All language subtitles for historys.greatest.mysteries.s03e09.1080p.web.h264-spamneggs_track4_[eng]

[dramatic music]

Fishburne: Tonight
a mysterious medieval book

written in
a secret language so complex

that even the world’s best
code breakers can’t crack it.

♪ ♪

- No one has been able

to translate
or read a single word,

a single letter.

Fishburne: 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.

Fishburne: Now we’ll uncover
the top theories

surrounding the origins
of this cryptic text.

- Voynich thinks this is
some sort of secret manual

for the practice of alchemy.

- The "Voynich Manuscript"
is written in glossolalia,

which is
the language of tongues.

- Has he pulled off one of
the greatest hoaxes in history?

Fishburne: Can modern
technology finally unlock

its impenetrable code?

- It’s the first definitive
answer we have about this book

in 400 years.

Fishburne: What is
the "Voynich Manuscript"?

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Just outside Rome,
famed Polish-American

rare bookseller
Wilfrid Voynich

enters a centuries-old
Jesuit college.

- Voynich operates what

is probably the world’s largest

rare books business
at the time.

He’s got this incredible knack

for digging up
the most valuable

and the most sought-after
manuscripts on the planet.

His collection
is worth millions.

Fishburne: 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 shop in London.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: One book
in particular stands out.

- As with all
of his purchases,

Voynich looks
for elaborate bindings,

beautiful books,

heavily illustrated,
illuminated manuscripts,

early printed books, really
things--luxurious objects.

But among them his eye’s
caught by what he later called

an ugly duckling.

- This particular
manuscript is small.

It’s only about
9 1/2 x 6 1/2 inches,

and 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
can be identified.

There are astrological
drawings of constellations

that don’t even 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.

It’s--needless to say,
it’s wild.

But it’s also indecipherable.

♪ ♪

And as for that
lovely handwritten text,

that 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 assumes
that this is some type of code.

Fishburne: In addition
to experience with codes,

Voynich speaks Polish,
Russian, and English fluently

and has a working knowledge
of 15 other languages.

- He was born to a noble family
in the Russian Empire.

He was educated at three of
the top universities,

and then he basically becomes
an anti-Czarist 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 before a friend
of his at the British Museum

suggested 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 gonna be able to make sense

out of this manuscript,
it’s gonna be Wilfrid 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 none 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 ink--

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 emerged in medieval
Europe in the 12th century,

and its practitioners tried
to purify certain materials,

so turn lead into gold
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 "great work,"

which was
the philosopher’s stone,

a mythical substance
that was said to be able

to grant immortality
among other things.

Fishburne:
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.

♪ ♪

- Voynich believes
the book is written in code,

because he believes that
whoever wrote it

needed to keep something
secret.

- Roger Bacon, today he is
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.

Fishburne: 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 with
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 antagonists.

- It’s very fortunate for Bacon
that he has the protection

of a very high-placed patron
and intellectual correspondent,

the pope, Clement IV.

Fishburne: 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 all
into a coded book.

- So if Voynich is right
and this manuscript can be

definitively affiliated
with Roger Bacon,

suddenly the manuscript itself

would be worth
untold amounts of money.

Fishburne:
First, Voynich must prove

Bacon truly authored
the manuscript.

- Even though Voynich
can’t crack the code,

he does find a letter dated
back to 1665 that’s written

by a very important
Czech scientist and doctor

named Jan Marek Marci.

He says he has a coded book

that fits precisely this
description,

and he’s giving it
to his friend,

a renowned code breaker,
Athanasius Kircher.

Marci also gives a little bit
of history on the book.

He says it was bought

by the Holy Roman Emperor
Rudolf II of Germany

about 100 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.

Fishburne: How did the book go
from Bacon to Emperor Rudolf?

- Wilfrid 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

and an occult scientist
who studies cipher,

and from a young age
he has access to a lot

of Roger Bacon manuscripts.

Fishburne: An accomplished
cryptologist himself,

Dee tries to decode
the manuscript but fails.

♪ ♪

- Eventually, John Dee brings
the manuscript to Prague

where Emperor Rudolf would buy
it from him for 600 ducats

or roughly $100,000 today.

- So Voynich
has this 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 gotta decode this thing
once and for all.

Fishburne:
A mysterious manuscript

dating back centuries,
one with a seemingly

unbreakable cipher.

When collector Wilfrid Voynich
finds this book,

he spends years trying
to prove who wrote it and why.

- Voynich showcases the book

at exhibitions
and lecture tours

with the hope that
somebody can figure it out.

