Page 78 - EXPOTIME!Sept2017

Fakes and forgeries — Illicit traffic of looted heritage Fakes and forgeries — Illicit traffic of looted heritage

Christian Mueller-Straten

The "Voynich manuscript" and its oddities

Until today, the so-called Voynich manuscript, which was Eamon Duffy thought it almost impossible that such a
alledly found by the antiquarian M. Voynich in 1912 and large amount of unused parchment would have lasted
has been a gift of the antiquarian Hans P. Kraus to the from the 15 century to the 20 century. Its scripture
th
th
1
Beinecke Books and Manuscript Library of Yale Universi- and illustrations can not be decoded, do not make sense
ty, is still undecipherable. Its content can be found in the to the present, can not be attributed to any author, to
internet and as an artful reprint for 10,000 €. The parch- any religion, nor to the well-known alchemical models
ment used was dated by C tests in 2009 to the period (although, at first glance, it looks like them). The manu-
2
14
between 1404 and 1438. This, of course, does not mean script contains more than 130 plant illustrations, but it is
automatically that the so-called Voynich manuscript is no herbarium: the botanical figures are all fictive, except
actually that old. However, the Irish-British historian for one or two possibly identified. Strikingly often, naked

Example pages (quire 6) from the so-
called "Voynich manuscript". Source:
http://www.voynich.nu/folios.html

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EXPOTIME!, issue August/September 2017