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Tonight, a mysterious medieval book
written in a secret language so complex

even the world's best code breakers
can't track it.

No one has been able to translate or
read a single word, a single letter.

Known as the Voynich Manuscript, it's
obsessed everyone from scholars to

conspiracy theorists.

They sincerely believe that this book
has something monumental to share.

Now we'll uncover the top theories
surrounding the origins of this cryptic

Voynich thinks this is some sort of
secret manual for the practice of

The Voynich manuscript is written in
glossolalia, which is the language of

tongues.

Has he pulled off one of the greatest
hoaxes in history? Can modern technology

finally unlock its impenetrable code?

It's the first definitive answer we have
about this book in 400 years.

What is the Voynich Manuscript?

1912.

Just outside Rome, famed Polish
-American rare bookseller Wilfrid

enters a centuries -old Jesuit college.

Voynich operates what is probably the
world's largest rare books business at

time.

He's got this incredible knack for
digging up the most valuable and the

sought -after manuscripts on the planet.
His collection is worth millions.

Voynich hopes his next great find is
here.

The Jesuits need funds to support their
college, so what they decide to do is

they decide to sell some of their most
ancient texts very discreetly.

Voynich negotiates a shrewd deal, as
always, and he adds 30 more books to his

collection. which he will try to sell
for a significant profit back at his

in London.

One book in particular stands out.

As with all of his purchases, Voynich
looks for elaborate

bindings, beautiful books, heavily
illustrated, illuminated manuscripts,

printed books, really luxurious objects.

But among them... his eyes caught by
what he later called an ugly duckling.

This particular manuscript is small.
It's only about 9 1⁄2 by 6 1⁄2 inches,

it's bound in goatskin. It's about 230
pages long, but there is some evidence

that some of the pages are missing.

Also, some pages are foldable sheets of
varying size.

And this book is filled with lines upon
lines of neatly handwritten text and

elaborate drawings. But here's the
thing.

None of it...

makes any sense.

There are a couple hundred detailed
drawings of plant species, none of which

be identified. There are astrological
drawings of constellations that don't

exist. There's a section where nude
pregnant women are engaging in

these baths and rituals with these
seemingly interconnected tubes.

And then there are these strange
hybrids, these plants with human organs.

And some of these plants even sprout
disembodied heads.

Needless to say, it is wild. But it's
also indecipherable.

And as for that lovely handwritten text,
the entire thing is written in a

language that no one has ever seen
before.

There are very clear and obvious words
and letters, but they're totally

unrecognizable. So Voynich...

Assume that this is some type of code.
In addition to experience with codes,

Voynich speaks Polish, Russian, and
English fluently and has a working

of 15 other languages.

He was born to a noble family in the
Russian Empire. He was educated at three

the top universities.

And then he basically becomes an anti
-Tsarist revolutionary.

He's arrested.

He's sent to a Siberian prison. He
escapes the prison. And then he heads to

London, where he continues his
revolutionary activities for a while

friend of his at the British Museum
suggests that he get into the rare book

trade.

Voynich knows everything there is to
know about rare books. He's connected to

all the top literary scholars.

He knows multiple languages.

He knows all about codes and code
breaking from his years as a Russian

revolutionary.

Point is, if anyone is going to be able
to make sense out of this manuscript,

it's going to be Wilfred Voynich.

Voynich spent years trying to decipher
the code, really the rest of his life.

And he reaches out to all of the top
code breakers at the time to help, and

of them can crack it. He sticks with it
because he has a hunch that this might

be the most valuable book he's ever
encountered.

And if he can figure this out, it could
be worth millions.

Based on the materials used to create
the book, the parchment, the style of

Voynich thinks it's going to date to the
13th century.

So while he can't decipher the words,
the images of plants and other sorts of

natural phenomena lead him to conclude
that it's probably some sort of guide to

a field that used to be called natural
philosophy.

And before there were modern scientists,
this is how people described the study

of nature in the physical universe. From
Aristotle to Isaac Newton, all of these

early scientists were actually natural
philosophers.

So because of that date and the contents
of the actual manuscript, Voynich

thinks this is some sort of secret
manual for the practice of alchemy.

Alchemy is this philosophical, part
science, part magic practice that

medieval Europe in the 12th century.

