An Intoxicating 500-Year-Old Mystery
August 13, 2024 at 04:35PMEven before fare like National Treasure and The Da Vinci Code, uncrackable codes have had a way of attracting the peanut gallery, and the oddity known as The Voynich Manuscript is no exception. Yet, as you learn from Ariel Sabar’s fascinating feature, the spurious interpretations may finally be giving way to progress—spearheaded by the very woman who once prided herself on fending off the would-be Robert Langdons of the world.
But after a couple of years, Davis developed second thoughts about her social-media smackdowns. It was less the hate mail she got from “Voynich bros,” as she called the men who dominated online forums—though that didn’t help. She’d just begun to feel unkind, as though she were punching down at people genuinely inspired by the manuscript’s mysteries. Hadn’t she once been one of them? Her regrets grew after a YouTube channel produced a video of failed Voynich solutions that identified her as “executive director of the Medieval Academy of America and Reigning Queen of Academic Burns.”
If she wanted to dignify the manuscript as worthy of serious scholarship, she realized, she would need to be more than just a critic.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2024/08/13/an-intoxicating-500-year-old-mystery/
via IFTTT
Watch