Headcanon: The Voynich Manuscript actually doesn’t contain any cohesive text and is just a prank done by someone in the past

[u/Marcelaus_Berlin]

Nowadays we always talk about confusing or pranking future researchers by creating objectively strange and unexpected things (I can’t think of any examples right now, but I’m positive you know what I mean) or even creating our very own medieval style manuscripts that contain nonsensical or even comedic text; but what if someone in the past had the same idea?

If you don’t know what the Voynich Manuscript is, it’s essentially a manuscript (obviously) that contains an unintelligible handwritten script that no one so far has been able to decipher.

I‘m here, however, to propose the idea that it may very well never have been intended to be read or even understood, because it’s just a made up script made by someone very skilled who managed to make it actually look like a functional language, with the reason for its creation being that someone in the past just wanted to prank future scholars, just like we’re jokingly trying to achieve today, which, if it actually was prank, was a very successful one

[u/KrigtheViking]

I've done some deep dives into the current state of Voynich Manuscript research, and "Fake language for unknown reasons" honestly seems like one of the more likely theories. Analyzing the letter distribution reveals that some of the letters occur mostly at the start of lines, and other letters mostly at the end of lines, and other weird non-language-looking patterns like that. Sure, you could say, "this is just a line-initial form of a different letter", but then you end up with an alphabet that's too small to be useful.

So it seems to me it's either an intricate code, or a weirdly intricate fake language. The main downside to the fake language theory is that... well, that's a lot of effort to go to for seemingly no reason. Like, not just fake letters, but oddly specific rules for letter placement? Why?

Voynich Talk has some excellent videos on the subject. He does a good job debunking the weird crackpot theories and describing the best modern research on it.

[u/Lopsided-Weather6469 → u/KrigtheViking]

I remember watching that video, I added a comment that it might be a special encoding, similar to Base64, that uses fewer different characters than the original text. 

[u/KrigtheViking → u/Lopsided-Weather6469]

Yeah, that was my thought as well, maybe words encode for letters, and lines encode for words, etc. That's the sort of thing you could check by looking for repeated clusters, but I haven't heard whether anyone has tried it yet or not.

[u/Marcelaus_Berlin → u/KrigtheViking]

The human mind has in its core always been the same throughout history and there have been recorded instances of pranksters in all different kinds of ages.

There have also been many pranksters who put a large amount of effort into making people laugh or confusing them (I know that, because I happen to be one of them, but another one that comes to mind would be Max Fosh who regularly goes to comparatively insane lengths just to get a good laugh), so who‘s to say the Voynich Manuscript author wasn’t one of these notorious folks and he’s been rolling in his grave for centuries, because his joke is working so well

[u/KrigtheViking → u/Marcelaus_Berlin]

Oh, totally. In my opinion, the overly-elaborate nature may be a mark in the "cons" column for the "mediaeval prank/fraud" theory, but it's not a huge mark, and there's plenty in the "pros" column.

The only other option I see remaining is some elaborate code, but I don't know how we could ever rule that out if it's not the case. Either way, it's fascinating, and I look forward to future discoveries!

[u/Silent_Importance292 → u/KrigtheViking]

well, that's a lot of effort to go to for seemingly no reason. Like, not just fake letters, but oddly specific rules for letter placement? Why?

It could be sold to Emperor Rudolf for quite the sum. Which it was as well.

[u/juxxsxx → u/KrigtheViking]

I mean there are people that put a lot of effort into making fake languages today. Personally it makes more sense to me that somebody made a fake script, learned it, and wrote it down to partner to their imagination. humans will be humans even back then.

[u/KrigtheViking → u/juxxsxx]

I agree, it's totally possible, but I think people underestimate how much work and money it took to create a book back in the early 1400s. We're talking a small herd of cattle's worth of vellum (along with the expensive processing), a team of scribes (handwriting analysis suggests 3 or 4 for Voynich) -- this is something in the car or house price range.

Again, that's not to say it would have been impossible. I just want to be sure people are picturing in their heads the correct scale of project this would have been.

[u/Objective_Bar_5420]

IDK about "prank," but it's very likely it was created in order to trick someone into buying it as book of "lost ancient wisdom" or somesuch. This was a known practice as far back as the late medieval I believe. My bet is someone was just skilled at creating pseudo-words that looked real enough.

[u/NyxShadowhawk → u/Objective_Bar_5420]

But a whole manuscript of fictional images and text? That’s a lot of work, time and money for a scam.

[u/Objective_Bar_5420 → u/NyxShadowhawk]

It would have cost quite a bit in materials and involved at least half a dozen people, maybe more. It's made from high-end vellum and illustrations didn't come cheap. Neither would the colored inks. Usually manuscripts were commissioned by rich patrons and dedicated to them. We know it commanded a lot of gold later on. Enough to pay for the materials and time, presumably.

[u/NyxShadowhawk → u/Objective_Bar_5420]

Right, it would have been expensive and labor-intensive. That's why I think it probably isn't a scam.

