An Intoxicating 500-Yearold Mystery - The Voynich Manuscript has long baffled scholars-and attracted cranks and conspiracy theorists.
The Atlantic|September 2024
The Voynich Manuscript has long baffled scholars-and attracted cranks and conspiracy theorists. Now a prominent medievalist is taking a new approach to unlocking its secrets.
By Ariel Sabar - photos by Yale University
An Intoxicating 500-Yearold Mystery - The Voynich Manuscript has long baffled scholars-and attracted cranks and conspiracy theorists.

Lisa Fagin Davis was starting her medieval-studies Ph.D. at Yale in 1989 when she got a part-time job at the university’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Her boss was the curator of early books and manuscripts, and he stuck her with an unenviable duty: answering letters from the cranks, conspiracists, and truthers who hounded the library with questions about its most popular holding.

In the library catalog, the book—a parchment codex the size of a hardcover novel—had a simple, colorless title: “Cipher Manuscript.” But newspapers tended to call it the “Voynich Manuscript,” after the rare-books dealer Wilfrid Voynich, who acquired it from a Jesuit collection in Italy around 1912. An heir sold the manuscript to another dealer, who donated it to Yale in 1969.

Davis grew up in Oklahoma City, transfixed by the fantasy worlds of J. R. R. Tolkien and Dungeons & Dragons. When the Beinecke curator first showed her the Voynich Manuscript, she thought, This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.

Its 234 pages contained some 38,000 words, but not one of them was readable. The book’s unnamed author had written it, likely with a quill pen, in symbols never before seen. Did they represent a natural language, such as Latin? A constructed language, like Esperanto? A secret code? Gibberish? Scholars had no real idea. To Davis, however, the manuscript felt alive with meaning.

This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.

This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.

MORE STORIES FROM THE ATLANTICView all
Catching the Carjackers - On the road with an elite police unit as it combats a crime wave
The Atlantic

Catching the Carjackers - On the road with an elite police unit as it combats a crime wave

On August 7, 2022, Shantise Summers arrived home from a night out with friends around 2:40 a.m. As she walked from her car toward her apartment in Oxon Hill, a Maryland neighborhood just southeast of Washington, D.C., she heard footsteps behind her. She turned and saw two men in ski masks. One put a gun to her face; she could feel the metal pressing against her chin. He demanded her phone, wallet, keys, and Apple Watch. She quickly handed them over, and they drove off in her 2019 Honda Accord.

time-read
10+ mins  |
November 2024
The Most Remote Place in the World - Point Nemo is Earth's official "middle of nowhere." A lot seems to be going on there.
The Atlantic

The Most Remote Place in the World - Point Nemo is Earth's official "middle of nowhere." A lot seems to be going on there.

It’s called the “longest-swim problem”: If you had to drop someone at the place in the ocean farthest from any speck of land—the remotest spot on Earth—where would that place be? The answer, proposed only a few decades ago, is a location in the South Pacific with the coordinates 48 52.5291ᤩS 123 23.5116ᤩW: the “oceanic point of inaccessibility,” to use the formal name. It doesn’t get many visitors. But one morning last year, I met several people who had just come from there.

time-read
10+ mins  |
November 2024
You Are Going to Die - Oliver Burkeman has become an unlikely self-help guru by reminding everyone of their mortality.
The Atlantic

You Are Going to Die - Oliver Burkeman has become an unlikely self-help guru by reminding everyone of their mortality.

"The average human lifespan," Oliver Burkeman begins his 2021 megabest seller, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, "is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short." In that relatively brief period, he does not want you to maximize your output at work or optimize your leisure activities for supreme enjoyment. He does not want you to wake up at 5 a.m. or block out your schedule in a strictly labeled timeline.

time-read
10+ mins  |
November 2024
Washington's Nightmare - Donald Trump is the tyrant the first president feared.
The Atlantic

Washington's Nightmare - Donald Trump is the tyrant the first president feared.

Last November, during a symposium at Mount Vernon on democracy, John Kelly, the retired Marine Corps general who served as Donald Trump's second chief of staff, spoke about George Washington's historic accomplishments— his leadership and victory in the Revolutionary War, his vision of what an American president should be. And then Kelly offered a simple, three-word summary of Washington's most important contribution to the nation he liberated.

time-read
10+ mins  |
November 2024
The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books - To read a book in college, it helps to have read a book in high school.
The Atlantic

The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books - To read a book in college, it helps to have read a book in high school.

Nicholas Dames has taught Literature Humanities, Columbia University's required greatbooks course, since 1988. He loves the job, but it has changed. Over the past decade, students have become overwhelmed by the reading, College kids have never read everything they're assigned, of course, but this feels different. Dames's students now seem bewildered by the thought of finishing multiple books a semester. His colleagues have noticed the same problem.

time-read
9 mins  |
November 2024
What Zoya Sees
The Atlantic

What Zoya Sees

Long a fearless critic of Israeli society, since October 7 Zoya Cherkassky-Nnadi has made wrenching portraits of her nation's sufferingand become a target of protest.

time-read
10+ mins  |
November 2024
Malcolm Gladwell, Meet Mark Zuckerberg
The Atlantic

Malcolm Gladwell, Meet Mark Zuckerberg

The writer’ insistence on ignoring the web is an even bigger blind spot today than it was when The Tipping Point came out.

time-read
10+ mins  |
November 2024
Alan Hollinghurst's Lost England
The Atlantic

Alan Hollinghurst's Lost England

In his new novel, the present isnt much better than the past—and its a lot less sexy.

time-read
8 mins  |
November 2024
Scent of a Man
The Atlantic

Scent of a Man

In a new memoir, Al Pacino promises to reveal the person behind the actor. But is he holding something back?

time-read
5 mins  |
November 2024
THE RIGHT-WING PLAN TO MAKE EVERYONE AN INFORMANT
The Atlantic

THE RIGHT-WING PLAN TO MAKE EVERYONE AN INFORMANT

In Texas and elsewhere, new laws and policies have encouraged neighbors to report neighbors to the government.

time-read
10+ mins  |
November 2024