Publisher Wins Rights to Publish Mysterious Ancient Manuscript that Has Never Been Deciphered

Ancient Origins

The enigmatic Voynich manuscript, an ancient text that has never been cracked despite more than a century of research, is set to be reproduced in its exact form. But if you want to get your hands on a copy, be prepared to by top dollar.  

The Guardian reports that Siloe, a small publishing house in northern Spain, has obtained the right to clone the document after a 10-year battle for permission. The publisher will make 898 exact replicas of the Voynich manuscript, so precise that even stains, holes and tears in the parchment will be reproduced.
Yale University’s Beinecke Library, where the precious manuscript is currently being held, decided to grant permission to Siloe to print the manuscript because so many people have been trying to get their hands on it.  In fact, more than 90% of all the access to their digital library is for the Voynich manuscript.

“We thought that the facsimile would provide the look and feel of the original for those who were interested,” said Raymond Clemens, curator at the Beinecke library [via The Guardian].  “It also enables libraries and museums to have a copy for instructional purposes and we will use the facsimile ourselves to show the manuscript outside of the library to students or others who might be interested.”

Pages from the Voynich manuscript showing various illustrations of plants (public domain)

The Medieval manuscript, which has been dated to between 1404 and 1438 AD, is considered to be the most mysterious text ever uncovered as it has never been deciphered despite over a century of attempts to uncover its meaning and more than 25 different analyses from top minds around the world. An academic war has raged for years between those who think the manuscript contains a real language that could eventually be decoded, and those who think it was a clever forgery designed to dupe book collectors.
The 240-page book, which uses a cryptic language and numerous illustrations depicting astronomical, biological, cosmological, herbal and pharmaceutical themes, was discovered in 1912 by a Polish-American named Wilfrid M. Voynich.  While the manuscript appears to be written in an unknown language, latest finding supports the hypothesis that there are meaningful words and messages within the text.
As for what those messages are, that still remains elusive. Craig Bauer, author of ‘Secret History: The Story of Cryptology’, believes it could be hiding something significant. "It could solve a major crime, reveal buried treasure worth millions or in the case of the Voynich manuscript, rewrite the history of science," he said

Illustrations in the Voynich manuscript, which appear to be related to astronomical phenomena (public domain)

The reproduction will be a painstaking process in order to replicate the original manuscript as closely as possible.  The paper will be given a special treatment to make it feel like parchment and the script and illustrations will be made to look authentic.
Siloe is planning to see the copies for £6,000 to £6,900 (US$ 7800 to $9000) apiece. Nearly 300 people have already put in pre-orders.
Hopefully with hundreds of copies in distribution, the secrets of the Voynich manuscript will one day be unravelled.
Top image: A page from the mysterious Voynich manuscript, which is undeciphered to this day. (public domain)
By April Holloway

Child Doodles Discovered in 14th Century Manuscript

Ancient Origins

Researchers have discovered a set of children's doodles in the margins of a medieval manuscript. The discovery sheds new light on the knowledge and education of children in the Middle Ages and their similarities to children of today.

A report recently published in the journal Cogent Arts & Humanities, described the remarkable 14th-century book from a Franciscan convent in Naples, which contains the doodles spotted in the margins. They are the work of mischievous little kids, and very similar to what children do nowadays.
According to Deborah Thorpe, an author of the study, the drawings were discovered by chance while researching an unrelated project. As an expert of the medieval manuscripts from the University of York in Canada, she believes that the drawings depict a human, a cow or horse and some kind of demon or devil.
“I was looking through a database of medieval manuscripts online and I found images of these beautiful doodles in the margins and to me they looked like they were done by children. I thought ‘this is really interesting, has anyone written anything about this?’' she said in a statement.

A child’s drawing of a person found in the manuscript. LJS 361, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries folio 23r.

