Some say it is a medieval medical manual written in abbreviated Latin and aimed at well-to-do women. Not true, say others: it was written in Hebrew by an Italian physician and clearly shows Jewish women having ritual baths.
Nonsense, others believe: the text was written in Old Turkish, in a poetic style. Or it may have origins in Old Cornish. Or in the Aztec language of Nahuatl, or in Manchu.
When it comes to the Voynich manuscript, a curious and apparently coded 15th-century document now held in the library of Yale University, perhaps the only thing on which academics, cryptographers and enthusiasts can agree is the depth of its mysteries. The beautifully illustrated text appears to have been written in cyphers representing a real language – but what does it mean?
Now a British academic has claimed the manuscript is a type of therapeutic reference book composed by nuns for Maria of Castile, queen of Aragon, in a lost language known as proto-Romance.
In a peer-reviewed paper published in the journal Romance Studies, Gerard Cheshire, a research associate at the University of Bristol, argues the manuscript is “a compendium of information on herbal remedies, therapeutic bathing and astrological readings” focusing on female physical and mental health, reproduction and parenting.
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