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'World's most mysterious manuscript' finally decoded after 500 years

A mid-15th century medieval transcript depicting bizarre “alien-like” pictures has finally been “partially decoded”.

The Voynich Manuscript – which has resisted all attempts to translate it for over a century – has reportedly yielded up its secrets.

Dr Gerard Cheshire, from the University of Bristol, has said in an article published in an academic journal that he used a combination of lateral thinking and ingenuity to unravel the Voynich Manuscript, which features in the Indiana Jones films.

The Voynich Manuscript is a medieval, handwritten and illustrated text, which has been carbon-dated to the mid-15th century. It shows images of strange, “alien plant species”.

It is named after Wilfrid M Voynich, a Polish book dealer and antiquarian, who purchased the manuscript in 1912.

The Voynich Manuscript pictured in 2016.
The Voynich Manuscript, a small unassuming book usually stored in a Yale University vault, has finally been decoded. Source: Getty Images

It is currently housed at Yale University, where it is filed as item MS408 in the Beinecke Library of rare books and manuscripts.

Dr Cheshire described how he successfully deciphered the manuscript’s codex and, at the same time, revealed the only known example of proto-Romance language.

“I experienced a series of ‘eureka’ moments whilst deciphering the code, followed by a sense of disbelief and excitement when I realised the magnitude of the achievement, both in terms of its linguistic importance and the revelations about the origin and content of the manuscript,” he said.

“What it reveals is even more amazing than the myths and fantasies it has generated.

“For example, the manuscript was compiled by Dominican nuns as a source of reference for Maria of Castile, Queen of Aragon, who happens to have been great-aunt to Catherine of Aragon.”

The Voynich Manuscript.
The 'alien' plant images in the manuscript. Source: Getty Images

He added it’s one of the “ most important developments to date in Romance linguistics”.

“The manuscript is written in proto-Romance – ancestral to today’s Romance languages including Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian, Catalan and Galician.”

“The language used was ubiquitous in the Mediterranean during the Medieval period, but it was seldom written in official or important documents because Latin was the language of royalty, church and government.

“As a result, proto-Romance was lost from the record, until now.”

Dr Cheshire also said in linguistic terms what made the manuscript so unusual.

More images from the manuscript. It's considered by scholars to be most interesting and mysterious document ever found. Source: Getty Images
The manuscript is considered by scholars to be most interesting and mysterious document ever found. Source: Getty Images

“It uses an extinct language. Its alphabet is a combination of unfamiliar and more familiar symbols,” he said.

“It includes no dedicated punctuation marks, although some letters have symbol variants to indicate punctuation or phonetic accents.

“All of the letters are in lowercase and there are no double consonants.”

The next step is to use this knowledge to translate the entire manuscript and compile a lexicon, which Dr Cheshire acknowledged will take some time and funding, as it comprises more than 200 pages.

However, some questions have been raised about Dr Cheshire’s work since the publication of his paper in the journal Romance Studies.

The university of Bristol has since published a statement about the study, which it says Dr Cheshire did independently of his work at the institution, saying some questions have been raised about the validity of the research.

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