The World’s Most Mysterious Book

This fine facsimile of the Voynich Manuscript is one of the most remarkable and mysterious manuscript facsimiles in our collection. The only original manuscript, which was carbon dated to 1404-34, exists at Yale University. For 10 years, the Spanish publishing house, Siloe, appealed to the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale, asking for access to produce a very small run of the illustrated, hand-written Voynich.

With its apparently encrypted language and illustrations of unknown and imaginary plants and never-seen constellations, this manuscript represents a riddle yet to be solved. Since its creation in the fifteenth century, countless scholars and cryptographers—including some of the world’s most brilliant code breakers—have dedicated themselves to trying to solve the puzzle. With this facsimile available at Hopkins, now our faculty and students can also attempt to solve this singular mystery.

Mysterious, Encrypted Medieval Manuscript Set To Be Published In Replica (NPR)