Thorpe didn't have the knowledge to analyze the discovery properly, so she recruited several child psychologists. They came up with a set of criteria, which helped them to classify the sketches and determine the approximate age of the drawer. They checked the elongated shapes, the really long legs, the lack of a torso, and the focus on the head. There are similarities between the drawings that children make at specific ages. The researchers concluded the drawings likely came from children between the ages of 4 and 6 years old.
There are later examples of the historical children’s drawings, but Thorpe believes that this is the first time that children’s drawings in medieval books have been classified as the work of children with the use of a set of psychological criteria. It shows that children enjoyed playing and learning, expressing their imagination exactly like today's children.
The manuscript covers knowledge about an astronomy, biblical dates and tables for determining any day of the week between 1204 and 1512, religious sermons, and astrology.
Thorpe’s discovery, although impressive, is not the only or the oldest child’s drawing that has been found from the past. April Holloway from Ancient Origins reported in June 29, 2014 about another fascinating discovery. As she wrote: ''Archaeologists have unearthed six ancient Russian birch-bark texts in the historical city of Vekliky Novgorod in north-western Russia, according to a report in Voice of Russia. The discovery adds to the collection of more than 1,000 birch-bark texts, which have been immensely significant in changing traditional ideas about literacy rates in ancient Russia, opening a new page in the study of the Russian language, and shedding light on early northern Russian culture.

Birch-bark letter no. 202, mid-13th century, produced by a child. Photo source: Wikimedia

Among their authors and addressees of the birch-bark documents are priests, high officials, house owners, merchants, stewards, craftsmen, warriors, women, and even children. For example, the document contains spelling lessons and drawings made by a boy named Onfim, who is estimated to have been between 6 and 7 years old at the time.
The first birch bark letter was found on July 26, 1951 by Nina Fedorovna Akulova, and at least 1025 have been unearthed thereafter – 923 in Novgorod alone – typically dating from the period between late 11 th and early 15 th century. Almost all of them were written with styluses of bronze and iron, and never ink. The letters were preserved due to the swampy soil which isolated them from oxygen. Many of them are found in streets, because streets were paved with logs, which eventually sank into the soil, with additional layers burying older ones, including the letters.''
Top image: Child doodles found in a Medieval manuscript. LJS 361, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries folio 26r.
By Natalia Klimzcak

4,000-year-old Ancient Egyptian manuscript measuring more than 8ft has been rediscovered in Cairo

Ancient Origins

The oldest known Egyptian leather manuscript, dating back some 4,000 years, has been rediscovered at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo after it was pulled from a dusty, old storage box, where it had been lost for around 70 years. The precious text contains fine quality depictions of supernatural beings which predate the famous drawings of the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
Discovery News reports that the manuscript measures 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) in length, making it the longest text ever found. It exceeds the next longest text by just 2 inches – an ancient pre-nuptial agreement between a couple due to be married, which sets out how the wife will be provided for, should the marriage fail.
“Taking into account that it was written on both sides, we have more than 5 meters (16.4 feet) of texts and drawings, making this the longest leather roll from ancient Egypt,” Wael Sherbiny, the Belgium-based independent scholar who made the finding, told Discovery News.

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The rediscovered leather manuscript in the longest Ancient Egyptian text ever found, exceeding the length of the next longest text, an 8-foot long prenuptial agreemeent (pictured), by just 2 inches. Credit: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

The ancient text, which dates from the late Old Kingdom to the early Middle Kingdom (2300 – 2000 BC), is a religious manuscript, which contains spells that would most likely have been recited by a priest, and an illustrated composition of temple rituals that would have also been adapted for  funerary use.
The manuscript is adorned with high-quality colorful drawings of divine and supernatural beings, illustrated around 1,000 years before similar drawings appeared in the world renowned Book of the Dead, an ancient Egyptian funerary text containing spells to aid a deceased person’s journey into the afterlife.

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Book of the Dead spell 17 from the Papyrus of Ani (Wikipedia)

Sherbiny told Discovery News that the same illustrated composition that is found in the leather manuscript is also found on the base of Middle Kingdom sarcophagi retrieved from the necropolis of Hermopolis in Upper Egypt, dating to between 2055 and 1650 BC.
“Amazingly, the roll offers an even more detailed iconography than the Hermopolitan coffins in terms of texts and drawings,” Sherbiny said.
The composition in the manuscript predates the illustrations found at Hermopolis, suggesting that they may have had a long history of transmission before being used in the coffin decorations.