And its practitioners tried to purify
certain materials, so turn lead into

and to cure diseases.

Now, none of this stuff actually worked,
but it was strongly believed in, and it

was written about for centuries.

Alchemists' real objective is perfection
of the soul.

And they'll do this by creating
something called the magnum opus, or

which was the philosopher's stone, a
mythical substance that was said to be

to grant immortality, among other
things.

According to Voynich, there is only one
early alchemist brilliant enough to have

produced this book.

Almost no one in Europe was creating
alchemy textbooks at the time. They were

just translating older works. So Voynich
thinks this is Roger Bacon.

Voyage believes the book is written in
code because he believes that whoever

wrote it needed to keep something
secret.

Roger Bacon, today he's incredibly well
respected.

He's known as one of the early pioneers
of the scientific method.

He was the first person in Europe to
record the formula for gunpowder. But

here's the problem.

He's also a monk and a modest member of
the clergy.

And the church doesn't take too kindly
to some of his more out there alchemy

practices.

In fact, some of Bacon's contemporaries
accuse him of being a wizard.

He has an automated mechanical clockwork
head that he talks to and consults

with. And like all alchemists, he's also
obsessed with forging the philosopher's

stone and granting immortality.

But in the church, only God can grant
eternal life.

So these are some very dangerous,
heretical ideas that Bacon is toying

right under the watchful eye of his
Franciscan superiors. But Bacon's not

entirely a crackpot.

He thinks that there's a way to bring
the church and science together.

Not everyone agrees with him.

He thinks these ideas can complement
each other. They don't have to be

antagonist.

It's very fortunate for Bacon that he
has the protection of a very high

patron and intellectual correspondent,
the Pope. But when Pope

Clement dies in 1268, Roger Bacon's
protection is gone, and within a decade,

he's arrested.

Bacon is eventually allowed to return to
his studies, but he never puts forth

any more of these so -called heretical
texts.

He mostly sticks to theological writing.

Unless, of course, he continued his
alchemy research in secret and wrote it

into a coded book.

So if Voynich is right, and this
manuscript can be definitively

with Roger Bacon, suddenly the
manuscript itself would be worth untold

of money.

First, Voynich must prove.

Bacon truly authored the manuscript.

Even though Voynich can't crack the
code, he does find a letter dated back

1665 that's written by a very important
Czech scientist and doctor named Jan

Marek Marcik.

He says he has a coded book that fits
precisely this description, and he's

giving it to his friend, a renowned
codebreaker, Athanasius Kircher.

Marchi also gives a little bit of
history on the book. He says it was

the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II of
Germany about a hundred years prior,

sometime in the late 1500s, for a large
sum of gold.

The letter mentions Roger Bacon by name
as the potential author in the late

1200s. How did the book go from Bacon to
Emperor Rudolf?

Wilfred Voynich thinks the connection is
Dr.

John Dee.

Dr. Dee was born in 1527.

He's a member of the court of Queen
Elizabeth I, and he's an avid astrologer

an occult scientist who studies cipher.

And from a young age, he has access to a
lot of Roger Bacon manuscripts.

An accomplished cryptologist himself,
Dee tries to decode the manuscript, but

fails.

Eventually, John Dee brings the
manuscript to Prague, where Emperor

buy it from him for 600 ducats, or
roughly $100 ,000 today. So Voynich has

fervent belief that Roger Bacon wrote
this book, but all the evidence is

circumstantial at this point.

If Voynich wants the world to believe
that this is a Bacon original and make a

fortune, he's got to decode this thing
once and for all.

A mysterious manuscript.

Dating back centuries, one with a
seemingly unbreakable cipher.

When collector Wilfred Voynich finds
this book, he spends years trying to

who wrote it and why.

Voynich showcases the book at
exhibitions and lecture tours with the

somebody can figure it out.

And of course, he's getting fame and
publicity all the while and hoping to

a sale.

He's trying to sell it for $100 ,000,
which would be the most anyone had ever

gotten. for an old manuscript ever in
history.

Other top codebreakers are trying to
decipher the book as well. For example,

you've got William Friedman, the man who
was responsible for breaking the

Japanese code purple during World War
II. He's also one of the founders of the

NSA, one of its chief cryptologists.

He spent 30 years trying before
declaring that cracking the manuscript's

was impossible.

