Historic cipher mapping

[Mark Knowles]

For me, the logic is the wrong way round, because what's on the left are things we don't know.
I would say:

A knowledge of ciphers of the time is important, because it will give us an insight into whether the Voynich is written in cipher, related to cipher or not.

(Whether or not a map is useful comes after that)

Those are the perspectives that I observe, though I am not saying those perspectives are necessarily the correct ones.

In this area I am completely committed to data collection. I, clearly more than anyone, have been focused on compiling as many examples of ciphers, whether diplomatic or not, used at and around the time from which the Voynich manuscript is dated. I have even gone as far as offering a small reward for any cipher from this period that I am not already aware of. This collecting and compiling of ciphers is an ongoing process and has not finished yet. Unfortunately as archives are not keen to share our European heritage freely I am prevented from making most of the ciphers I have found public; if ciphers are reproduced in a book past its copyright date I think I am free to share them. Hopefully the transcription work that DECODE are doing will allow them to make many ciphers public without breaking the rules of the archives.