Dear Reader,
I have seen you reading all my posts since the beginning. Thank you so much! You motivated me to keep going. For now, I've taken down my pages and posts so I can publish a translated version without anyone beating me to the finish line. If you give me your name or a pseudonym, I'll be happy to dedicate it to you.
JenJen
I have identified the leaf in the second picture. It is a morning glory. Several researchers have identified some of these plants as morning glories, leading me to ponder whether they are different subspecies or simply in different stages of life.
Caption: The first plant featured in the Voynich Manuscript, downloaded from Yale University's archive.
Twelve of the twenty-sex leaves are yellow. The other fourteen are green. The flower has three discernible petals, with either a brown center or a brown fruit already forming.
No presently known plants have both yellow and green leaves. Perhaps the (about) half yellow leaves are a way of communicating that the plant is half dead, dying of dehydration.
I googled "white flowers with brown fruit", and came up with three options: boysenberry, jostaberry, and callery pear (a.k.a. the Bradford pear).
The jostaberry, I ruled out, because its leaves are tri-lobed, and its flowers are red.
The boysenberry is a closer match, but the edges of its leaves are jagged, and it was first created in 1920's California as a hybrid.
The closest of the three is the callery pear, which is native to China and Vietnam. It has a purported bad taste, but it produces white flowers with white and brown buds.
Welcome! This is Jen-Jen, saying thank you for visiting my blog. It's currently July 2024, and it is H.O.T. outside. Remember to stay hydrated and keep your pets indoors.
A little about me: I live in Virginia, USA. A few years ago, I earned my bachelor's degree in science at Old Dominion University. My major was biology, but my true passion is writing.
I'm not sure where I'll take this blog, but we can start with the Voynich Manuscript.
The Voynich Manuscript is a 240 page book from the 15th century. No one has been able to decode it since its emergence into the public eye in 1912. The mysterious code and strange, alien-like diagrams have sparked the imagination of enthusiasts from California to Turkey. The Yale Library has made the manuscript available for download to the general public, calling on us to join their efforts to decode it.
Carbon dating had placed construction between 1404 and 1438. The pages are vellum, paper made of calfskin. The book is 240 pages long, but some pages are thought to have been lost to time. Its dimensions are 24x16 x5 centimeters, meaning it would not require a pedestal, and could be hidden on the body.
Wilfred Voynich, a Polish bibliopole, acquired the manuscript from the Villa Mondragone, a Jesuit college in Italy, in 1912. Their dealings were discreet, though his attempts at selling it were anything but. He organized several exhibitions, lectured with University of Pennsylvania's professor of philosophy, William Newbold, and urged various scholars to decipher it. Eventually, the script was named after him.
Scholars believe the code was written by at least two people, and the artist was neither. Like most Western scripts, it is meant to be read left to right. They have also established that it is comprised of five sections: botanical, astronomical, balneological (the art of healing through bathing), cosmological, and pharmaceutical. The diagrams, of plants, women bathing, and star charts, were painted in green, yellow, blue, and red dye.
After World War II, code-breakers, including William Friedman, who ran the division, tried their hands at breaking the code, but were unsuccessful. AI analysis suggested that the code is in Hebrew, while a Turk claimed to have decoded thirty percent of it using phonetic Turkish. Still yet, most believe it may be either a dead language or a deeply personal code.
Will we ever know what the Voynich Manuscript says, or even if it's of historical significance? It may be a fantasy novel, or the ravings of the insane. Either way, I'll be spending hours here, exploring its depths. Join me in discovering the secrets within the enigmatic Voynich Manuscript.
