The Voynich Manuscript is getting decoded

I seem to remember watmm being all over this and the codex seraphinianus some time ago, being the two most incomprehensible lengthy illustrated manuscripts of history. The codex seraphinianus is a fabrication by a 80s artist, and this one was always suspected to be a 15th or 16th century elaborate troll in a similar vein...

 

Until now.

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2564325/Has-Voynich-manuscript-decoded-First-words-mysterious-15th-century-text-revealed.html

 

 

  Quote

 

Professor Bax is using linguistic analysis to work on the script letter by letter

'I hit on the idea of identifying proper names in the text, following historic approaches which successfully deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs and other mystery scripts, and I then used those names to work out part of the script,' he said.

'The manuscript has a lot of illustrations of stars and plants. I was able to identify some of these, with their names, by looking at medieval herbal manuscripts in Arabic and other languages, and I then made a start on a decoding, with some exciting results.'

Among the words he has identified is the term for Taurus, alongside a picture of seven stars which seem to be the Pleiades, and also the word KANTAIRON alongside a picture of the plant Centaury, a known mediaeval herb, as well as a number of other plants.

Altogether Bax says he has worked out: Juniper,
Taurus, Coriander, Centaurea, Chiron, Hellebore Nigella Sativa, Kesar and Cotton.

Although Professor Bax admits his decoding is still only partial, it has generated a lot of excitement in the world of codebreaking and linguistics because it could prove a crucial breakthrough for an eventual full decipherment.

 

I guess we shouldn't be holding our breaths for a full decoded version anytime soon, but this still made me excited.

Yeah, saw that this was happening the other day.

 

Here's hoping he unleashes some Lovecraftian/Evil Dead type beings when he cracks the code fully.

[youtubehd]fpZD_3D8_WQ[/youtubehd]

 

Pretty cool!

  On 2/21/2014 at 10:52 PM, hello spiral said:

Yeah, saw that this was happening the other day.

 

Here's hoping he unleashes some Lovecraftian/Evil Dead type beings when he cracks the code fully.

that would be badass and finally something i think we could all agree on, as being badass, just before we all melted in horrible, agonizing deaths

 

also i think this thing being decoded is pretty cool, but at the same time it also kills the mystique of it, and when it gets decoded it will probably turn out to be just another boring old book, about stuff, which none of us who used to talk about how cool it was, will ever care to read.

 

edit- for example i used to think this thing was pretty sweet, but now..

i forget, what were we talking about?

Edited February 22, 2014 by MisterE

I'm having a spot of trouble with this one, anyone care to help out?

 

lol