order the pages now”
But don’t let that stop you from feeling some sense of superiority
TheRecognized | 6 hours ago
Considering we don’t know the potential language it’s almost impossible to tell those kinds of things.
1900grs | 4 hours ago
But differences in handwriting and shapes of characters should be apparent despite not being able to read and understand the characters.
TheRecognized | 3 hours ago
Yeah and that’s been known
TheoremaEgregium | 10 hours ago
God, for a moment I was scared this might be about those TikTok witches that everybody's talking about on YouTube.
But it's Lisa Fagin Davis, she's top-notch and trustworthy.
rushmc1 | 7 hours ago
I don't think I want to know...
timpinen | 2 hours ago
There was some TikTok person who claimed that it was some book about creating life with menstrual blood, and that the only reason why we didn't know earlier is because women didn't look at the book before (ignoring actual female scholarship). She is basically a grifter trying to sell merch
almarcTheSun | 7 hours ago
If this ends up being the case that'd be really cool. I've written it off as just some overanalyzed artistic conlang with illustrations made as someone's art project, but maybe there's something to it.
tillandsia | 7 hours ago
does anyone know if the images of plants are of actual plants?
LastLemmingStanding | 6 hours ago
From what I recall, no. Most if not all of the plants appear to be fantastical.
tillandsia | 6 hours ago
To me that is the most interesting of all - all of these fantastic images, when there are so very many strange plants.
dogboyboy | 10 hours ago
Shouldnt this have been noticed way sooner?
INITMalcanis | 10 hours ago
Everything is obvious after someone thought of it...
dogboyboy | 10 hours ago
I mean, a book that was analyzed this much? “Page 50 has similar drawing to page 100” come one folks.
INITMalcanis | 10 hours ago
Could we get you to take a look at Fermat's Last Theorem?
Barrington-the-Brit | 7 hours ago
I know right? If only they got a handful of redditors from r/history on the case, could’ve had this solved in an afternoon
chess_the_cat | 9 hours ago
He didn’t say it should be obvious but that it should have been noticed way sooner. It should have. This book has been analyzed back and forth. It’d be like saying oh no one noticed the page numbers aren’t in order after 1000 students were told to tell us everything they could about the book.
Emotional-Top-8284 | 7 hours ago
If there were page numbers, it would be obvious, but there aren’t
Ziggy_has_my_ticket | 9 hours ago
Hey, look at Dunning and Kruger over here.
TheRecognized | 6 hours ago
Shouldn’t “wash hands, less infections” have been noticed way sooner?
slanderpanther | 6 hours ago
>“Our hypothesis fixes a lot of problems with the structure of the manuscripts in a really elegant way”, said Davis, an expert on medieval handwriting.
Dear The Guardian, Instead of posing article titles as a question or a mystery that's still unsolved, please just state what the result is. It's a thesis. You state exactly what the thing is up front. THEN you give supporting statements and evidence. Then you restate the conclusion based on the evidence. Don't try to coax me in. Hit me over the head with it. Get to the point. It's not history mystery hour. It's one small finding after another.
ennuiinmotion | 11 hours ago
If that's true then there's a new mystery: why would someone bind it incorrectly?
GoblinRightsNow | 10 hours ago
That’s only a mystery because you didn’t read the article
ennuiinmotion | 10 hours ago
The article doesn't say anything about why it was put together wrong. Unless I missed a quick line or something.
underground_avenue | 10 hours ago
If you look at the graphic, it looks a lot like a simple and very common way to join folded papers. Considering we still have no clue what is going on there, it's not unlikely that neither did whoever bound it in the first place.
Alas this is all speculation, because there iis simply no hard data to either support or rule out anything.
AceOfGargoyes17 | 10 hours ago
It's not a common way to bind medieval manuscripts at all: most are bound in quires and then the quires are bound together. As the article notes, the only other manuscripts bound as singulions are North African Qurans.
underground_avenue | 9 hours ago
I think we both mean the same thing, though I might have phrased it better.
The way they were (incorrectly) joined is the common/simple one.
It's quite plausible some unknown book binder didn't know of singulions (and the cryptic nature of the scripts wouldn't be much help here). So he decided to bind them the way he bound everything else.
Justwaspassingby | 3 hours ago
When Chretien de Troyes died they went through his papers and put together his last work, the Perceval, that he had left unfinished.
But they didn’t realize those papers actually held two different works: the Perceval and the Gawain. It seems obvious in hindsight - in the mixed story there are two Easter celebrations during a single year, for example - but they made the mistake nonetheless. A similar mistake could have been made with the Voynich Manuscript.
cupcakeheavy | 9 hours ago
yes that is why they are confounded, otherwise it would have made sense immediately.