Unfortunately, Voynich dies in 1930.

before he can solve the mystery.

When Voynich dies, he leaves the book to
his wife, Ethel, who lives until 1960.

And then after a couple of short -term
owners, the book ends up at the Yale

Library in 1969, where it remains today.

It's an artifact that, to this day,
captures the public's imagination

it's both intriguing and infuriating.

I mean, we can see it. We can touch it.
We know this thing exists. It's not a

figment of anyone's imagination, except
no one knows exactly what it is.

It remains pure mystery. And once we
have the advent of the Internet, that

mystery explodes.

When Yale's Beinecke Rare Book Library
posts scanned pages of the manuscript

online in 2004, the book gains even more
attention.

Suddenly, the Voynich manuscript is
world famous. It's attracting millions

people who want to figure it out. Every
year brings multiple major news stories

about potential breakthroughs. One of
the biggest breakthroughs occurs in 2009

at the University of Arizona.

Researchers realized that while the
language of the book might be impossible

understand, the book's physical
materials aren't. They can be analyzed.

The 234 pages of the book are made up of
calfskin parchment, and because they

are organic in nature, they can be
radiocarbon dated.

This is obviously a big deal. This is a
chance to finally get some answers that

have eluded scholars for generations.

They take samples from several sections
of the book just to be sure.

But the results aren't what anyone
anticipated.

Remember, Wilfred Voynich thought this
was a 13th century text by Roger Bacon.

But the pages date back to the early
15th century, so about 140 years after

Roger Bacon's death.

And just like that, the primary theory
behind this strange book shot down.

But this is still fantastic news. It's
probably the first definitive answer we

have about this book in over 400 years.

So now that the parchment's been dated,

scholars want to keep the momentum
going.

So Voynich's hypothesis...

that this was a 13th century book, led
him to research what possible authors

there could have been in the 13th
century to write an alchemical text.

And that led him to Roger Bacon.

With this new dating of the manuscript,
scholars do the same thing again. They

wonder, in the 1400s, who's known to be
an author, an illustrator?

Who's writing in code?

Who has an interest in science and
alchemy?

And they think, who could have written
the book?

In 2017, one researcher announces she
might know the answer.

Could this book actually have been
written by none other than Leonardo da

Dr. Edith Sherwood is a retired
biomedical scientist.

And these days, she's fascinated by the
Voynich Manuscript. And she's spent

countless hours studying it.

And according to her, there's only one
European author in the 1400s that fits

the bill.

In 2002, she publishes an article
comparing the manuscript to the

other works of Leonardo da Vinci.

So then, all of a sudden...

She has this new evidence of the carbon
dating. So now she really is convinced

she's onto something, and she spends
more time researching the manuscript.

Fifteen years later, she publishes a new
article in much greater detail.

And the evidence she finds is actually
pretty compelling.

Sherwood starts with a detailed
handwriting analysis.

Both the anonymous author of the Voynich
manuscript and Leonardo da Vinci use a

type of writing that's called humanist
minuscule script.

the style that was developed in Italy in
the early 1400s.

It's different than a lot of what was
being written at the time. Most

texts were written in something called
Gothic script or black letter.

And it's a pretty obvious difference
when you look at them side by side. And

a lot of people were writing like this.

But Leonardo da Vinci was.

Not only that, but Leonardo da Vinci and
the author of the Voynich manuscript

have a lot of features that are very
similar.

Neither writes with capital letters.

neither punctuate, there are no line
breaks or paragraph breaks, and also

never connect their letters.

Dr. Sherwood then turns their attention
to the manuscript's drawings.

So we all know that Leonardo da Vinci
was, he's an okay artist, to put it

mildly. No, obviously, he's great. All
you have to do is look at his works like

the Mona Lisa, which show off his
otherworldly talent. But in his

they're just full of these crude
drawings and studies.

Of course, no one would suggest that the
illustrations in the Voynich manuscript

rise to the level of da Vinci's greatest
works or mature works. Nevertheless,

there are some similarities.

The one thing that was very hard to do
in the 15th century when drawing and

writing was to create perfect circles.
Without modern drafting equipment, only

really, really talented artists could
create a perfect circle only using pen

ink. But da Vinci could.

And so could the author of the Voynich
manuscript.

