It contains symbolic language that has defied translation by eminent cryptologists. Discovered in an Italian Catholic college in 1912 by a Polish book dealer Wilfrid Voynich, it was eventually bequeathed to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University. The bizarre Voynich Codex has often been referred to as the most mysterious book in the world. In Flora of the Voynich Codex: An Exploration of Aztec Plants (Springer 2019), Tucker and Janick increase the number of identified plants in the Voynich Codex to 166.Unraveling the Voynich Codex reviews the historical, botanical, zoological, and iconographic evidence related to the Voynich Codex, one of the most enigmatic historic texts of all time. Janick and Tucker conclude the Voynich Codex is a compendium of Aztec knowledge that is largely medicinal and herbal but includes information on astronomy, astrology and ritual bathing. Identifying the Voynich manuscript as a New World text gives scholars valuable information about the culture of post-conquest Mexican society that, importantly, is unfiltered by Spanish or Inquisitorial censors. While several words have been deciphered, the full text remains untranslated. The book is written in a symbolic script that some of the world’s most distinguished cryptologists have been unable to decode, but Tucker deciphered the symbols using the Mesoamerican names of labeled plants as the Rosetta Stone.

The authors also identified the illustrator and author based on their initials and names embedded in the first botanical illustration. “Simply put, there is no way a manuscript written on vellum that contains a sunflower and an armadillo could have been written before 1492,” Janick says. The authors viewed specific illustrations as hard proof of a post-Columbian manuscript. Identification of 60 plants and 12 animals indigenous to the New World in the manuscript provided the key to the mystery. Canadian linguist Fernando Moreira and Purdue wildlife ecologist Elizabeth Flaherty also contributed to the book. Tucker, emeritus herbarium director at Delaware State University, have identified the work as a 16th century Mexican manuscript.

Its pages are filled with illustrations of plants, animals, astrological signs, bathing nymphs and symbolic language that has been undecipherable.īut in Unraveling the Voynich Codex (Springer, 2018), Jules Janick, distinguished professor of horticulture, and Arthur O. For years, researchers assumed a work known as the Voynich Codex was a 15th century European manuscript.

Voynich manuscript decoded 2018