World's most mysterious book may be a hoax: The Voynich manuscript may be elegant gibberish.

[R. A. Hettinga]

<http://www.nature.com/nsu/031215/031215-5.html>
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World's most mysterious book may be a hoax
The Voynich manuscript may be elegant gibberish.
17 December 2003

JOHN WHITFIELD
Using a Cardan grille the manuscript could have been written in three months.

© G. Rugg



A strange sixteenth-century book may be cunningly crafted nonsense, says a
computer scientist. Gordon Rugg has used the techniques of Elizabethan
espionage to recreate the Voynich manuscript, which has stumped
code-breakers and linguists for nearly a century1.

"I've shown that a hoax is a feasible explanation," says Rugg, who works at
Keele University, UK. "Now it's up to believers in a code to produce
evidence to support their ideas." He suspects that English adventurer
Edward Kelley produced the Voynich to con Rudolph II, Holy Roman Emperor
and collector of antiquities, out of a fortune in gold.

The explanation is plausible, but not conclusive, say Voynich scholars.
"It's an excellent piece of work," says Philip Neal, a former medievalist
based in London. "I haven't given up hope that the manuscript contains
meaning, but this makes it less likely."

Page turner

The Voynich manuscript is often described as the world's most mysterious
book. It is hand-written in a unique alphabet, about 250 pages long, and
contains pictures of unrecognizable flowers, naked nymphs and astrological
symbols.

The manuscript first appeared in the late 1500s, when Rudolph II bought it
in Prague from an unknown seller for 600 ducats - about 3.5 kilograms of
gold, worth more than US$50,000 today. The book passed from Rudolph to
noblemen and scholars, before disappearing in the late 1600s.

It surfaced again around 1912, when US book dealer Wilfrid Voynich bought
it. The manuscript was donated to Yale University after Voynich's death.

No one has worked out whether Voynichese is a code, an idiosyncratic
translation of a known tongue, or gibberish. The text contains some
features that are not seen in any language. The most common words are often
repeated two or three times, for example - the equivalent of English using
'and and and' - giving weight to the hoax theory.

On the other hand, some aspects, such as the pattern of word lengths and
the ways in which characters and syllables occur with each other, are
similar to real languages. "Many people have believed that it is too
complicated to be a hoax - that it would have taken some mad alchemist
years to get such regularity," says Rugg.

Table setting

But this complexity could have been produced easily, Rugg demonstrates,
with an encryption device invented around 1550 called a Cardan grille. This
is a table of characters. Moving a piece of card with holes cut in it over
the table makes words. Gaps in the table ensure different-length words.

Using such grilles on table of Voynichese syllables, Rugg has produced a
language with many, although not all, of the manuscript's features. About
three months' work would have been enough to produce the entire book, he
says.

"It's an interesting angle, but it's too early to say whether it's
correct," says Nick Pelling, a computer programmer based in Surbiton, UK,
who also studies cryptography and the Voynich.

To prove that the manuscript is a hoax, one would need to produce entire
sections using this technique, says Pelling. Tweaking the grilles and
tables should make this possible, reckons Rugg.

Code book

It seems that the Voynich resists deciphering attempts because its author
knew enough about codes to make the text plausible yet hard to crack.

The book appears to contain cross-referencing, just the kind of thing that
cryptographers look for. The characters of Voynichese are also ambiguously
written, so it is hard to work out how large the alphabet is, and drawing
naked figures makes it impossible to date the text by styles of dress.

I haven't given up hope that the manuscript contains meaning

Philip Neal, medievalist



The chief suspect for producing the book is known to have used Cardan
grilles. As well as a cryptographer and inventor of languages, Edward
Kelley was a forger, mystic, alchemist, mercenary and wife-swapper. He
travelled to Prague to meet with Rudolph in 1584, and may have sold him the
manuscript then. Kelley was lost to history after escaping from prison at
the end of the sixteenth century.

"If it's a hoax Kelley is the obvious candidate," says Neal. But he adds
that Rudolph bought many alchemical texts that are far cruder forgeries
than the Voynich manuscript. "Rudolph was easily fooled. If the Voynich was
a hoax by Kelley, it looks a bit like overkill," Neal says.
References

	 1.  	Rugg, G. An elegant hoax? A possible solution to the Voynich
manuscript. Cryptologia, (in the press).|Homepage|




-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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