Dr. Sherwood believes one page of
circular drawings provides the best clue

all. There's an astrological chart
representing the sign of Aries with 15

women sitting in birthing tubs.

The women appear to be pregnant, and in
one of the tubs there's a baby, and that

mother no longer appears to be pregnant.

The woman is holding a striped string
with a star on the end.

while the other women are holding plain
strings.

According to Dr. Sherwood, this page is
a birth record.

Aries the ram represents the month of
April, and because of the 15 women, she

believes that this birth took place on
April 15th.

And the woman holding the baby is
positioned roughly at 10 o 'clock. And

what? Leonardo da Vinci was born just
around 10 p .m. on April 15,

1452.

And of course, the final clue is that
the manuscript is written in code. And

Leonardo da Vinci famously wrote his
notebooks in code throughout his adult

life. He typically used a mirror image
code that also sometimes combined or

separated certain words.

Could the Voynich Manuscript be da
Vinci's first coded notebook?

The mystery might be even bigger than
that.

I mean, was Leonardo da Vinci writing in
code to hide some...

great secrets of alchemy that he had
discovered, or medical cures, is the

of history's greatest genius even
greater than we thought?

Until it's deciphered, we just won't
know.

For over a hundred years, people have
speculated on what the Voynich

is and who created it.

After successfully carbon dating the
book parchment to the 15th century,

researchers seek other technology to
help understand it.

Dating the book is a huge breakthrough,
but of course, that still can't help us

determine what it is. We know the
approximate date of its creation, but

really about it.

There's really only one way to fully
understand this book, and that's to

the writing.

to figure out what language this is,
what cipher they use, and start to

translate it.

Unfortunately, it's a code no human has
ever been able to crack.

But could there be another way?

In 2016, some computing scientists at
the University of Alberta in Canada

doing something incredible with the
Voynich manuscript.

They work with artificial intelligence,
and they realize, hey, Maybe our AI

computer can finally decipher this text
where others have failed.

The project is led by Professor Greg
Kondrak.

Their exact field of study is called
natural language processing.

So it combines computer science and
linguistics and artificial intelligence.

And the goal is to improve interactions
between computers and human language.

Basically, their ultimate goal...

is to create a computer that you could
give any document in any language in the

history of mankind.

And that computer would be able to
recognize it and understand and analyze

With the right inputs, the computer
might even be able to decipher a

code in an unidentified language.

It is a challenge, but the computer is
programmed to recognize any and all

patterns and compare them with known
languages.

And it can do this thousands and
thousands of times faster than a human

it's worth a shot.

Contract starts by entering samples of
400 different languages.

The AI goes to work comparing the
Voynich manuscript to other languages.

It looks at individual characters.

It looks at groups of words. It looks at
how often they're repeated and in what

combination. All the little nuances that
could determine...

what language this was written in.

They honestly don't know if this is
going to work because this computer is

designed to read the Voynich Manuscript.
However, they work on it for weeks and

weeks, and after a while, lo and behold,
the computer gives them an answer.

According to the Artificial Intelligence
at the University of Alberta in Canada,

the Voynich Manuscript is in Hebrew.

There had been speculation for quite
some time that the Voynich manuscript

wasn't written in a European language
because had it been written in Italian

Greek or Latin, somebody more than
likely would have figured it out by now.

And the researchers actually went into
this thinking maybe the manuscript was

written in Arabic, but Hebrew presents
an intriguing possibility.

Even if they've discovered the language
of origin, the book may take years to

translate.

The team thinks that not only was it
written in Hebrew, it was written as an

alphagram. An alphagram is a way of
coding language in which you present the

letters of a word in alphabetical order.

So, for instance, the alphagram of the
word cat would be A -C -T.

The problem, of course, is that A -C -T
also is the alphagram for the word act.

So you can see the challenges here.

Compounding those challenges is the fact
that Hebrew isn't typically written

with vowels.

So researchers are left with the
painstaking task of going word by word,

swapping in the Hebrew letters, and then
rearranging those letters for it to

make some sort of sense.

Slowly, the team makes progress.

Once you think you've figured out a
word, you move on to the next word.

But if those two words don't make sense
together, then you have to go back to

the first word and try again.

So far, they think they've come up with
three grammatical phrases.

She made recommendations to the priest,
man of the house, and me and people.

