[extropy-chat] FWD (forteana) Secret of historic code: it's gibberish [Voynich manuscript]

[Terry W. Colvin]

Barbara Babbles;
Hee hee ;-)

Very old "news", by a couple of years, and rejected outside of Keele
University by all Voynich scholars, including myself.

Gordon's contention is that because he can use his technique to produce
Voynich-like pages, therefore that technique was used to make the Voynich.
Forteans; spot the logical flaw here.

Besides that, Kelly and Dee scholars universally reject the idea that either
Kelly or Dee produced the Voynich. They were chucked out on their ears from
their previous patron before visiting Rudolf, and once there, Kelly and Dee
had one audience at which they demonstrated "talking with angels" and to
which Rudolf resonded "don't call us, we'll call you",. Thay made several
attempts to gain another audience but never succeded, and they left Prauge
in poverty.

The fact the Voynich has defied cryptographers is not surprising. If
something is written in a singular writing system, the "logic" of which is
unknown, then no amount of cryptographic analyisis will ever "break" it -
there are many documents of this nature - the Voynich is only the best
known. The diaries of John Hampton for example are almost certainly in
english, but Hampton devised a personal writing system to record them (not a
code or cypher) and so far no one, including top US military code breakers,
has managed to "solve" their mystery either.

I've included the full text of the article.  because I just hate and loathe
URL only posts: IMO they're rude and inconsiderate.

Barbara

< http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1130727,00.html >

Secret of historic code: it's gibberish
Mystery of manuscript that foxed scholars for centuries is solved

Robin McKie, science editor
Sunday January 25, 2004
The Observer

It is covered with drawings of fantastic plants, strange symbols and naked
women.

Its language is unknown and unreadable, though some believe it bears a
message from extraterrestrials. Others say it carries knowledge of a
civilisation that is thousands of years old.

But now a British academic believes he has uncovered the secret of the
Voynich manuscript, an Elizabethan volume of more than 200 pages that is
filled with weird figures, symbols and writing that has defied the efforts
of the twentieth century's best codebreakers and most distinguished medieval
scholars.

According to computer expert Gordon Rugg of Keele University, the manuscript
represents one of the strangest acts of encryption ever undertaken, one that
made its creator, Edward Kelley, an Elizabethan entrepreneur, a fortune
before his handiwork was lost to the world for more than 300 years.

'It was bought by Emperor Rudolph II of Bohemia for 600 ducats, an absolute
fortune for that period,' said Rugg, whose paper on the manuscript is
published in the journal Cryptologia. 'People clearly thought it contained
arcane secrets and great knowledge and were prepared to pay to learn them.'

Unfortunately, after only a few years in Rudolph's care, the manuscript was
lost and was not seen again until it surfaced in Frascati, Italy, in 1912
when it was bought by a Russian antiquarian called Wilfred Voynich.

The manuscript - written on vellum in neat and clear handwriting,
illustrated with watercolours - is now a prize exhibit at Yale University.

However, those who have attempted to unravel its meaning have had a singular
lack of success even though they include some of the world's greatest
codebreakers such as John Tiltman, head of Britain's codebreakers at
Bletchley Park, and William Friedman, whose team broke the Japanese Purple
cipher during the Second World War.

The fact that an Elizabethan document could be written in a code that has
defied a century's attention by the world's greatest code-breakers is the
most astonishing aspect of this amazing document.

Some of its strange characters look like Roman numbers and Latin letters.
Others are unlike any symbol seen before. The language seems to have
structure, however, and forms a pattern, albeit one unlike any other
language on earth.

Apart from those who believe it is the handiwork of aliens or survivors of
great lost civilisations, there are cryptologists who claim the Voynich
manuscript is written in early Ukrainian script while others say it is a
form of Chinese.

Despite these claims no-one has been able to translate the document. Nor
have claims that the script is a simple hoax been sustained.

'The manuscript exhibits so much linguistic structure that a hoax appears to
require almost as much sophistication as an unbreakable code,' says Rugg in
his paper.

But now the computer expert and his team believe they have found the secret
of the Voynich manuscript.

They have shown that its various word, which appear regularly throughout the
script, could have been created using table and grille techniques. The
different syllables that make up words are written in columns, and a
grille - a piece of cardboard with three squares cut out in a diagonal
pattern - is slid along the columns.

The three syllables exposed form a word. The grille is pushed along to
expose three new syllables, and a new word is exposed.

Rugg's conclusion is that Voynichese - the language of the Voynich
manuscript - is utter gibberish, put together as random assemblies of
different syllables.

'People thought the manuscript had great meaning - some form of alchemy,
perhaps,' said Rugg.

'In fact, it was created by Kelley as a deception to make him money. He
succeeded. The Voynich manuscript was the Elizabethan equivalent of the
Hitler diaries.'


-- 
"Only a zit on the wart on the heinie of progress." Copyright 1992, Frank Rice


Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1 at mindspring.com >
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