Calling all Code Crackers – Can You Decipher The Voynich Manuscript

If you don’t already know, the Voynich Manuscript is a handwritten tome that has been flummoxing literary experts and code breakers for decades. The book was originally thought to have been written by the English friar and philosopher Roger Bacon in the 13th Century but carbon dating methods have ruled this theory out dating the manuscript to the early 15th century.

Untitled, the manuscript has been named after Wilfrid Voynich the American-Polish rare books dealer who acquired it in 1912 from monks in Italy and now avid code crackers have the opportunity to own a copy for themselves

Filled with a strange flowing script that experts believe is based on Roman lettering and covered with illustrations of unknown plants, nude women wading through some form of liquid and myriad astral drawings the Voynich Manuscript is currently housed at the Beinecke Library at Yale and it was the constant bombardment of requests by people wanting to attempt to discover the book’s secrets that finally convinced them to allow a small print run.

According to specialist publishers Gil de Siloe of Burgos it took a decade of discussion to convince the library to allow them access to the manuscript in order to produce 898 exact replicas of the Voynich, right down to the tiny splits, imperfections and tears in the pages. “It’s a book that has such an aura of mystery that when you see it for the first time… it fills you with an emotion that is very hard to describe,”  the director of Siloe Juan Jose Garcia told Agence France-Press.

If you want your own copy, you are going to have to be quick, and prepared to pay. If they are not already all reserved or sold each copy is expected to sell for around £6,000-6,900 ($7,911-9,098).

I think I’ll be waiting until a copy becomes available at my local library.