The same illustrated composition that is found in the leather manuscript is also found on the base of Middle Kingdom coffins retrieved from the necropolis of Hermopolis. Objects from the tomb of Djehutynakht, a nomarch during the Middle Kingdom era of Egypt, found in the necropolis of Hermopolis (Wikipedia)

Ancient Egyptian leather manuscripts are extremely rare because leather quickly disintegrates over time, while papyri were well-preserved by the dry climate of Egypt. At the time, leather was considered the more prestigious writing material, and was used to record religious texts, as well as important historical events.
Wael Sherbiny had to piece together the leather roll, which was in tiny fragments. He is currently preparing the full publication of the contents of the ancient manuscript.
Image: The rediscovered leather manuscript has been compared to the Egyptian Book of the Dead (pictured). Book of the Dead papyrus of Pinedjem II, 21st dynasty, circa 990-969 BC. Originally from the Deir el-Bahri royal cache. (Wikipedia)
By April Holloway

1,400-year-old medicinal treatise of Galen found hidden under hymns in ancient manuscript

Ancient Origins

A 6th century translation of a work of one of the most important ancient Greek doctors has been discovered in an animal-hide manuscript, hidden underneath text of 1,000-year-old hymns. A researcher told The New York Times that Galen's ideas on medicine were “completely bonkers,” but the palimpsest text holds important clues on how the ancients treated patients.
Galen, born in 131 AD, was considered one of the greatest practitioners of medicine in the ancient world, both East and West, through to the 16th century. Legend has it that Galen eviscerated an ape in front of the High Priest of Asia in Pergamon and challenged other doctors that were present to repair it. They could not, so Galen did, thereby gaining his post as physician for the high priest's gladiators. In 170 AD he became physician to Commodus, who became emperor in 180 AD.
“The Galenic system is completely bonkers,” Dr. Siam Bhayro, a Jewish studies scholar in England, told The New York Times.

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“Wound Man,” a medieval work attributed to Galen (Wikimedia Commons)

That said, the website Medscape indicates Galen understood more about physiology than Aristotle. Aristotle said the heart was more important than the brain, while Galen said the brain was the primary organ, controlling all the other organs of the body. Both men were right in a way because the brain cannot function without the blood and oxygen that the heart pumps to it. But Aristotle's idea was that the brain's main purpose was to produce phlegm to cool the heart. Galen showed more understanding when he said the brain was connected to and controlled the entire body. He wrote, "If you press so much upon a cerebral ventricle that you wound it, immediately the living being will be without movement and sensation, without spirit and voice."
Peter Pormann, a Greco-Arabic scholar in Manchester, England, called the find important on many levels. “It’s likely to be a central text once it’s fully deciphered. We might discover things we really can’t dream of yet,” he told The New York Times.

A scan of a folio from the text, which is available online at http://digitalgalen.net/.

The 230-folio parchment palimpsest includes one of Galen's medical texts that was not entirely lost in antiquity, though 125 of his books were lost in a fire.
Books 6 to 8 of the text, On the Mixtures and Powers of Simple Drugs, are in the British Library. But the new find, which will provide much more material, is an earlier translation, from ancient Greek to Syriac. This translation may differ from later ones and be truer to what Galen actually wrote. The differences between known translations and this latest find, a 9th century copy of a 6th century translation, may help show how doctors treated patients in antiquity.
Though the text has been known since the 2000s, scholars are just beginning to study it. The New York Times says the text may provide previously unknown information about how the practice of medicine developed and spread.
The book is owned by a man in Baltimore, a collector of rare scientific material. Grigory Kissel, a German language scholar, was examining the manuscript at the collector's house when he saw how similar it was to a page he had held Harvard University a little while before. Kissel realized how important the find was.
That was in February 2013. Between then and May 2015 a worldwide search for seven missing pages ended when the final page was digitized in Paris, The New York Times reported. One page of the manuscript remains at St. Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai Desert. Three others were in a Vatican library.

