Cipher Mysteries

Last week  (3rd February 2011) saw the US premiere of "The Book That Can't Be Read", the long-awaited National Geographic channel airing of the recent ORF documentary on the Voynich Manuscript. Though it prominently features the benign beardiness of everyone's favourite Voynich expert Rene Zandbergen, for a pleasant change the star of the show is undoubtedly the manuscript itself, with the ...

The recent Austrian Voynich documentary gave a nice clear radiocarbon dating (1404-1438 at 95% confidence) for the vellum, and finished by suggesting (based on the swallow-tail merlons on the nine-rosette castle) a Northern Italian origin for the manuscript. But I have to say that as art history proofs go, that last bit is a little bit, ummm, lame: it's a single detail ...

Further to the recent (and much-commented-upon) post on Godefridus Aloysius Kinner's correspondence, I had a snoop around to see what other early modern correspondence roadkill I could scrape off the infobahn's oh-so-narrow historical lane. The most useful page I found was from the Warburg's Scaliger Research Project (kindly established by Professor Anthony Grafton): this contained a long-ish list ...

Though the Dean at All Saints in the Citadel of Prague was one of the earliest people to mention the Voynich Manuscript (in two letters to his old friend Athanasius Kircher), poor old Godefridus (Gottfried) Aloysius Kinner of Löwenthurn hasn't really featured much in the discussion so far. In Kinner's letter dated 4th January 1666, he mentions to Kircher that their mutual friend Johannes Marcus Marci ...

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 ...

A blog post dated yesterday (26th September 2009) contains a discussion with German fantasy author Susanne Gerdom. Curiously, she says: Die "Voynich-Verschwörung" spielt nun leider in Prag, und das ist inzwischen bei Fantasyautoren beinahe so en vogue wie Vampire und Elben. I was so surprised at what the first half appeared to ...

Jan Hurych has very kindly emailed in a translation of the short piece of text I uncovered relating to the 14th century Prague apothecary Antonio of Florence. With a few minor style tweaks, here it is:- The restoration of gothic painting in the house U Lilie ["By Lilly"] no. 459/1, Malé náměstí ["The Little Square"] 11. During the 14th century, this house ...

I've just received (directly from the author, thanks!) a copy of Vladimír Karpenko's admirably thorough 1990 AMBIX paper on the "cesta spravedlivá" pair of manuscripts. From his analysis, it seems very much as though these are both genuinely 15th century and (just as Rafal predicted) entirely unconnected with the VMs. Oh well! :-( Even so, the secret history of the mysterious "Antonio of Florence" ...

My recently-started hunt for the authentic source of the "Anthony z Florencie" manuscript (which popped up at the Rudolphine court) continues. Only one person claims to be a disciple of Antonio of Florence: the early (if not the very first!) Czech alchemist Jan z Lazu / Johann von Laaz / Ioannis Lasnioro / Laznioro / Lassnior. This claim is in the last two sentences ...

Today's Cipher Mysteries post comes from long-time Voynich researcher Jan Hurych, who very kindly agreed to go through Otakar Zachar's (1899) monograph on the "Cesta spravedliva v alchymii" ("The True Path of Alchemy") manuscript by Antonio of Florence dated 1457. Here's what Jan found... * * * * * * * While Otakar Zachar's name is now generally unknown, he appears ...