{"id":19,"date":"2013-07-10T19:24:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-10T23:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bibliowonk.com\/wp\/?p=19"},"modified":"2014-05-23T12:37:35","modified_gmt":"2014-05-23T16:37:35","slug":"the-voynich-manuscript-and-fakery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bibliowonk.com\/?p=19","title":{"rendered":"The Voynich Manuscript and Fakery"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Update 10\/14\/2013 See comment below.] The latest New Yorker has an article<\/a> about the Voynich manuscript by Reed Johnson. The article helpfully reviews the provenance (some of it possibly putative) as well as the modern history and reception of the very strange manuscript.<\/p>\n

In one throw-away line, Johnson notes that some people have questioned whether the manuscript is as ancient as claimed:<\/p>\n

<\/blockquote>\n

The hoax hypothesis can\u2019t be ruled out. But if the Voynich is a fake, it\u2019s an elaborate one. A twentieth-century scam artist would have to have located a hundred and twenty sheets of blank six-hundred-year-old vellum in anticipation of the invention of radiocarbon dating (which did not yet exist when the manuscript first re\u00ebmerged, in 1912).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This reasoning strikes me as naive. By the early twentieth century, some art forgers were certainly using antique materials (not in expectation of radiocarbon dating, but in expectation of trying to fool better trained experts), and the use of such old materials and old techniques was far more common in the 1920s. Eric Hebborn’s Art Forger’s Handbook<\/i>, while slender on history, is very suggestive about the overlap between early art restoration and forgery–indeed some early 20th C restorers tried their hand at outright faking. (I’m ignoring the question of whether the manuscript’s code <\/i>is medieval or modern, which is a major buttress to it authenticity in Johnson’s reasoning–but, frankly, that evidence could be argued either way, as the “Hoax” section of Wikipedia<\/a> suggests.)<\/p>\n

In terms of provenance, the descent sketched by Johnson has some gaps, and the overall provenance could go either way, but the romantic story about Rudolph II makes me a bit suspicious. It sounds a little too good (to be true) and while the story might have been tarted up by Voynich to sell the manuscript, it wouldn’t surprise me that an anonymous forger used the story and references to create this minor masterpiece that still excites the fancy of writers and laypeople.<\/p>\n

The Unread: The Mystery of the Voynich Manuscript<\/b><\/a> (New Yorker<\/i>, July 9, 2013)<\/p>\n

(update: fixed some typos. Update 10\/14\/2013 update for comments)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Update 10\/14\/2013 See comment below.] The latest New Yorker has an article about the Voynich manuscript by Reed Johnson. The article helpfully reviews the provenance (some of it possibly putative) as well as the modern history and reception of the very strange manuscript. In one throw-away line, Johnson notes that some people have questioned whether… Continue reading The Voynich Manuscript and Fakery<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71,180],"tags":[360,405,234],"class_list":["post-19","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fakes","category-provenance","tag-fakes","tag-provenance","tag-voynich-manuscript","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bibliowonk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bibliowonk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bibliowonk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bibliowonk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bibliowonk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/bibliowonk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":362,"href":"http:\/\/bibliowonk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions\/362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bibliowonk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bibliowonk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bibliowonk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}