St. Catherine's Monastery from Mount Sinai in Egypt; the monastery has the oldest continuously operating library in the world. (Photo by Wilson44691/Wikimedia Commons)

The Digital Galen Syriac Palimpsest has all of the folios online. They were scanned using special techniques at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. An introduction on the website says: “This manuscript contains an eleventh-century liturgical text that is very important for the study of the hymns of Byzantine and Melkite Christianity. The manuscript's value is further increased by the fact that it is a palimpsest, with an older and very significant undertext.  The undertext dates back to approximately the ninth century, and contains Syriac translations of Greek medical texts. Preliminary investigations have identified several leaves from Galen's major pharmacological treatise.”
Featured image: The medical text dates to the 9th century, the hymn book to the 11th century. (Walters Art Museum photo)

By Mark Miller

Ghostly Faces and Invisible Verse Found in Medieval Text

Jeanna Bryner
Live Science

A page (49r) of "The Black Book of Carmarthen" showing the stylized drawing of a dog and text in the margins. Credit: National Library of Wales

Ghostly faces and lines of verse previously invisible to the naked eye have been uncovered in the oldest surviving medieval manuscript written entirely in Welsh.
"The Black Book of Carmarthen," dating to 1250, contains texts from the ninth through 12th centuries, including some of the earliest references to Arthur and Merlin.
"It's easy to think we know all we can know about a manuscript like the 'Black Book,' but to see these ghosts from the past brought back to life in front of our eyes has been incredibly exciting," Myriah Williams, a doctoral student at the University of Cambridge, said in a statement. "The drawings and verse that we're in the process of recovering demonstrate the value of giving these books another look." [See Images of the Black Book and Ghostly Faces]
In 1904, Sir John Williams, the founder of the National Library of Wales, bought the book, which measures 6.7 by 5 inches (17 by 12.5 centimeters). Only recently did Myriah Williams and Paul Russell, a professor at Cambridge's department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic (ASNC), examine the pages of the book.

The ghostly faces as visible under different parts of the spectrum in "The Black Book Carmarthen."
Credit: National Library of Wales

View full size image

"The margins of manuscripts often contain medieval and early modern reactions to the text, and these can cast light on what our ancestors thought about what they were reading," Williams explained. "The 'Black Book' was particularly heavily annotated before the end of the 16th century."
Williams and Russell said they think a man named Jaspar Gryffyth, a 16th-century owner of the book who copied his name in Hebrew onto the book, likely erased such "reactions." These verses and doodles would've been added to the manuscript over centuries as it was passed from one owner to another. "He fits the time frame for the erasures, which we know would have been in the late 16th century, but we can only speculate that he might have been the one to take it upon himself to 'cleanse' the manuscript," Williams told Live Science in an email.
Using UV light and photo-editing software, Williams and Russell revealed glimpses of some of the erased doodles. For instance, page fol. 39v of the newly visible work includes ghostly faces and a line of text accompanying them, which date to the 14th or 15th century, Williams said. On the following page, fol. 40v, a full verse, possibly dating to the 13th century, came to light. "There is one more drawing so far that we are still working on," Williams said.
"What we have discovered may only be the tip of the iceberg in terms of what can be discovered as imaging techniques are enhanced," Russell said in the statement. "The manuscript is extremely valuable and incredibly important — yet there may still be so much we don't know about it." [10 Words in Medieval Voynich Manuscript Decoded]
Scientists think a single scribe collected and recorded the book's contents, ranging from religious verse to different types of poetry, over that individual's lifetime. The text in the 54-page book changes from large script written on alternating ruled lines of vellum to later pages with much smaller lettering and lines that are much closer together.
Williams, who studied the manuscript for her doctoral dissertation, has some favorite pages and verses, she said. Her favorite page, fol. 49r, holds various styles and layouts, along with an example of the scribe's penchant for writing on the book's margins. "It also contains a fantastic stylized image of a dog, possibly a greyhound," Williams said, adding that the book's scribe likely made the drawing. Two verses were also added, likely by this scribe, on the right margin of 49r.
"I am also fond of the central poem of this page, a short series of verses cursing a goose for pulling out the eye of Gwallawg, the figure after whom the poem has been named by scholars," Williams said.
In another entry, the legendary hero Arthur describes the virtues of his men in order to gain entrance to a court, the researchers noted. Two prophetic poems are attributed to the famed Merlin, as well, with the first poem of the book a conversation between him and Welsh poet Taliesin.
And in a text entitled "Englynion y Beddau" (or "Stanzas of the Graves"), a narrator claims to know where some 80 warriors are buried.
Williams said she hopes to continue to improve the reading of the newly revealed work on page fol. 40v and to learn more about the scribe's process of collecting works for the book. "Furthermore, I hope that I can use the information that we have gained from the margins and gaps to continue to develop a picture of the life of the 'Black Book' after the 'Black Book' scribe had completed his work," Williams said.