Projects:2015s1-31 Cracking the Voynich manuscript code

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Introduction

Team

Supervisors

Honours Students

Project Information

Background

The Voynich Manuscript is a document written in an unknown script that has been carbon dated back to the early 15th century [1] and believed to be created within Europe [2]. Named after Wilfrid Voynich, whom purchased the folio in 1912, the manuscript has become a well-known mystery within linguistics and cryptology. It is divided into several different section based on the nature of the drawings [3]. These sections are:

  • Herbal
  • Astronomical
  • Biological
  • Cosmological
  • Pharmaceutical
  • Recipes

The folio numbers and examples of each section are outlined in appendix section A.2. In general, the Voynich Manuscript has fallen into three particular hypotheses [4]. These are as follows:

  • Cipher Text: The text is encrypted.
  • Plain Text: The text is in a plain, natural language that is currently unidentified.
  • Hoax: The text has no meaningful information.

Note that the manuscript may fall into more than one of these hypotheses [4]. It may be that the manuscript is written through steganography, the concealing of the true meaning within the possibly meaningless text.

Technical Background

The vast majority of the project relies on a technique known as data mining. Data mining is the process of taking and analysing a large data set in order to uncover particular patterns and correlations within said data thus creating useful knowledge [6]. In terms of the project, data shall be acquired from the Interlinear Archive, a digital archive of transcriptions from the Voynich Manuscript, and other sources of digital texts in known languages. Data mined from the Interlinear Archive will be tested and analysed for specific linguistic properties using varying statistical methods.

The Interlinear Archive, as mentioned, will be the main source of data in regards to the Voynich Manuscript. It has been compiled to be a machine readable version of the Voynich Manuscript based on transcriptions from various transcribers. Each transcription has been translated into the European Voynich Alphabet (EVA). An example of the archive in EVA and the corresponding text within the Voynich Manuscript can be seen within the appendix section A.3. The EVA itself can be seen within appendix section A.4.

Aim

The aim of the project is to determine possible features and relationships of the Voynich Manuscript using statistical methods that can be used to aid in the investigation of unknown languages and linguistics. It is not to fully decode or understand the Voynich Manuscript itself. This outcome would be beyond excellent but is unreasonable to expect in a single year project.

Motivation

The project shall attempt to find relationships and patterns within unknown text through the usage of known statistical methods on languages and linguistics. The Voynich Manuscript is a prime candidate for this as there is no known accepted translations of any part within the document. The relationships found can be used to verify the statistical methods and also be used to conclude on specific features of the unknown language(s) within the Voynich Manuscript.

Knowledge produced from the relationships and patterns of languages and linguistics can be used to further the current linguistic computation and encryption/decryption technologies of today [5].

Significance

There are many computational linguistic and encryption/decryption technologies that are in use today. As mentioned in section 1.3, knowledge produced from this research can help advance these technologies in a range of different applications [5]. These include, but are not limited to, information retrieval systems, search engines, machine translators, automatic summarizers, and social networks [5].

Particular technologies, that are widely used today, that can benefit from the research, include:

  • Turn-It-In (Authorship/Plagiarism Detection)
  • Google (Search Engines)
  • Google Translate (Machine Runnable Language Translations)

Approach

Deliverables

Future Pathways

Resources

  • Standard University Computers
    • MATLAB Computing Environment
    • C++ Programming Language
    • BASH Scripts
  • Electronic Voynich Transcriptions
  • Universal Declaration of Human Rights in various languages
  • Various electronic English texts

Further Project Information

References

[1] D. Stolte, “Experts determine age of book 'nobody can read',” 10 February 2011. [Online]. Available: http://phys.org/news/2011-02-experts-age.html. [Accessed 12 March 2015].

[2] S. Reddy and K. Knight, “What We Know About The Voynich Manuscript,” LaTeCH '11 Proceedings of the 5th ACL-HLT Workshop on Language Technology for Cultural Heritage, Social Sciences, and Humanities, pp. 78-86, 2011.

[3] G. Landini, “Evidence Of Linguistic Structure In The Voynich Manuscript Using Spectral Analysis,” Cryptologia, pp. 275-295, 2001.

[4] A. Schinner, “The Voynich Manuscript: Evidence of the Hoax Hypothesis,” Cryptologia, pp. 95-107, 2007.

[5] D. R. Amancio, E. G. Altmann, D. Rybski, O. N. Oliveira Jr. and L. d. F. Costa, “Probing the Statistical Properties of Unknown Texts: Application to the Voynich Manuscript,” PLoS ONE 8(7), vol. 8, no. 7, pp. 1-10, 2013.

[6] S. Chakrabarti, M. Ester, U. Fayyad, J. Gehrke, J. Han, S. Morishita, G. Piatetsky-Shapiro and W. Wang, “Data Mining Curriculum: A Proposal (Version 1.0),” 12 April 2015. [Online]. Available: http://www.kdd.org/curriculum/index.html.

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