Shades of Eco. I want it to be a lot older than R. Bacon - a salvaged encyclopedia of the ancient world, prized by Ptolemy, saved from the fire that destroyed the library at Alexandria. With a forward by Abraham.

IT'S A DAMN COOKBOOK!!!

Yeah, that's what I was thinking... Eco is the one you want to talk to about something like this.

All I know is: I'm integrating this into my Call of Cthulhu game, pronto.

It's a lot like Codex Seraphinianus--lots of enigmatic illustrations and an indecipherable script.

Sounds very "Alias". Let's hope that scroll doesn't fall into the wrong hands.

The Voynich is fun. I have a copy - some of the pages are really beautiful. If you look on the net you can find Voynich fonts, transcriptions, even some purported solutions.

But in the grand scheme of scholarship the Voynich is a sideshow. Turns out there are hundreds of manuscripts from this era that we do know how to read, but no one has had time to translate. The Voynich is more interesting as a crypto puzzle. Given how much attention has been paid to it without a solution it might very well be a fraud, albeit a fairly well constructed one.

If you like the Eco / Alias angle, read up on John Dee. http://www.johndee.org/ Amazing scientist (come to think of it, maybe Rimbaldi is modelled on him.) He wrote books of revelations from angels (Enochian) that some folks say look like the Voynich.

i was looking at the pictures and realized that it could be seen more properly in a mirror. The text is backwards. Anybody get that?

You could do all the Glozel stuff at the same time. Laundry list my arse.

My understanding is that the Voynich manuscript is not open to standard cryptographic analysis (note: I am not a cryptographer!). All previous attempts have not only failed, they've failed to even find a hint of an opening. AFAIK, the language in Voynich has a very low entropy, found only in Polynesian languages. Since it's clearly not of Polynesian origin, it is probably a made up language or semi-language. And the problem with completely unknown languages is they can't really be cracked. You need a Rosetta stone, or at least some known word (like a picture of a cat labelled "cat" in Voynichese). It's a really fascinating subject!

Language, like religion, is man made. Both
are without meaning, less there is a key to opening
the doors of understanding, whether by spiritual or linguistic roots. Perhaps, these manuscripts are
just a silence.