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Life

24th Aug 2016

The first ever copies of ‘the world’s most mysterious book’ will soon go on release

Conor Heneghan

We’d love to tell you it’s great but nobody knows what it means.

The first ever copies of the Voynich Manuscript, a 15th century manuscript written in a code that nobody has yet managed to crack, will soon be made available to the public.

If you’ve never heard of it, it shouldn’t come as a surprise because it’s been stored at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library in Yale University for years and has only ever been seen by a handful of people, many of whom it was has managed to drive mad.

According to sciencealert.com, the manuscript is written in a code that scientists have been trying to crack for decades but haven’t yet come even close to doing so.

It also contains illustrations of human beings, plants, animals and other creatures and was suspected by some to have been the work of Leonardo da Vinci, with others believing that it was the handiwork of aliens.

suspicious

Named after Lithuanian Wilfried Voynich, who purchased it from Italian Jesuits in 1912, Spanish publishing house Siloe have been trying to get the publishing rights for the manuscript for years.

They’ve finally succeeded and are set to release exactly 898 copies of the book to the public, for a cool $9,000 (approximately €8,000) per copy, not exactly the type of thing you’d find in an airport bargain bin.

You might think the price would put people off, but there have been nearly 300 pre-orders for it already, despite the fact that its new owners won’t get their hands on it for another 18 months such is the painstaking nature of reproducing the original.

We think we might wait for the movie.

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Topics:

Books,Science