‘Beinecke Library’ category posts - « Cipher Mysteries »


The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library is part of Yale University in New Haven, CT. Perhaps the most (in)famous rare book in its collection is Beinecke MS 408 – somewhat better known as The Voynich Manuscript (”the VMs”), one of those as-yet-undeciphered manuscripts this blog is so foolishly passionate about.
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Having said all that, if you just pitch up at the Beinecke expecting to be able to see the VMs for yourself, you’ll probably be somewhat disappointed when the curators turn you away. Contact them first, and tell them exactly why a first-class academic like you needs to examine the VMs in person (and why the eerily beautiful hi-res scans on their website aren’t good enough for your needs), and they might just change their minds…


23 posts in 3 Pages. ...

The balneological Panteo…

Posted by nickpelling on Feb 12th, 2010 - 14 comments.
A nice email arrived from Paul Ferguson, pinging me about Giovanni Antonio Panteo/Pantheo (i.e. not the Giovanni Agostino Panteo who wrote the Voarchadumia as mentioned here before) and his book on baths & spas that is listed in the STC as Annotationes ex trium dierum confabulationibus (printed in Venice 1505).  According to The Story of Verona ...
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More APOD spin-off comments…

Posted by nickpelling on Feb 4th, 2010 - 20 comments.
The APOD third-time-lucky Voynich page has (just as you'd expect) been reblogged and retweeted near-endlessly, even on the What Does The Prayer Really Say blog, which describes itself as "Slavishly accurate liturgical translations & frank commentary on Catholic issues - by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf", and has a Catholic priest smiley in the header:  o{]:¬)  Quality-wise, I have to admit that this tramples ...
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Happy New Year, and some predictions for 2010…

Posted by nickpelling on Dec 29th, 2009 - 10 comments.
Once again, it's time to roll out and dust off the Cipher Mysteries crystal skull crystal ball (no, I didn't buy it on eBay, nor did I nick it from the British Museum) to peer dimly ahead to 2010. What will it bring us all? Of course, 2009's big news was the radiocarbon dating of four slivers of the Voynich Manuscript's ...
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Voynich Manuscript – the state of play…

Posted by nickpelling on Dec 4th, 2009 - 31 comments.
For decades, Voynich Manuscript research has languished in an all-too-familiar ocean of maybes, all of them swelling and fading with the tides of fashion. But now, thanks to the cooperation between the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and the documentary makers at Austrian pro omnia films gmbh, we have for the very first time a basic forensic framework for what ...
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Micky Bet Voynich piece, now in English (sort of)…

Posted by nickpelling on Nov 20th, 2009 - 3 comments.
Much as I enjoyed watching Micky Bet covering the Voynich Manuscript, I couldn't help but wonder how much better it would be had it had a slightly funkier script. So (courtesy of the kind people at Overstream) I added my own captions. Enjoy! :-) (If you can't see this in your browser or email client, here's a ...
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Every Voynich Book Ever Written (Condensed)…

Posted by nickpelling on Nov 14th, 2009 - 12 comments.
As my plane reached New Haven in Chapter One, I began to realize that this "Voynich Manuscript" mystery was going to be a tough nut to crack. And when the first of my idealistic (but fruit-loop) cryptographic allies got ritualistically murdered by the end of Chapter Two, it was clear that the stakes were higher than an NBA star's dandruff. Yes, ...
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The Beinecke Library’s Voynich Manuscript page…

Posted by nickpelling on Oct 6th, 2009 - 12 comments.
Given that the Voynich Manuscript is owned by the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, you'd perhaps expect its online description of the VMs to be sober, accurate and helpful - a useful antidote to the speculation-filled Wikipedia VMs page. Unfortunately, it isn't. As a technical writing exercise, I thought I'd dismantle its description to give a more accurate picture of ...
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Voynich Summer Camp, transcript of session #1…

Posted by nickpelling on Sep 11th, 2009 - 1 comment.
For the recent Hungarian Voynich summer camp, I offered to do a couple of IM sessions over Skype, both of which seemed to go down very well. I thought many Cipher Mysteries readers might enjoy going over the transcript, so here it is (lightly edited for house style, as usual, and with after-the-event section dividers to make it not quite so unwieldy). ...
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Voynich challenges, updated…

Posted by nickpelling on Jun 30th, 2009 - 12 comments.
Every few years, I get around to posting a list of Voynich challenges - things about the Voynich Manuscript that we would like to know or to find out. Looking back at my 2001 list of Voynich Challenges, I seem to have been flailing around at every codicological nuance going: yes, there are hundreds of interesting angles to consider - ...
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The Voynich Cipher for code-breakers…

Posted by nickpelling on Jun 6th, 2009 - 10 comments.
Though (as was apparent from the rapid social media take-up of yesterday's XKCD webcomic) the Voynich Manuscript is now firmly wedged in the cultural mind, sadly the level of debate on it is still stuck circa 1977 - and if anything, Gordon Rugg's foolish "hoax" claims have helped to keep it there. But it is demonstrably written ...
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