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We’ve been able to decipher ancient Egyptian and Mayan hieroglyphs, Cuneiform, and Old Persian, but not Voynichese. 

Voynichese is the unknown, hand-written language that dominates the Voynich Manuscript, a 15th-century codex that we quite literally know nothing about, aside from it likely being composed sometime between 1404 and 1438, and that it was likely created in Italy.

We have no known author, origins, or what the manuscript even entails due to the inability to crack the code to this secret language. It’s 9.3 inches long and 6.4 inches wide, and consists of over 200 pages. As far as we know, only 240 out of the 272 pages have ever been discovered.

The manuscript is also filled with illustrations of people, plants, and astrological symbols, which give no further explanation as to what its contents hold. 

Ownership

We know that in its early years, the manuscript was likely owned by a man named John Dee, who lived from 1527 to 1608. It was then bought by Emperor Rudolph II of Germany, who purchased it thinking it was the work of Roger Bacon, a 13th-century polymath and philosopher.

From the Emperor, the book was likely passed to two more owners before it landed in a Jesuit College in Rome.

The book gets its title from its last private owner, however, as Wilfrid Voynich purchased the manuscript around 1912. He was a Polish antiquarian and the owner of one of the largest rare book businesses worldwide. He lived from 1865 to 1930.

The manuscript has been held by Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library since 1969, after it was purchased from the Voynich estate. 

Deciphering Attempts

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According to the Beinecke website, the manuscript’s drawings fall under six sections:

• Botanicals
• Astronomical and astrological symbology
• A biological section consisting mostly of nude women
• Cosmological medallions
• Pharmaceutical drawings
• Continuous pages of text

Both professional and amateur cryptographers have tried to crack the code of this manuscript, with no success thus far. Code-breaking attempts have even been made by the FBI as well as World War II codebreaker Alan Turing. 

Theories

Since we don’t really know what’s written in the manuscript, there are several popular theories as to what it could be about. 

Obviously, the main theory is that the words are a cipher of some kind, or perhaps a phonetic translation of a lost language. Another belief is that it's a type of steganography, or a hidden writing system, which we’ve not been able to decipher. What we do seem to know is that it’s not gibberish, as several “words” appear multiple times across the book. 

Another theory is that it's an entirely new language that was created by the elusive author, possibly not meant for anyone else to understand. This also falls into another category of theory, in that it could just be a really elaborate hoax, and that the book doesn’t actually say anything at all.

More extreme theorists believe that the manuscript was left by aliens, or that it was left by a divine being - but there is no solid evidence to support these claims. 

If you think you have the potential to crack this centuries-long mystery, you can find the manuscript in full on the Beinecke Rare Book website.