18-01-2025, 09:22 AM
(17-01-2025, 09:50 PM)dashstofsk wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If not in a known language then perhaps in cypher? This seemed to me to be even less plausible and raised a number of questions. The biggest one being why? ( See my post You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ) Also then how could this explain the differences in the language clusters? A and B being the significant ones, both very similar but at the same time both different. Two cypher books? Doubly complicated.
Thank you for providing a detailed answer!
I agree that if this is a cipher, it's unlikely to be a book cipher, exactly for the reason you mentioned. However, I see no problem with this being another kind of cipher after all. The reason for hiding the whole text could have something to do with legal (as in "the Spanish Inquisition") implications if the text or even its topic is disclosed. Writing in an invented script with no plaintext anywhere gives a huge advantage in hiding one's handwriting and giving the option of plausible denial. If the author wrote in normal Latin (Greek, Hebrew, Arabic...) letters, it would be possible to prove the authorship by matching the handwriting. It's much harder to do this if the text is written in a custom script, not used elsewhere. Even letters similar to those of Latin alphabet show very high level of irregularity in Voynichese. I'm not sure this is the right explanation, but I think this could explain both the invented script and the total absence of plaintext. (I'm not sure Latin marginalia is original, and even if so it's certainly possible to adjust one's handwriting for 20-30 words, but certainly not for a book of 240+ pages.)
The difference in language clusters could be as simple as a variation of the underlying cipher.