Challenge 11: Any coffee table book

Coffee table books serve many a purpose, from decorating a room, completing a motif, providing a means for starting conversation, or just looking cool. They might be massive tomes full of interesting facts and factoids on almost any subject you can think of, or they might be full of vivid pictures, or colorful paintings and drawings. They might be miniature sets of works by your favorite author, maybe a full set of The Hunger Games or Shakespeare tragedies. One thing they all have in common is they have the same intended home, your coffee table. This challenge is an excuse for you to add to or start your own collection of coffee table books. Having an actual coffee table is entirely optional.

The Voynich Manuscript came to attention of the modern world in 1912, when Wilfred Voynich bought it from the Jesuit order. Voynich was a book dealer who grew up in Lithuania, taking part in Russian civil strife and spending years in a penal colony in Siberia. Eventually, with his wife Ethel Boole, author of The Gadfly, he opened a book store in London and began acquiring rare books to study and sell, later opening a shop in New York.

The untitled book, popularly known as The Voynich Manuscript, which currently resides in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University under the name Beinecke MS 408, was a mystery to Voynich. Filled with sketches, charts and tables accompanied by paragraphs of text, it befuddled all who laid eyes on it.

The sketches of plants and roots comprise the majority of the book. Some appear to be real plants, such as Atropa Belladonna(Deadly Nightshade). Others appear to be entirely fantastical. Most sketches have been touched up with color, while some have been left as simple outlines. In the middle are what appear to be charts and sketches that seem to be astrological in nature, including zodiac signage and symbology. Several pages include simplistic sketches of women, frequently grouped in pools of some kind, who seem to be showering and bathing. Some pages fold out to hold illustrations that are several pages wide.

The text itself, many thousands of words, from small paragraphs that go with the sketches and charts, to full, densely packed pages, is completely indecipherable. It matches no known language, current or extinct. It may be some sort of code, but people ranging from scholars to mathematicians to entire organizations like the U.S. Department of Defense, have tried to decipher it without success. While there have been some claims made over the years of successful interpretations, there have never been any agreed upon translations.

Scientists have determined that it was written in the fourteen hundreds, the color was added some time later that century, that the cover has been replaced repeatedly, and that many pages seem to be missing. Speculation on the book's creator includes Franciscan friar and philosopher Roger Bacon, who lived in the thirteenth century, and legendary artist Leonardo da Vinci.

Why? What's the purpose of this strange manuscript? There are as many guesses as there are people interested. Some are convinced it's a coded language, perhaps lost to time, meant for only a few scholars to understand and written in an era when science and knowledge were considered a threat to the church's authority, thus dangerous for anyone to possess. It might have been meant for an herbalist or healer. Others suggest it's nothing more than a elaborate, expertly crafted hoax, an attempt to create a fantastic and mystical item to sell the the highest bidder.

So what do I get out of having my own copy of this strange, indecipherable book filled with odd sketches of plants, charts, and women? Something to look at and and ponder, making my own attempts at understanding what may be forever a mystery. It's also fun to show people and get their opinions and reactions. If you see my copy of this tome displayed on my coffee table, check it out. See if you can solve a puzzle that's proven to be, so far, unsolvable. I would love to talk about it. As for the indecipherable text, I hold out hope that one day a translation will be found and agreed upon. Once in a while we are still amazed when heretofore indecipherable messages are solved, such as a message left by the zodiac killer a few years ago. Interested persons who want a glimpse at the strange book can find a complete scanned version online at here.

D.G.Raymond