Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Wednesday Weird

It's time for the second edition of Wednesday Weird!

Today we're moving away from crazy animal stuff and onto books.
What books you ask? Why, the Voynitch Manuscript.

The Voynitch Manuscript is an ancient book that no one has ever been able to understand or decipher.
It's an actual book, with consistent script, organization and detailed illustrations, but no code-breaker, cryptographer or linguist has ever been able to figure it out. And boy have they tried.
It appears to be an actual language, just one no one has ever seen before.



Throw in the mix that fact that no one can even figure out who wrote it, or really when, and you got some sort of crazy MS on your hands.

Most of the manuscript seems to deal with herbs and plants, but none of the pictures match any known plant or herb species.





So there you have it! You think your rough drafts are bad? At least it hasn't become some sort of mysterious cryptological mystery.

.

18 comments:

Maria Zannini said...

Tolkein created several entire Elven languages. Kind of looks to me this guy did too. Now that's dedication!

Hart Johnson said...

Oh, cool! I'd LOVE to leave behind something that people puzzled and pondered over, not quite able to decipher it. Maybe it is alien...

Kimberlee Turley said...

I'd laugh so hard if it turns out that the book is just a made up story by some monarch's nephew.

JoLynne Lyon said...

Maybe an alien wrote it. Somebody should write a book about that...

vic caswell said...

oh WOW!!!
this is awesome!
so many mysteries!!!

Matthew MacNish said...

It's got to be alien. Or Atlantean.

Patti said...

I like Matthew's suggestion. Alien for sure.

DL Hammons said...

I can see a book being written about that book! Very cool!! :)

Austin Gorton said...

It's an actual book, with consistent script, organization and detailed illustrations

I recently read an article on Cracked.com about the consequences of the e-book revolution no one thinks about (like not having books to hide a gun in or prop up a couch).

The absence of cryptic and abstract texts, like the Necronomicon, as plot devices in movies and TV shows was one, and this post made me think of that.

Shelley Sly said...

Yes, I've heard of this! I'm one of those people who doesn't like unanswered scientific/historical questions (seriously, I Google everything) so I am dying to know what this manuscript is!

Michael Offutt, Phantom Reader said...

Hmmm...whatever it does say will have as much truth in it as say...the Bible...I'd imagine. Course I say that about all fiction.

Ninja Girl said...

This is so cool!! That right there is the stuff that great plots are made out of. Now, they just need to find the Chosen One (the only person who can decipher the language), and it may tell us some incredibly secret way to save the world :) Anyway, this really does sound like the beginning to some great story. Hope you're having a good one Falen!
Ninja Girl

Nate Wilson said...

Considering it was apparently written about the time of the first printing press, I suspect the Voynitch manuscript is nothing more than the crazed Tolkeinesque ramblings of a rejected fantasy novelist. Sure, he would have been the first fantasy novelist, but you see, Gutenberg had standards to uphold.

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

Imagine if one of our rough drafts was discovered thousands of years later? Hey, the creator of that book won't ever know it, but he achieved everlasting fame.

Unknown said...

Cool blog you got here, Sarah!

Jamie Gibbs said...

I remember seeing this on a documentary a little while back. I think it was history's first attempt at trolling.

Sarah Tokeley said...

It's a shopping list :-)

Lola Sharp said...

I saw a documentary on this. You'd think we'd be able to crack the language code with all the computers.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...