And of course,
he’s getting fame

and publicity all the while
and hoping to make 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.

[dramatic music]

- Other top code breakers

are trying to decipher
the book as well.

For example, you’ve got
William Friedman,

the man who’s 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
code was impossible.

Fishburne: 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.

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,

because 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.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: 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
more people

who want to figure it out.

Every year brings
multiple major news stories

about potential breakthroughs.

Fishburne: 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 to 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.

Fishburne:
But the results aren’t

what anyone anticipated.

- Remember,
Wilfrid Voynich thought

this was a 13th-century text
by Roger Bacon.

But the pages date back
to the early 15th century,

so about a 140 years after
Roger Bacon’s death.

And just like that
the primary theory

behind this strange book
is 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’ve 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

"and illustrator?
Who’s writing in code?

Who has an interest
in science and alchemy?"

And they think, "Who could’ve
written the book?"

Fishburne: In 2017
one researcher announces

she might know the answer.

- Could this book
actually have been written

by none other
than Leonardo da Vinci?

♪ ♪

Dr. Edith Sherwood is a
retired biomedical scientist,

and these days
she’s fascinated

by the "Voynich Manuscript,"

and she 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 notebooks and 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.

15 years later,
she publishes a new article

in much greater detail,

and the evidence she finds
is actually pretty compelling.

Fishburne:
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 miniscule script."

It’s a 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 scholarly 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 not 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 punctuates.

There are no line breaks
or paragraph breaks.

And also, they never
connect their letters.

Fishburne: Dr. Sherwood
then turns her 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 notebooks,
they’re just full

of these crude drawings
and studies.

- Of course,
no one would suggest

that the illustrations
from 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 and ink.

But da Vinci could

and so could the author
of the "Voynich Manuscript."

Fishburne:
Dr. Sherwood believes

one page of circular drawings
provides the best clue of all.

- There’s an astrological chart
representing the sign of Aries

with 15 nude 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.

And all 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 10:00,
and guess what.

Leonardo da Vinci was born
just around 10:00 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,

and he typically used
a mirror-image code

that also sometimes combined
or separated certain words.

Fishburne:
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 legacy
of history’s greatest genius

even greater than we thought?

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

Fishburne: For over 100 years,

people have speculated on what
the "Voynich Manuscript" is

and who created it.

After successfully carbon
dating the book’s parchment

to the 15th century,

researcher seek other
technology to help understand.

- 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 that’s really about it.

[dramatic music]

And there’s really only one
way to fully understand

this book, and that’s
to decode the writing,

to figure out
what language this is,

what cipher they used,
and start to translate it.

Fishburne: 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

start 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.

Fishburne: 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 it.

Fishburne:
With the right inputs,

the computer
might even be able to decipher

a complicated 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 can.
So it’s worth a shot.

Fishburne: Kondrak 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 combinations,

all the little nuances
that could determine

what language
this was written in.

- Honestly don’t know
if this is going to work,

because this computer
is not 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 or Greek or Latin,

somebody more than likely
would’ve figured it out by now.

♪ ♪

And the researchers actually
went into this thinking

maybe the manuscript
is written in Arabic,

but Hebrew presents
an intriguing possibility.

Fishburne:
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.

Fishburne: Slowly
the team makes progress.

- Once you think
you’ve figured out a word,

you move onto 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.

♪ ♪

- Unfortunately,
this AI was never designed

to spend its existence
studying the 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.

Fishburne: Then in 2017

another researcher picks up
where the Canadians left off.

- There’s
a German Egyptologist

named Ranier Hannig,

and he also thinks
the book is in Hebrew,

and he spends
three years studying it,

and he makes some progress
in translating it,

and he publishes his findings
in 2020.

Hannig manages to translate
a number of paragraphs

on multiple pages,
and according to his findings,

it looks like
the "Voynich Manuscript"

might be a book of prophecy.

♪ ♪

On one particular page,
according to Hannig,

it says...

Fishburne: Is the "Voynich
Manuscript" a Hebrew manual

for predicting the future?

- For quite a while now,

there have 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.

Fishburne: For many decades,
countless code breakers

and scholars
have tried and failed

to decipher the mysterious
"Voynich Manuscript."

Then in 2009 researchers
posed a radical new question.

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

[dramatic music]

- Since at least the 1500s
people have assumed

the "Voynich Manuscript"
is encoded.

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.

So 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 how 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
with 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.

