Turkic Research Home Page

What is Voynich?

Voynich is the name given to a historical manuscript. The manuscript is named after an antiquarian named Voynich (the seller of old and rare books) as he claimed he found it. This manuscript is around 600 years old (1404-1438) and consists of about 240 pages. The writing consists of coding and plain text sections, and the plain text sections are read from left to right, while the coded sections are read by first letters of every line from top to bottom. The coded chapters and the content have been read for the first time due to the ATA alphabet transcription we made, and as we understand from the read chapters, we can say that the manuscript was written before 1453. Today, the original manuscript is found in the library of rare books and manuscripts at Yale University in the United States.

Although this manuscript is related and known by the name of the antiquarian who found it in Europe, we prefer to call the manuscript the ATA Manuscript, as we will disclose our unfortunate discoveries behind the acquisition of the manuscript. In other words, we have strong reason to believe Voynich was a thief, and naming such an artifact after him would be a disservice to history. Yet, more on that later.

ATA Transcription and Author’s Language

The alphabet in which the manuscript was written has never been found before. We have prepared a transcription for this alphabet and called it ATA Transcription. It is possible to read this manuscript in Turkish using this transcription. It has not yet been possible to clarify exactly which of specific Turkish dialects spoken today (or closest one) the author employed. This subject should be further examined by professionals in the field of linguists. Our current conclusion is that the author’s dialect is a mixture of Anatolian, Azerbaijani, and Uzbek as it is congruent to all three. Another possibility is that the Turkish dialect used by the author is one of the dialects that are no longer employed / forgotten today. Since this field is open to linguistic commentary, we will refer to the author's language in the manuscript and in our publications as Turkish and-or Turkic. On this website, you can find our work regarding this manuscript and the disclosure of our (ATA) transcription, as well as various studies of past Turkish dialects to serve as examples.

If you would like to contribute to your reading, you can use the ATA alphabet transcription we have published here. In order to contribute to these readings, you can submit your findings, suggestions and opinions via creating an account with our website.

Pages

You can view the original pages of this manuscript in the library of rare books and manuscripts in Beinecke (Yale University Beinecke Rare Book Manuscript Library).
Some of the pages of the ATA manuscript have been lost over time, and we believe that these missing pages have been deliberately torn by Voynich and-or some of his business associates, as they contained Ottoman stamps between random pages to signify who and which library they belonged to.
You can learn more about it in our book. From time to time, we will also share the pages of ATA writing (which have been translated into both today's Turkish and English) on this platform.
You can also find details about how these translations are made in our book. In addition, if you would like to contribute your full-page readings, you can contact us through the “contact” section to submit your findings and-or suggestions.

Sentences

You can find the sentence readings we made using the ATA alphabet transcription on this page as well as from our books and articles. You may also find our notes on how these readings are made and how the sentences should be examined throughout our publications. Using this platform, we will also try to update or announce our new discoveries as often as possible. ATA alphabet transcription allows the reader to make different readings since some of the text marks are coded to correspond to multiple sound values, as the author does not prefer to write some information explicitly in this manuscript. This will become more evident upon reading our further explanations. Although appearing superficially easy to manipulate, such permutations in fact create more words and only make the transcription harder translate. It is possible these permutations (which can be interpreted in more than one way) have created different words that give meaningful results with multiple possibilities.

Idioms

If you are a person who knows the Turkish language, you will see some words in the ATA manuscript that have not been in any Turkish dictionary so far, yet you will immediately understand their meaning.
Likewise, there are idioms you will encounter for the first time in this writing.
We also think that some of these idioms may be ones explained by us for the first time, as they have never been shown in a Turkish language dictionary or study.
Some of the figures of speech might be idioms that were popular during the author’s time, or they might be artificially created by the author; nevertheless, we do not know.
If you encounter new idioms while reading the manuscript, please share with us by submitting your inquiries.

Words

Currently, we have read just over 600 different words in manuscript. Since we do our work in our spare time, the progress is incremental. However, as the studies continue, the number of words read increase. All the words found are (and will continue to be) alphabetically presented and updated. Some words that no longer appear in modern dictionaries are defined etymologically, as the root is isolated and defined separately. However, approximately 20% to 21% of the words found in the manuscript are still used today with practically no variation in definition or phonetic values. Since the author, as a traveler, made a trip (from today's Italy to Istanbul) we believe that the author knows some regional languages in the lands he traveled upon. Thus, languages such as Latin and Greek may have been occasionally employed. In addition, the author would probably know the Arabic and Persian languages as many literate Ottoman citizens at that time did, and therefore it would be useful for those who know these languages to try to make word readings based on the ATA alphabet transcription we made. You can share the words you read with us on this page.