The Voynich Manuscript is one of the most mysterious manuscripts ever found. It was written in the 15th century in a book-like way, but it was written in an unknown script. In addition to the letters, it also has what seem to be doodles of people, plants, animals, astrological symbols, and more.

If you would like to see the manuscript in its entirety, it is available on Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. If you find that you can read it, you’ll instantly be very famous because experts have been trying to figure it out for years with very little luck.

Some people believe it is written in a currently unknown language. Others say it is just gibberish that has no meaning at all. Still others say it was written using a cipher that scrambles text using a specific algorithm. As of now, nobody knows for sure which of these is true, or if it is something else entirely.

Michael Greschko really started digging into this mystery during the COVID lockdowns as a way to kill time. He has since published a study on the manuscript where he argues that it likely was written by a cipher. This study was published in the journal Cryptologia. He commented on his work, saying:

“I would sometimes sit and flip through a facsimile copy of the Voynich Manuscript, just to soak in that wonder and mystery. Somehow, that led me to start messing around in Microsoft Excel to come up with a cipher that could mimic ‘Voynichese,’ the peculiar text of the Voynich Manuscript. The goal was never to publish a paper; it was simply to give myself a satisfying, and distracting, mathematical puzzle.”

Through this process, he came up with whe he named the Naibbe cipher, which is an interesting algorithm that can take a Latin or Italian text and strip it down to a string of letters that is unbroken. From there, it scrambles the rhythm through a process where it randomly replaces it in a mix of one and two letter chunks.

This complex process can be used to create text that is very similar to what is seen in the Voynich Manuscript. While this does not confirm that it was written using a similar system, it at the least confirms that this is a possibility. He goes on to say:

“It’s hard to even speculate on the nature of the Voynich Manuscript because – to my endless fascination and frustration – it holds up a mirror to whatever idea you have for it. If you think it’s gibberish, there’s plenty of evidence you can point to. Ditto if you think it’s an encoded message or even a language all its own. The inherent ambiguity of the Voynich Manuscript is what makes it so mysterious – and so interesting.”

Greschko will not be the last person to dive into the mystery of the Voynich Manuscript, but his study has offered new insights into the possibilities of what it actually is. Perhaps, this will give future sleuths the launching point they need to finally find an answer.

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