04-06-2026, 12:10 AM
Well, when I wrote my last post, I didn't think about sharing my opinion on this... I think it would be better if I wrote it in a separate post.
During my independent study of the Voynich manuscript (which took about a year), I came to the conclusion that Voynich is most likely a cipher based on numbers. I am not a cryptology expert, but I will try to explain how I came to this conclusion.
Let's start with what I wrote about in the previous post, which is that the text of the Voynich manuscript (or rather, the mechanism of word formation) is very similar to classical substitution: all words consist of a fixed set of characters and bigrams arranged in a certain order. Here you might think that I am reinventing the wheel, having in mind the concepts of "prefix-midfix-suffix" or Stolfa's "crust-mantle-nucleus" model (in fact, this is what some initially thought), however, this is not quite the case. The set of supposed minimal substitution units that I have compiled demonstrates some more dependencies besides the dependencies of position in the word.
I would like to suggest that you look at this from a different angle. If we can easily decompose any word in the manuscript into such minimal units, but at the same time we clearly see that this is not a regular "symbol-symbol" substitution, then we can use regular numbers to help us.
First, I'll add a list of the "letters" I've generated:
1). Single letters: o, d, e*, y, r, l and maybe s,
2). Bigrams: oi, ai(an), or, ol, ar, al, om, am, in, iin, ee (es)*, ch/sh, ir, il, im, qo
3). All gallows and EVA x.
Pay attention to the digrams al-ar and ol-or. Their peculiarity is that in such a combination they repeatedly appear both in words and standing alone. But by swapping the letters (ol-or to lo-ro, al-ar to la-ra), these properties are immediately lost, and the structure of words becomes "more fragmented" (let's take the word for example oralar. It can be decomposed as ol-ar-ar, and as o-la-ra-R. I think you can immediately see the difference between three bigrams and two extra letters around the edges. In addition, there are no words "lara" or "rala" in the manuscript). This remarkable property of bigrams suggests that the letters of the Voynich manuscript are not Latin letters, but numbers.
But if they were Arabic numerals, swapping the digits in a number would result in a different number (for example, 41 becomes 14, 310 becomes 103, and 80 becomes 08), and the meaning would not be lost. However, in the case of digrams, the opposite effect is observed. This already suggests that Voynichese is a cipher based on Roman numerals, as they have the same property: if you take the number 41 = XLI and swap the IXL, you will not get a whole number, as it does not follow the rules of Roman numerals.
This "position effect" manifests itself both at the level of individual semantic units (as in the example with bigrams) and at the level of multiple words and the entire text (this manifests itself in the form of the "prefix-midfix-suffix" pattern). Given the historical context (specifically, the realities of the 15th century, the author's tools, and capabilities), I assume that the Voynich manuscript's cipher is a kind of nomenclature that is additionally encrypted using the letters of an artificially created alphabet (this is not entirely unusual, considering that it was a standard substitution technique for the time, similar to the Theban alphabet), which encrypts both letters and abbreviations.
Why letters and abbreviations?
I came to this conclusion because the list of "letters" I provided is quite flexible. For example, it is easy to see that ch and sh are equivalent (in the sense that words using these letters are almost identical to each other: chey - shey, cheody - sheody, char - shar, chdar - shdar, chckhy - shckhy).
It's not suitable for letters alone, or for abbreviations alone, but it's fine for both.
**
With bigrams, we can conduct a small experiment that shows features that are not typical for substitution. Let's exclude ee(es), ch/sh, and qo from the list. From the remaining list, we can select al-ar and ol-or. We can generate a pair of words by taking a pair like ol-*-in and replacing the asterisk with ai: olaiin, oraiin, and alair. These patterns are not typical for regular substitution, but they align well with the typical numerical cipher-nomenclator. Thus, we should read the words of the manuscript not as words, but as an ordered sequence of numbers, e.g. chey as 50-10-5 (this is not a translation, this just an example of how it might look).
It's inconvenient/impractical/difficult to do!
Maybe that's true, but it's possible, even for the 15th century, plus, given that the manuscript is a product of collective labor, the argument about its bulkiness loses weight, because a group of skilled people would definitely be able to encrypt the text faster than a single person.
It's inconvenient/impractical/difficult to read!
The manuscript is essentially not a work of fiction, but a reference book (all herbals are reference books), which means that the reader does not have to spend time deciphering the entire book. By knowing the key, they can apply it to the relevant pages without any problems.
Apparently, the book was not written for a wide audience (as evidenced by its design and lack of decryption), but for someone who at least knew the key. This suggests that there should have been no difficulties... if the book had fallen into the right hands
.
...And super-highly interested fact...
Let's look at the top right corner of the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. page. In the context of the Roman numeral version, it takes on a new meaning...
[attachment=15909]
Rotate the red symbols 90 degrees to the left, and you will get the Roman numeral 102. Such a bold coincidence, and on the first page... Could this be the key?
P.S. I am not an expert, and what I have written may be complete nonsense. The purpose of this post is not to prove that I am right, but rather to reach out to you, to find out your opinion, and to discuss this version together.