Unfortunately, this AI was never
designed to bend its existence studying

mysteries of the Voynich Manuscript.

So the University of Alberta team only
brings its research so far.

All they know is they think the book was
written in Hebrew.

But we still don't know what it says.

Then in 2017, another researcher picks
up where the Canadians left off.

There's a German Egyptologist named
Rainer Hannig, and he also thinks the

is in Hebrew.

And he spent three years studying it,
and he makes some progress in

it. And he publishes his findings in
2020.

Hannig manages to translate a number of
paragraphs on multiple pages.

And according to his finding, it looks
like the Voynich Manuscript might be a

book of prophecy.

On one particular page, according to

Hannig, it says, Drink carefully an
elixir that delivers the mind. The

allows you to speak prophecy and
counteract false prophets. But do not

about the elixir. Is the Voynich
Manuscript.

A Hebrew manual for predicting the
future? For quite a while now, there

been two separate schools of thought
about the Voynich manuscript.

The first one, which is also the most
popular, is what if it's an encoded

version of a known language?

There are a growing number of people who
think that could be entirely wrong.

For many decades, countless codebreakers
and scholars have tried and failed.

to decipher the mysterious Voynich
Manuscript.

Then in 2009, researchers pose a radical
new question.

What if the book isn't written in code
at all?

Since at least the 1500s, people have
assumed the Voynich Manuscript is

But recently, a new question has been
introduced.

What if the reason no one's been able to
crack the code is because it isn't a

code at all?

What if it's an actual language, but a
language that's not human?

Think about what it takes to create a
code, especially one so complex that it

defies translation for centuries.

First, you have to think about what you
want to write, and then you have to

convert it into code, letter by letter,
word by word.

If you look at the case of another
famous code, the Zodiac Killer, look at

the symbols are arranged.

spaced out and separate from each other.
Because Zodiac had to stop and think

every step of the way, each letter sits
on its own.

But in the Voynich manuscript, it really
looks like the author was writing

continuously. The writing is tightly
formed. It flows evenly from letter to

letter. It's a swift and continuous
movement of the pen.

They didn't have to stop and think about
anything.

So some say...

Even the most ingenious human couldn't
have pulled this off while coming up

an unsolvable code.

If someone is writing in this continuous
style, it's obviously a language they

understood. And that has some theorists
thinking, what if that language is

extraterrestrial?

Did an alien create the Voynich
manuscript?

There are some exciting precedents for
this.

Eric Von Daniken, well known for his
book Chariots of the God, puts this

forward in his book in 1968.

And in that book, Von Daniken asserts
that many of our ancient technologies

created by aliens, such as Stonehenge,
Punta Pucu, all of these other places,

Easter Island, that we did not have the
technology to create, so it needed alien

assistance.

He also cites a bunch of literary
examples.

There's an early world map known as the
Piri Reis map, and von Däniken describes

it as showing the Earth as it would be
seen from space, which, of course, is an

impossible viewpoint in 1513 when the
map was made.

When von Däniken applies the same logic
to the Voynich manuscript, he believes

he's finally unlocked its mysterious
origins.

In his 2009 book, History is Wrong, von
Däniken goes into great detail about

his theory about the Voynich manuscript.

He believes that it was written by an
alien astronaut who was stranded on

in the 1400s and spent the rest of his
life on planet Earth recording his

observations in the Voynich manuscript.

Even though we don't understand the
written language, the illustrations seem

indicate that there was a...

A crude understanding perhaps riddled
with inaccuracies.

Could it be that this alien astronaut,
in cataloging these things, was writing

about things, drawing pictures of things
he didn't know anything about? Are we

being observed and studied by somebody
else out there?

The alien theory is obviously pretty out
there.

But the concept that the book is written
in its own language instead of a code.

That definitely could be possible.

And in fact, there's another really well
-documented phenomenon that this could

be. In 2004, the British researchers
Jerry Kennedy and Rob Churchill

book on the Voynich Manuscript.

The theory they put forth is that the
Voynich Manuscript is written in

glossolalia, which is the speaking of
tongues or the language of tongues, in

this case, the writing in tongues.

There are thousands of examples of this.

cataloged from antiquity to the present.
And it typically presents the same way.

A person generates unintelligible words
that appear to be a language but can't

be understood.

