TheCodeBreakers
Prague) told about . . . book containing nothing but hieroglyphicks,
which book his father bestowed much time upon, but I could not hear
that he could make it out." The comment may refer to this very
manuscript.
This is conjectural, however. What is certain is that Kircher deposited
the manuscript in the Jesuit Collegium Romanum, and that in 1912 an
American rare book dealer named Wilfred Voynich purchased it for an
undisclosed sum from the Jesuit school of Mondragone in Frascati, Italy.
Eager to read the manuscript, Voynich generously supplied
photostats to anyone who seemed likely to solve it. Many tried. Botanists
thought they could read it-by identifying the plants and assuming their
names as probable words; one difficulty here was that most of the flora
were
imaginary. Astronomers recognized stars such as Aldebaran and the
Hyades but could not force a solution. Philologists tried the methods
used for reading lost languages and failed
annaabi.ee 
