{"id":90,"date":"2025-04-27T23:48:38","date_gmt":"2025-04-28T06:48:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ac.nau.edu\/artcrime\/?p=90"},"modified":"2025-05-03T09:07:01","modified_gmt":"2025-05-03T16:07:01","slug":"the-voynich-manuscript-has-not-been-solved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ac.nau.edu\/artcrime\/2025\/04\/27\/the-voynich-manuscript-has-not-been-solved\/","title":{"rendered":"The Voynich Manuscript has Not Been Solved"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Created by Aiden Lucier
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Signal strength: Strong\n\nWould you like to connect to The Onion Router network?<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
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Tor Browser routes your traffic over the Tor network, run by thousands of volunteers all over the world. Establishing a secure connection . . .\n\nConnection established.<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
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You’ve got mail!<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
AOL “You’ve got mail!” sound effect. A male voice saying “You’ve got mail!”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Hey [NAME REDACTED],

Glad you got into the email I set up for you. It\u2019s really been nice catching up again\u2013I missed seeing you around after graduation. 

So, to cut to the chase. I\u2019ve got a plan that, if we play our cards right, could pay off all of our debt in just a couple years\u2013all I need is someone with the brains and skill to help me pull it off, both of which you have. You interested?<\/p>\n<\/div>
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Maybe?<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
\"Voynich<\/figure>
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Knew I\u2019d get you there. You\u2019ve heard of the Voynich Manuscript, right? Weird-ass little book from the 1400s that nobody can read. Nobody knows who made it, where it comes from, what it says, anything. But people really<\/em> want to know what it means–the thing’s been a conspiracy magnet for decades.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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What if we told<\/em> everyone what it means? But not like everyone else has–everyone else posturing and claiming to read it is just working off of the book itself. That’s a dead end, everyone who reads it like that is full of crap. What if we brought in something from the outside?<\/p>\n<\/div>
\"A<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
[REDACTED], I really think we could do something special here. Let’s say we “discover” some sort of lost page. If we made a decoder for the whole book, we could make it say whatever we want! We could tell people it says the date of the rapture for all I care, just something that gets people panicking and wanting to know more, and throwing money at us so they can<\/em> know more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is where you come in. I don\u2019t have that fine arts hand\u2013but you do. You\u2019ve spent enough time staring at manuscripts to know your way around them better than anyone else I know. I’ll handle everything else–the materials, the marketing, the face. I just need you to make the thing and then we’ll be golden!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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So, what exactly is<\/em> your plan?<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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I’m so glad you asked. I say we procure some parchment, scrape off the old text, and replace it with our own. Then I, as my charming self, will go make a stink about it online and provide some \u201ctranslated\u201d pages as proof. Once we get enough attention, we say we need money to keep translating it, and boom. Instant income. We’ll open a Patreon or something.<\/p>\n<\/div>
\"An<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
How are we even going to get enough attention for that?<\/summary>\n
You ever heard of Joe Rogan? There’s enough shady guys online with enough reach to get us to the right circles. The ones we gotta target are the conspiracy nuts–if we can convince them they’re in on something secret,<\/em> something world-changing,<\/em> something they<\/em> don’t want them to know, they’ll sell their firstborns for us.<\/p>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n
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I’d rather they not do that, actually.<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Relax, it’s an expression. They won’t really do that. Hopefully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Folio 78V.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Okay, what makes you think that I can do this? Why me?<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n
If we’re gonna go to the trouble of making this, why not just sell it?<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Come on, man, you’re really discounting yourself here. I don’t just think you can do this, I know<\/em> you can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First off, you’ve got how many years of fine art classes under your belt?<\/summary>\n
I remember your calligraphy work, I saw plenty of it up on our walls in college. You can write.<\/em> Surely a quill can’t be too different from a dip pen. You just have to study the handwriting, just like how you forged Dr. Davis’ signature on that one application. Speaking of, that brings me to my next point… <\/p>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n
People have been studying this writing for decades.<\/summary>\n
They’ve got it down to a science at this point. Some researcher even went through and broke down all the different people that must have worked on it–I’ve already picked out which one I want you to copy. If you just pay attention to the pages with that writing, you’re golden! At some point it’s all nonsense anyway.<\/p>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n
I will take care of everything else.<\/summary>\n
I mean it. Everything<\/em>. I’ll get us the parchment, I’ll clean it off, I’ll tell you exactly what to write–hell, I’ll even make the inks! All I need from you is the artistic touch, and you could do that with your eyes closed. Listen, I believe in you just as much as I believe in myself, and I know that between the two of us we’re gonna make it big.<\/p>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n
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If we’re gonna go to the trouble of making this, why not just sell it?<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Okay, I get it now.<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
If we’re gonna go to the trouble of making this, why not just sell it?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’ve got a few reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think it\u2019s too risky, and even if we did manage to sell it, I don\u2019t think we\u2019d make much. This is a book that\u2019s known <\/em>for how hard it was to sell. The Voyniches themselves tried to do so for decades\u2013the last time it did<\/em> sell, it was because the buyer was a family friend who wanted to sell it for more. 