And in many cases, this is thought to
happen while the person is possessed.

Could that be what's happening in
Buenas?

Kennedy and Churchill are the first to
notice a potential parallel between the

Voynich manuscript and the work of the
12th century German saint Hildegard von

Binyon. She wrote hundreds of pages in a
language known as lingua ignota, or the

unknown language.

She had her own script. She had her own
vocabulary.

Both manuscripts contain perplexing
illustrations, so you can see why the

comparison suggests itself.

Hildegard claims she was recording
visions that she was receiving, thought

from the divine.

Kennedy and Churchill suggest the same
phenomenon could have afflicted the

Voynich author, causing what is known as
automatic or possessed writing.

Historically, Judeo -Christianity
expresses possession as being a real

from demonic to angelic possession.

Jesus has many examples of him driving
out demons.

For many years, the Catholic Church
tried to downplay possession, but now,

current times especially, they admit
that it exists, that it is out there,

there are dozens, if not hundreds, of
exorcisms performed every month.

Of course, there will probably never be
any way to prove this theory, but it

just goes to show how the Voynich
Manuscript has captured everybody's

imagination. The possibilities are
literally endless.

If it turns out the book wasn't written
in code, it wasn't written by an alien,

it wasn't written by an angel, a demon,
it wasn't written by someone suffering

from mental illness, we may never be
able to find out what it says.

Maybe this mystery is truly unsolvable.

One of history's most infamous books is
a manuscript that no one can understand.

But that hasn't stopped people from
trying.

After all this time, no one can read it,
no one can understand it. We all want

to believe that the manuscript has
meaning.

Someone spent a lot of time, a lot of
effort, and a lot of resources writing

drawing on it. The Voynich manuscript
must have a purpose.

How could it not?

And that's why so many people have
dedicated their lives trying to solve

-called Voynich Code, because they
sincerely and firmly believe that this

has something monumental to share.
There's got to be some sort of amazing

it wants to let us know.

But what if the answer is something much
more surprising?

As researchers have hit dead end after
dead end after dead end, trying to find

patterns, substitutions, translations,
languages of origin, there's this one

burning question.

That's just sitting in the back of their
minds. No one wants to admit it out

loud. But what if they're just wasting
their time?

In April 2007, Austrian researcher
Andres Schinner completes his own

analysis of the Voynich manuscript.

Like everyone else, he's been looking
for patterns that might crack the code.

But instead, his findings show that the
statistical properties of the text are

most consistent with meaningless
gibberish.

If Schindler is correct, then a lot of
people have spent a lot of time on a

goose chase.

In some ways, a hoax might be the
easiest explanation.

But if so, I mean, wow.

What a hoax.

Still, hoax or not, we're still trying
to find proof of what this book is, not

just more speculation.

So, is there any way to prove that this
book...

Could have been faked.

The material, the parchment on which the
manuscript has been written, is carbon

dated to the early 15th century.

You can't fake that.

The parchment is 600 years old.

Somebody in the early 15th century
created the manuscript.

Just gibberish.

It would be extremely difficult to
identify who that was.

But there is one person with a possible
motive.

We're talking about none other.

than Wilfred Voynich himself.

For starters, Voynich has a financial
motive. Think about this. Remember, he

going around the world trying to
convince everybody that he found a long

encoded alchemy guide written by Roger
Bacon, which, of course, he wants to

for quite a lot of money.

Supporters of the hoax theory also cite
the book's complete lack of provenance.

People begin to realize, wait, here's...

actually no written evidence that proves
the existence of the Voynich manuscript

before Wilfred Voynich.

Remember, Voynich offers proof in the
form of a 17th century letter that he

found. But if you actually read the
letter, all it really says is that

mysterious book that we can't seem to
figure out and that it was written by

Roger Bacon.

It doesn't mention any details specific
to the Voynich manuscript.

There's no proof that they're even
talking about the same book.

In fact, some say maybe Voynich found
the letter, and then he made the book so

that he could claim it was the lost
bacon manuscript they're referring to.

Additionally, Voynich's story seems to
change over the years.

In 1912, he says he got it in a castle
in southern Europe.

In 1915, he says that the castle was in
Austria. When Voynich's wife, Ethel,

dies in 1960, the letters discovered,
only to be opened posthumously that says

that he actually found the manuscript in
the Jesuit order in Frascati, Italy.