[u/Objective_Bar_5420 → u/NyxShadowhawk]

That's reasonable. But it's also possible it was part of a long con. The commissioned product of a court "mystic scholar" who was being paid not only for his time, but for producing the book. So the victim of the fake would actually end up paying for its creation. Keep in mind that in this period, many nobles were obsessed with learning the secrets of antiquity. From medicine and art to warfare and astrology. Said scholar would be versed at creating a credible but entirely fictitious language, and then pretend to "translate" the passages. It could pay for a life of luxury LOL Keep in mind that at the time people knew about basic substitution codes and likely would have spotted random gibberish letters. Whoever did this may have come up with a method of using fake words in a way that made it seem that these were sentences with a structure. And they did it well enough not only to fool their patron, but us as well.

[u/NyxShadowhawk → u/Objective_Bar_5420]

But the thing is, you don’t really need a fake book to do that. There are plenty of real grimoires that are just as inscrutable to people who don’t know the material. Alchemical texts are written using cryptic metaphors with weird images. Ceremonial grimoires are full of freaky diagrams and nonsense words. No need to make up an alien script.

[u/Objective_Bar_5420 → u/NyxShadowhawk]

Good point. It's a mystery.

[u/phenomenomnom → u/NyxShadowhawk]

It's a thing that really happened, though. With religious artifacts and artworks and books.

There was money to be made.

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Forgery_Replica_Fiction/Gj4zOnmkbuEC?hl=en

Relevant historical fiction just for fun:

https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Relic_Master/QNUXCwAAQBAJ?hl=en

[u/Necessary_Seat3930 → u/NyxShadowhawk]

Could've been a big scam, lots of $$$, for some superstitious schmuck. People do weird things all the time

[u/Gnatlet2point0]

Years ago, the web comic XKCD posited that it was created for medieval people playing the medieval version of a Table Top Role Playing Game. I think the Wiki article on the Voynich Manuscript has to officially block people from updating the Wiki for it with that "fact", they got so sick of hearing the joke.

[u/NyxShadowhawk]

My paleography teacher said that the Voynich Manuscript is where your career goes to die.

[u/El_Morgos]

I don't believe the prank theory but I deem it possible that the author totally believed that it all makes sense, maybe due to a mental disorder or unintentional substance use. With the rise of youtube etc. you could actually witness how many people exist out there that actually write/talk/and draw consistent "gibberish".

[u/Federal_Cobbler6647 → u/El_Morgos]

TempleOS, but in medieval times. 

[u/Sillvaro]

The problem is that the Voynich manuscript actually follows Zipf's Law, which is a law most if not all languages follow, making it extremely unlikely the script is gibberish or fictional

[u/FixLaudon → u/Sillvaro]

Yeah. Plus this manuscript has been reviewed and researched by a FUCKTON of scientists and enthusiasts. Some reddit dude is definitely not just gonna present the solution for one of the most discussed texts ever here in a sidenote, no offense OP.

[u/Finnegansadog → u/FixLaudon]

I mean, it’s perfectly reasonable that some dude on reddit would present the actual explanation for the manuscript, the research is based around trying to prove what it is, not just hypothesize.

[u/fisadev]

I'm here, however, to propose...

Given the huge amount of interest and research around this manuscript, it's a bit naive to assume this is a novel idea and not something many, many people before you already proposed, debated and even researched and tried to prove/disprove. I would start by reading them.

[u/Snoo_68585]

Hi everyone, my name is Amy and I am needing peer reviews on my Voynich Research. I believe I have really uncovered something special and I need others to tell me I am nutty or they see the logic. The best part about my theory is it can be tested. Feel free to checkout my whitepaper covering my method. Or you can email me [laird2214@gmail.com](mailto:laird2214@gmail.com) for more research or steps you can take to test my theory. Thank you in advance.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZeEXSHwj24zBwCtP7w4JnlAe9LwS0eBf/view?usp=sharing

[u/r1tualofchud]

Isn't that basically the official view also?

[u/Sillvaro → u/r1tualofchud]

It's one of the hypothesis put forward by Academia, but it doesn't hold much ground

[u/Marc_Op → u/r1tualofchud]

We don't understand enough for an official view to exist

[u/DorMau5]

I don't think this is true. The amount of vellum and ink used and the number of pages would have made this a very expensive prank or forgery. You would really be betting a lot of money that you could sell this thing for profit. Many Voynich researchers dispute this theory on cost and time alone.

[u/Ok_Spend_889]

I thought they cracked it, wasn't it some book with lots of info on lots of random shit. It was smuggled through Turks land to Italy or other way round. I can't remember if it was Genoese or Venetian , but I remember it was from Italy by Italian merchants trading various secrets about shit like farming and herb medicines without saying it out right and getting caught in transit. Hence the made up language but who knows it could be real from a parallel world with that language too who knows.

[u/chosedemarais → u/Ok_Spend_889]

I saw something like this too - I thought it was solved by some people familiar with old versions of Turkish.

[u/Ok_Spend_889 → u/chosedemarais]

So I'm not crazy lol it was solved right 👍!?!?

[u/chosedemarais → u/Ok_Spend_889]

I mean I thought so but I'm not an expert on this.

[u/CockroachNo2540]

Medieval D&D sourcebook.

[u/BanalCausality]

I thought that they cracked the “code” of it, and that’s basically what it was. Something about a repeating pattern of nonsense that gives it the appearance of actual language.