10-01-2026, 05:51 PM
As far as I know, and as I noted earlier, there is no reliable evidence for the claim that the COMPLETE Voynich manuscript (not the existing incomplete one) was, before the process that concluded with its sale to Rudolf II, enigmatic and a puzzle. What is puzzling to me is how the absence of the pages has been treated as a benign event. There is simply no evidential basis for claiming that the Voynich manuscript has been enigmatic for 600 years.
No experts or scholars can scientifically claim that. At best, observers’ documented puzzlements about the manuscript’s date back to late 1500s (so at best we have a 450-year puzzle, that is 2026-1576=450, per its Yale publication chronology). If the manuscript’s provenance timeline is marked “unknown” from 1400s to late 1500s, and it has been established that it was up to some point during that time complete, that means claims made about the enigma of the currently existing incomplete vellum cannot be readily assumed valid for the complete vellum that once existed.
The reason is, nobody can claim to have seen the contents of the missing/removed pages, and it can plausibly be considered that their going missing and being removed was an act of forgery to make the manuscript enigmatic and marketable to a highest bidder. I am surprised Voynich scholars have ignored or underestimated that possibility and treated the missing pages as merely incidental.
However, I am not inclined to believe that the manuscript itself was a forgery from the beginning. It could have been subjected to forgery later as described above and in my earlier post in this thread. And yes, I agree with Proto57’s point that even the vellum’s preparation timeline can start earlier, such as 1365.
Proto57’s point (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) that “… is written on parchment that dates from 1365 through 1497 (but we can help by "adjusting" that inconvenient result through averaging the differing samples, until we have a more believable number)” has merit, in my view principally because we have significant missing pages that are no longer even available to be carbon-tested, and the carbon testing was made on selective pages of the incomplete manuscript existing today, not all of its pages. The curves of the tested pages’ timeline extend to an earlier time than 1405, with less probability, understandably.
The obtaining and using of the vellum could have spanned a wider timeline, some done earlier that could have started even in 1360s, some later, the bulk perhaps falling in the 1405-1438 period. But I would not rule out the possibility that it was even entirely prepared during 1405-1440 while being transferred to vellum from a complete manuscript authored and used in 1300s.
Any modern forgery thesis, if true (which I doubt to the extent being claimed), does not have to assume the original manuscript had been also a forgery.
No experts or scholars can scientifically claim that. At best, observers’ documented puzzlements about the manuscript’s date back to late 1500s (so at best we have a 450-year puzzle, that is 2026-1576=450, per its Yale publication chronology). If the manuscript’s provenance timeline is marked “unknown” from 1400s to late 1500s, and it has been established that it was up to some point during that time complete, that means claims made about the enigma of the currently existing incomplete vellum cannot be readily assumed valid for the complete vellum that once existed.
The reason is, nobody can claim to have seen the contents of the missing/removed pages, and it can plausibly be considered that their going missing and being removed was an act of forgery to make the manuscript enigmatic and marketable to a highest bidder. I am surprised Voynich scholars have ignored or underestimated that possibility and treated the missing pages as merely incidental.
However, I am not inclined to believe that the manuscript itself was a forgery from the beginning. It could have been subjected to forgery later as described above and in my earlier post in this thread. And yes, I agree with Proto57’s point that even the vellum’s preparation timeline can start earlier, such as 1365.
Proto57’s point (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) that “… is written on parchment that dates from 1365 through 1497 (but we can help by "adjusting" that inconvenient result through averaging the differing samples, until we have a more believable number)” has merit, in my view principally because we have significant missing pages that are no longer even available to be carbon-tested, and the carbon testing was made on selective pages of the incomplete manuscript existing today, not all of its pages. The curves of the tested pages’ timeline extend to an earlier time than 1405, with less probability, understandably.
The obtaining and using of the vellum could have spanned a wider timeline, some done earlier that could have started even in 1360s, some later, the bulk perhaps falling in the 1405-1438 period. But I would not rule out the possibility that it was even entirely prepared during 1405-1440 while being transferred to vellum from a complete manuscript authored and used in 1300s.
Any modern forgery thesis, if true (which I doubt to the extent being claimed), does not have to assume the original manuscript had been also a forgery.