Fascinating Life Sciences

"Unraveling the Voynich Codex" reviews the historical, botanical, zoological, and iconographic evidence related to the Voynich Codex, one of the most valuable historic texts of the 16th century. The Voynich Codex is one the most fascinating and bizarre manuscripts in the world. It was discovered in an Italian Catholic college (Villa Madragone) in 1912 by a book dealer Wilfrid Voynich. It was eventually bequeathed to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University. The parchment or vellum has been carbon dated to the early 15th century, but the writing is most likely a palimpsest (a manuscript written on scraped parchment or vellum) and thus newer. The codex, consists of many foldout pages, has been divided by previous researchers into sections known as: Herbal/Botanical/ Pharmacology (consisting of 309 images plants or plant parts); Balenological/Biological; Cosmology and a final Recipe section consisting of text that may be proscriptions or poetry. All the sections contain text. Cryptological analyses by modern computer programs have recently determined that the language is real and not a hoax, as has been suggested by some.

Despite the fact that this codex is largely an herbal, the interpreters of this manuscript with two exceptions, have not been botanists. The two botanists who have published papers in refereed journals (Rev. Hugh O'Neil, 1944 and Arthur O. Tucker, 2013) have observed the presence of only New World plants. Tucker has demonstrated that this is a MesoAmerican codex based on identification of plants, animals, a mineral, language symbols, and heliocentrism. Subsequent analysis by Tucker and Jules Janick have demonstrated connections to colonial Mexican history including illustrations and names of various cities and allusion to the establishment in 1530 of the Celestial City of Jerusalem (Puebla de los Angeles) by the Franciscan friar Toribio of Benvente known as Motolinia (1482-1568). All our research to date indicates that the Voynich is a 16th century codex associated with indigenous Indians of Nueva Espana educated in schools established by the Spanish. This is a breakthrough in Voynich studies. We are convinced that the Voynich codex is a document produced by Aztec descendants that has been unfiltered through Spanish editors. Furthermore, we believe the failure to decipher the manuscript has been hampered by a misrepresentation of its origin in time and place. We have written essays on various parts of the manuscript and we believe these essays can form the basis of a book that would be of interests to Voynich enthusiasts and scholars, historians of Colonial Mexico, linguists, and cryptologists.