I hope this will help whoever deciphers the Voynich manuscript.
During my independent study of the Voynich manuscript (which took about a year), I came to the conclusion that Voynich is most likely a cipher based on numbers. I am not a cryptology expert, but I will try to explain how I came to this conclusion.
Let's start with what I wrote about in the previous post, which is that the text of the Voynich manuscript (or rather, the mechanism of word formation) is very similar to classical substitution: all words consist of a fixed set of characters and bigrams arranged in a certain order. Here you might think that I am reinventing the wheel, having in mind the concepts of "prefix-midfix-suffix" or Stolfa's "crust-mantle-nucleus" model (in fact, this is what some initially thought), however, this is not quite the case. The set of supposed minimal substitution units that I have compiled demonstrates some more dependencies besides the dependencies of position in the word.
I would like to suggest that you look at this from a different angle. If we can easily decompose any word in the manuscript into such minimal units, but at the same time we clearly see that this is not a regular "symbol-symbol" substitution, then we can use regular numbers to help us.
First, I'll add a list of the "letters" I've generated:
1). Single letters: o, d, e*, y, r, l and maybe s,
2). Bigrams: oi, ai(an), or, ol, ar, al, om, am, in, iin, ee (es)*, ch/sh, ir, il, im, qo
3). All gallows and EVA x.
Pay attention to the digrams al-ar and ol-or. Their peculiarity is that in such a combination they repeatedly appear both in words and standing alone. But by swapping the letters (ol-or to lo-ro, al-ar to la-ra), these properties are immediately lost, and the structure of words becomes "more fragmented" (let's take the word for example oralar. It can be decomposed as ol-ar-ar, and as o-la-ra-R. I think you can immediately see the difference between three bigrams and two extra letters around the edges. In addition, there are no words "lara" or "rala" in the manuscript). This remarkable property of bigrams suggests that the letters of the Voynich manuscript are not Latin letters, but numbers.
But if they were Arabic numerals, swapping the digits in a number would result in a different number (for example, 41 becomes 14, 310 becomes 103, and 80 becomes 08), and the meaning would not be lost. However, in the case of digrams, the opposite effect is observed. This already suggests that Voynichese is a cipher based on Roman numerals, as they have the same property: if you take the number 41 = XLI and swap the IXL, you will not get a whole number, as it does not follow the rules of Roman numerals.
This "position effect" manifests itself both at the level of individual semantic units (as in the example with bigrams) and at the level of multiple words and the entire text (this manifests itself in the form of the "prefix-midfix-suffix" pattern). Given the historical context (specifically, the realities of the 15th century, the author's tools, and capabilities), I assume that the Voynich manuscript's cipher is a kind of nomenclature that is additionally encrypted using the letters of an artificially created alphabet (this is not entirely unusual, considering that it was a standard substitution technique for the time, similar to the Theban alphabet), which encrypts both letters and abbreviations.
Why letters and abbreviations?
I came to this conclusion because the list of "letters" I provided is quite flexible. For example, it is easy to see that ch and sh are equivalent (in the sense that words using these letters are almost identical to each other: chey - shey, cheody - sheody, char - shar, chdar - shdar, chckhy - shckhy).
It's not suitable for letters alone, or for abbreviations alone, but it's fine for both.
**
With bigrams, we can conduct a small experiment that shows features that are not typical for substitution. Let's exclude ee(es), ch/sh, and qo from the list. From the remaining list, we can select al-ar and ol-or. We can generate a pair of words by taking a pair like ol-*-in and replacing the asterisk with ai: olaiin, oraiin, and alair. These patterns are not typical for regular substitution, but they align well with the typical numerical cipher-nomenclator. Thus, we should read the words of the manuscript not as words, but as an ordered sequence of numbers, e.g. chey as 50-10-5 (this is not a translation, this just an example of how it might look).
It's inconvenient/impractical/difficult to do!
Maybe that's true, but it's possible, even for the 15th century, plus, given that the manuscript is a product of collective labor, the argument about its bulkiness loses weight, because a group of skilled people would definitely be able to encrypt the text faster than a single person.
It's inconvenient/impractical/difficult to read!
The manuscript is essentially not a work of fiction, but a reference book (all herbals are reference books), which means that the reader does not have to spend time deciphering the entire book. By knowing the key, they can apply it to the relevant pages without any problems.
Apparently, the book was not written for a wide audience (as evidenced by its design and lack of decryption), but for someone who at least knew the key. This suggests that there should have been no difficulties... if the book had fallen into the right hands
....And super-highly interested fact...
Let's look at the top right corner of the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. page. In the context of the Roman numeral version, it takes on a new meaning...
[attachment=15909]
Rotate the red symbols 90 degrees to the left, and you will get the Roman numeral 102. Such a bold coincidence, and on the first page... Could this be the key?
P.S. I am not an expert, and what I have written may be complete nonsense. The purpose of this post is not to prove that I am right, but rather to reach out to you, to find out your opinion, and to discuss this version together.
I hope this will help whoever deciphers the Voynich manuscript.
