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Star Charts From A Strange Book From The Past

Posted by timothy on from the perhaps-someone-is-laughing-at-us dept.

serutan writes: "Today there is a really unusual Astronomy Picture of the Day that talks about a centuries-old book, written in an unknown language that is undeciphered to this date. The 265-page book, with its curly script and weird illustrations, reminds me a lot of a bizarre modern book called the Codex Seraphinus, but for real. Any crypto experts care to take a whack at this?" Update: The image was transitioned and the entry can be found Here - cd

6 of 89 comments (clear)

  1. Very interesting by Trane+Francks · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It seems to me that analyzing the script used to write the text would be well suited to a distributed computing architecture. It's great to be doing setiathome, but how about cracking the cipher? I'd love to know what this is all about. It could be very illuminating.

    --
    ...a FreeDOS contributor: http://www.freedos.org/
  2. gotta love... by Morphine007 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...this quote:

    During World War II some of the top military code-breakers in America tried to decipher it, but failed. A professor at the University of Pennsylvania seems to have gone insane trying to figure it out.
    --
    Oh god, that woman is John Romero!
  3. Just how odd is this ? by Raiford · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I don't anything about ancient languages or texts but it would seem pretty odd that something written in the 15th century would be of a complete unknown origin to all the scholars of the world. How many other examples of undecipherable ancient texts are there out there somewhere ??? Anyone have an idea ?

    --
    "player 4 hit player 1 with 0 stroms"
  4. Stupid Alias Quote: "It's a Rambaldi Document!" by jmoo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Actually quite intresting. I did a bit of searching:

    Pictures of The Voynich Manuscript

    Seems a running theroy is this man Roger Bacon may have written the book.

    -You must not change the past! Don't do anything that effects anything. Unless you were suppose too, then for the love of God don't not do it.

    --
    The world isn't run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It's run by little ones and zeroes, little bits of data.
  5. My wife examined the actual Voynich Manuscript by Allen+Varney · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In 1998 my wife visited the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut, specifically to look at the Voynich Manuscript. She only got to see it for 20 minutes or so (the library was about to close), and needless to say she didn't crack the mystery. She did observe that some of the letters look like Arabic, and some of the plant illustrations reminded her of medieval herbals (books about herbs). She speculates that the author intended it as a spellbook to summon female spirits. It was a highly intriguing, frustrating, and very cool experience.

  6. this guy was ahead of his time. by argStyopa · · Score: 3, Interesting

    from: http://www.crystalinks.com/voynich.html

    "Historically, it first appears in 1586 at the court of Rudolph II of Bohemia, who was one of the most eccentric European monarchs of that or any other period. Rudolph collected dwarfs and had a regiment of giants in his army. He was surrounded by astrologers, and he was fascinated by games and codes and music. He was typical of the occult-oriented, Protestant noblemen of this period and epitomized the liberated northern European prince. he was a patron of alchemy and supported the printing of alchemical literature.

    The Rosicrucian conspiracy was being quietly fomented during this same period. To Rudolph's court came an unknown person who sold this manuscript to the king for three hundred gold ducats, which, translated into modern monetary units, is about fourteen thousand dollars. This is an astonishing amount of money to have paid for a manuscript at that time, which indicated that the Emperor must have been highly impressed by it."

    Wow, if this guy had lived 400 years later he'd probably have founded a dot.com, run the stock up to million$, and then vanished.

    Let's see, gullible king with lots of money, known for being eccentric....
    I'm thinking we're wasting our time, and some departed spirit is laughing his ass off that we're trying to decipher something that was no more than an elaborate con.

    --
    -Styopa