If you price it how it\u2019s worth, you\u2019re never going to find a buyer, because it\u2019s not an investment piece. It\u2019s a very niche interest that takes a very niche person, and I don\u2019t want to wait around for the rest of my life to find that person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then<\/em> there\u2019s the fact that just about any one person or institution with Voynich money would also have the money to get it tested.<\/em> We can match the ink materials and parchment date all we want, which I am doing, but if someone comes along wanting to look at the radiation levels in the inks, we\u2019re screwed. The best way to keep this from happening is to control how and when it enters other peoples\u2019 hands. If we want that control, we have to keep it. 

Plus, I can’t lie, I like the attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Okay, what makes you think that I can do this? Why me?<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Okay, I get it now.<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Glad to hear it. So. What do you think? Are you in?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Yes.<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n
No.<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Glad to hear it. So. What do you think? Are you in?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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No.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oh. Darn. I really thought we had something there. Well–you win some, you lose some. Hit me up when you’re ready to do the biggest project of your life, yeah?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Return to beginning<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Return to final choice<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Credits<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Glad to hear it. So. What do you think? Are you in?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Yes.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
That’s what I like to hear! [REDACTED], you are not<\/em> going to regret this, trust me.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Return to beginning<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Return to final choice<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Credits<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Website experience made by Aiden Lucier. Thank you for reading!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Works Cited<\/span>

Website Assets<\/span>
AOL \"You've got mail!\" sound effect retrieved from https:\/\/orangefreesounds.com\/youve-got-mail-sound\/<\/a>.
\"How to Forge a Manuscript\" infographic assembled with assets from Canva.com under Canva for Education plan.
Voynich images 1 and 4 retrieved from https:\/\/collections.library.yale.edu\/catalog\/2002046<\/a>.
Voynich images 2 and 3 retrieved from https:\/\/www.voynich.nu\/descr.html<\/a>.
The Onion Router\/Tor is a registered copyright of The Tor Project used under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.


Research Assets<\/span>

David L. Cooper. \u201cTranslation, Pseudotranslation, and the Manuscripts.\u201d The Czech Manuscripts\u202f: Forgery, Translation, and National Myth. Northern Illinois University 
Press, 2023. EBSCOhost, research.ebsco.com\/linkprocessor\/plink?id=ae351f56-911c-3915-b868-3694ce3736c3.

Davis, L.F. (2020). How Many Glyphs and How Many Scribes? Digital Paleography and the Voynich Manuscript. Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies 5(1), 164-180. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1353\/mns.2020.0011

D'Imperio, M. E. (1978). The Voynich Manuscript: An Elegant Enigma. National Security Agency. https:\/\/permanent.fdlp.gov\/gpo58694\/voynich_manuscript.pdf

Douglas, K. M., Sutton, R. M., & Cichocka, A. (2017). The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26(6), 538-542. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/0963721417718261.

Foley, Jillian. \u201cThe Strange Quest to Crack the Voynich Code.\u201d Undark Magazine, 13 Feb. 2020, undark.org\/2020\/02\/12\/decoding-bizarre-voynich-manuscript\/. 

\u201cManuscript Forgeries.\u201d \u201cThings Aren\u2019t What They Seem: Forgeries and Deceptions from the UD Collections.\u201d University of Delaware, University of Delaware Special Collections and Museums, 28 Aug. 2018, exhibitions.lib.udel.edu\/things-arent-what-they-seem\/home\/manuscript-forgeries\/.

Robins-Early, Nick. \u201cDisinformation for Profit: Scammers Cash in on Conspiracy Theories.\u201d The Guardian, 21 Feb. 2022, www.theguardian.com\/media\/2022\/feb\/20\/facebook-disinformation-ottawa-social-media.

Sara Charles. \"Making Iron Gall Ink.\" Schoenberg Institute for manuscript Studies, 27 September 2018, https:\/\/schoenberginstitute.org\/2018\/09\/27\/making-iron-gall-ink\/.
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Return to beginning<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Return to final choice<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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