Since its official discovery in 1912, the Voynich Manuscript has been dubbed “the most mysterious book” to ever exist. The pamphlet, consisting of over 250 pages, held sections referring to herbal recipes, astrological calculations, and drawings of nymph-like women. What captivated experts for years was the fact that it was written in an unknown language, and until recently, despite its best attempts to be deciphered, it couldn’t be. Furthermore, the plants in the book were initially sought as a site for decoding the language – however, the only plant recognizable on the manuscript was of coriander. Recently, a father and his sons in Turkey discovered that the language was actually an ancient, poetically-written, phonetic way of writing Old Turkish. The discovery was made after they created a computer algorithm to analyze and cross-reference patterns of the manuscript with those of other languages – the father, Ahmet Ardic, is also a hobbyist in studying languages. The Ata Team was established by the Voynich Manuscript Research facility and the Turkish government, and over 30% of the book has been deciphered and translated. The book is currently being stored at the Yale Library for special books.

Check out some of the released translations of the book on Yale’s catalog. I highly recommend the video released by the Voynich Manuscript Research Project for more information!