Description
Our book is a translation of the first part of the Voynich manuscript. This manuscript is a wonderful 15th century manuscript on wove paper. It owes its name to Wilfrid Voynich, who bought it from the Jesuits in 1912 near Rome. This manuscript is currently in the library of Yale University. The beautiful illustrations and drawings are associated to a long text written in a coded alphabet that had never been deciphered. Evidently illustrations tell us that it is “ a medical” text. By searching for common words, found in electuaries, such as the Theriac: Snake, Valerian, Opium, as well as expressions used by apothecaries: wash - cut – filter- chop, or even the expression “as custom”, that were picked out in the text, we noticed that when written in Greek the alphabetic code could be immediately deciphered. This permitted the translation of the first pages of the manuscript, proposed in English and French, with a glossary giving the Voynich word and its Greek translation. The reader can now continue the laborious translation and discover with us the thoughts of on apothecary and physician of the 15th century, at least his secrete thoughts on biology the zodiac.