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New Study Suggests the Voynich Manuscript May Have Been Created Using a Cipher
A new study proposes that the mysterious Voynich manuscript may have been produced using a carefully designed cipher rather than representing an unknown natural language. While the research does not decode the manuscript, it offers a plausible explanation for how its enigmatic text could have been generated in the late medieval period.
The Voynich manuscript, dated to the 15th century, contains around 38,000 words written in an undeciphered script, accompanied by unusual illustrations of plants, astronomy, and symbolic scenes. Despite more than a century of analysis, the meaning and purpose of the text remain unresolved, and scholars continue to debate whether it encodes real information or is an elaborate fabrication.
The recent study demonstrates a manual encoding system that transforms ordinary Latin or Italian text into glyphs with statistical properties strikingly similar to those found in the manuscript. The method relies on simple tools available in medieval Europe, such as dice and playing cards, to introduce controlled randomness. Letters and letter pairs are converted into symbols using predefined tables, producing text that closely resembles Voynich script in word length, symbol frequency, and internal structure.
Although the system does not reproduce every feature of the manuscript exactly, it succeeds in mimicking many of its most puzzling characteristics. This suggests that the Voynich text could have been intentionally constructed to look like a coherent writing system without being directly readable.
The findings strengthen the idea that the manuscript may reflect a sophisticated encoding process, whether for secrecy, intellectual experimentation, or deliberate obfuscation. Rather than solving the mystery, the study provides a new framework for understanding how such a manuscript could have been created using medieval techniques, keeping the Voynich manuscript firmly among the most intriguing unresolved artifacts of the Middle Ages.
Published on: 03-01-2026
Edited by: Abdulmnam Samakie
Source: Live Science