It all adds up to suspicious behavior.
And one has to ask, is Wilfred Voynich

just this celebrated and respected
antiquities dealer? Or has he pulled

off one of the single greatest hoaxes in
history?

Is it possible that the centuries -old
mystery of the Voynich manuscript is a

hoax?

If it's a fake, it's an incredible fake.
For starters, it uses materials from

the 1400s.

It's got all of these writings and
drawings and charts and diagrams. It has

different -sized pages that fold out in
every which way.

It would take a genius -level expert in
antique books to pull this off.

And some think that genius is none
other... than Wilfred Voynich himself.

To some, it's not a question of how
could it be Voynich.

It's more a question of how could it not
be Voynich.

At some point between 1908 and 1911,
Voynich finds a letter by Jan Marek

that talks about an encoded Roger Bacon
manuscript.

Then, perhaps, he sets about forging a
fake one.

The problem with this hoax theory, and
it's the one that a lot of people cite,

is that it's nearly impossible for
anyone in the modern day to have access

lot of these ancient parchments and inks
and other materials to create such a

thing. But is it possible Voynich did?

Shortly before the appearance of the
manuscript, Voynich purchases the entire

collection of the Libreria Francescini
in Italy.

It's a private collection that consists
of over half a million books, pamphlets,

maps, and other manuscripts.

And we can't say for sure, but it is
likely that among that treasure trove of

materials that he purchased was a large
amount of blank 15th century parchment.

In any ancient library, you're going to
find blank parchment, whether it's...

sewn into a complete book or some kind
of a blank notebook, or empty parchment

that just happens to be sitting around.

Many books and manuscripts have blank
pages at the beginning or at the end,

another place where you can find ancient
blank parchment.

This would have been a jackpot for
Voynich, and from that moment on, he

had everything he needed to pull this
off.

What about the ink?

In addition to being a Polish
revolutionary, a Siberian prison

of the world's premier rare book
dealers, Voynich also has a training in

chemistry from when he was a student at
the University of Moscow. In his

restoration work on his own collection,
he sometimes uses that work to create

inks and pigments to restore books and
manuscripts.

He may have also had some help, because
it turns out he had a covert friendship

with a famous British secret agent by
the name of Sidney Riley, who's also

as the Ace of Spies.

Riley allegedly goes into the British
Museum Library and takes out a book

called Some Observations on Ancient
Inks.

So according to this theory, Voynich
finds the letter, buys the parchment,

creates the ink and the pigment, forges
the book.

There you have it.

If the manuscript is a forgery, it
didn't turn out the way Voynich hoped.

The crazy thing is, if Voynich was
trying to create a Roger Bacon

sell, he failed.

Voynich was never able to sell the book.

The problem is, he created too good of a
puzzle.

Everyone got so wrapped up in the story,
in cracking the code and deciphering

it, that they started finding patterns
that... Voynich never intended clues

weren't there.

People didn't want to buy the thing.

They wanted to solve it.

But Wilford Voynich did successfully
sell at least one forgery that we know

It's called the Columbus Miniature. It's
a painting of Columbus landing in the

New World, which was made by an
anonymous Spanish forger in the 1800s,

sold it to the British Museum.

Whether he did this knowingly, we're not
entirely sure, but at least there is

some precedent for Voynich selling a
fake.

Despite this evidence, most scholars
still believe the Voynich manuscript is

genuine 15th century article.

The book has been tested and retested.
It's been studied using some of the most

advanced scientific techniques, none of
which even existed when Voynich was

alive.

So could he have made a forgery that
good in the 1910s?

Maybe. But is it likely?

Probably not.

Besides, where's the fun in that?

Where's the mystery?

Where's the history? We're not all
clamoring over this book and studying it

piece by piece because we want it to be
a fake.

We want it to be a revelation, the
greatest code of all time, which, when

unlocked, will reveal the greatest
secrets of the universe.

In 2016, Yale University's Beinecke
Library scanned all 234 pages

of the Voynich Manuscript.

making it easily available to anyone who
wants to take a crack at solving the

600 -year -old puzzle.

I'm Lawrence Fishburne. Thank you for
watching History's Greatest Mysteries.