500 Years Earlier: Person #1: Forsooth! I concoct an elixer of courage.
VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT XKCD FULL
Cueball: Just imagine someone found a book from our time, full of lists, illustrations, tables, and long, dry descriptions of nonexistent worlds written in an invented language. Obvious? Linguists and cryptographers have been stumped for decades. Megan: It could be a hoax, a lost language, a cipher, an alien text, glossolatia - no one knows. It's some kind of visual encyclopedia of imaginary plants and undeciphered "recipes". Transcript Megan: This is the Voynich manuscript- a book, allegedly 500 years old, written in an unrecognized script. He then unexpectedly goes on to suggest the prosaic activity of playing Druids and Dicotyledons, assuming such a game could be defined by the manuscript. Rigorous security rules now only allow carefully controlled access to materials under video surveillance, thus Cueball's reaction upon realizing Megan has somehow gotten her hands on the original manuscript. The reference to the real plant Wolfsbane could also be a reference to another invented world, as it is memorably mentioned in the first book of the Harry Potter series.Īfter concluding this, a shocked Cueball then asks in the title text how Megan got her hands on the original manuscript, which is in the Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. They speak in a somewhat outdated English. In the last panel the book is used, 500 years ago, to play a game similar to Dungeons and Dragons. That it is this obvious was again stated when the manuscript was referenced in 1501: Mysteries. Tolkien invented several languages of which Sindarin (Grey elvish), and Quenya (High elvish), are the most famous.Īfter being shown the manuscript for the first time by Megan, Cueball argues that it should be obvious that it's just an ancient role-playing-game rulebook, since the human tendency to invent fantastical worlds must have also existed in the past. The invented language is probably a reference to The Lord of the Rings in which author J. Tabletop role-playing games (such as Dungeons and Dragons) are fantasy games with extremely detailed descriptions of fantastical worlds. A cut out from the book is depicted in the first frame (real or similar). Over the past few decades, linguists and cryptographers have unsuccessfully attempted to decode the book. The Voynich manuscript is a very detailed book written in an unknown script, describing plants and recipes, most of which lack a real-world analogue. Title text: Wait, is that the ORIGINAL voynich manuscript? Where did you GET that? Wanna try playing a round of Druids and Dicotyledons?