WSHU Zyats flips through the Voynich Manuscript at the Beinecke Library and Rare Book Room. “Sometimes it seems as though the leaf of one goes with the root of another with the flowers of a third,” Zyats said. The weird thing is, none of the plants are real. Nothing out of the ordinary here – many medieval manuscripts cover herbalism, which was considered a medical art. The first pages show colorful, detailed illustrations of plants, flowers and herbs.
Its pages are made of calfskin – an ordinary parchment for books in the Middle Ages. The book itself is about the size of a small paperback. “There’s a lot of beauty in this book, even though there’s a lot of crazy in it, too,” said Beinecke’s assistant chief conservator Paula Zyats as she flips through the Voynich manuscript. Now the book is about to receive its first official publication. The book has been hidden away in Yale University’s Beinecke Library since the 1960s, even as its notoriety has spread across pop culture. The Voynich Manuscript has baffled historians since it was brought to public attention over 100 years ago by its namesake, rare book collector Wilfrid Voynich. And it’s written entirely in an unknown language that’s stumped the world’s greatest codebreakers. Its origins are unknown, its creator anonymous.
#VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT FULL#
It’s one of the world’s great literary mysteries: a 15th century book full of bizarre illustrations of imaginary plants, astrological signs, surreal figures and landscapes.
0 kommentar(er)