♪ ♪

- Erich von Daniken,
well-known for his book,

"Chariots of the Gods,"
puts this theory

forward into his book in 1968,

and in that book
von Daniken asserts

that many
of our ancient technologies

were created by aliens,

such as Stonehenge, Pumapunku,
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 Daniken 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.

Fishburne: When von Daniken
applies the same logic

to the "Voynich Manuscript,"
he believes he’s finally

unlocked
its mysterious origin.

- In his 2009 book
"History is Wrong,"

von Daniken 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 Earth 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 to indicate

that there was
a crude understanding

perhaps riddled
with inaccuracies.

Could it be
that this alien astronaut

in cataloguing 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 British researchers
Gerry Kennedy and Rob Churchill

published a 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

catalogued from
antiquity to the present,

and it typically
presents the same way.

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 Voynich?

♪ ♪

- 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 Bingen.

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 could see why the
comparisons suggest itself.

- Hildegard claimed
she was recording visions

that she was receiving
thought to be from the divine.

Fishburne:
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 thing

from demonic
to angelic possessions.

Jesus has many examples
of Him driving out demons.

For many years
the Catholic Church

tried to downplay possession.

But now
in current times especially

they admit that it exists,
that it is out there,

and 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.

Fishburne: 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 it and 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 this so-called
Voynich code,

because they sincerely
and firmly believe

that this book has something
monumental to share.

There’s got to be
some sort of amazing secret

it wants to let us know.

Fishburne:
But what if the answer

is something
much more surprising?

[dramatic music]

- 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
Andreas Schinner

completes his own
computer 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 Schinner is correct,

then a lot of people
have spent a lot of time

on a wild 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.

If somebody in the early 15th
century created the manuscript,

just gibberish,
it will be extremely difficult

to identify who that was.

Fishburne: But there is one
person with a possible motive.

- We’re talking about
none other than

Wilfrid Voynich himself.

♪ ♪

For starters,
Voynich has a financial motive.

Think about this.
Remember, he was going

around the world trying
to convince everybody

that he’s found a long-lost
encoded alchemy guide

written by Roger Bacon,

which, of course, he wants to
sell for quite a lot of money.

Fishburne:
Supporters of the hoax theory

also cite the book’s
complete lack of provenance.

- People begin to realize,

"Wait, there’s actually
no written evidence

"that proves the existence
of the ’Voynich Manuscript’

before Wilfrid Voynich."

♪ ♪

- Remember,
Voynich offers proof

in the form of a 17th-century
letter that he’s found.

But if you actually read the
letter, all it really says

is that there’s
this 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.

Fishburne:
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,

a letter’s discovered only
to be opened posthumously

that says that he actually
found the manuscript

in a Jesuit order
in Frascati, Italy.

♪ ♪

- It all adds up
to suspicious behavior,

and one has to ask,

is Wilfrid Voynich just this
celebrated and respected

antiquities dealer,
or has he pulled off

one of the single
greatest hoaxes in history?

Fishburne: 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.

Fishburne: And some think
that genius is none other

than Wilfrid 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 Marci

that talks about an encoded
Roger Bacon manuscript.

And then, perhaps, he sets
about forging a fake one.

♪ ♪

- The problem
with this hoax theory,

and it’s the one
a lot of people cite,

is that it’s nearly impossible
for anyone in the modern day

to have access to a lot
of these ancient parchments

and inks and other materials
to create such a thing.

Fishburne: But is it possible
Voynich did?

- Shortly before the appearance
of the manuscript,

Voynich purchases
the entire collection

of the Libreria Franceschini
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 probably had

everything he needed
to pull this off.

Fishburne:
What about the ink?

- In addition to being
a Polish revolutionary,

a Siberian prison escapee,

and one 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 collections

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 Reilly,

who was also known
as the ace of spies.

Reilly allegedly goes into
the British Museum Library

and takes out a book
that’s called

"Some Observations
on Ancient Inks."

- So according to this theory
Voynich finds the letter,

buys the parchment,

creates the inks
and the pigments,

forges the book,
and there you have it.

Fishburne: 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 masterpiece
to 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 that weren’t there.

People didn’t want to buy
the thing.

They wanted to solve it.

But Wilfrid Voynich
did successfully sell

at least one forgery
that we know of.

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.

And he 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.

Fishburne:
Despite this evidence

most scholars still believe
the "Voynich Manuscript"

is a 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.

Fishburne: 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 Laurence Fishburne.

Thank you for watching
"History’s Greatest Mysteries."

♪ ♪