![]() ![]() ![]() Since 2017 he has been intensively studying the mysterious Voynich Manuscript, which is being regarded as the most enigmatic script of our time. In this context, he conducts research not only on Egyptian hieroglyphs but also on other ancient scripts and their deciphering. Hannig ranks as an outstanding expert in the ancient Egyptian language and is working for several years now as a scientific advisor for the Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum in Hildesheim. Rainer Hannig has succeeded in deciphering the mysterious Voynich Manuscript, according to a report released by the Roemer-und Pelizaeus-Museum at Hildesheim, Germany. In 2015, Gibbs did an interview where he said that in five years, "I would like to think I could have a returnable series up and running." Considering the dubious accuracy of many History Channel "documentaries," he might just get his wish.After years of research, the renowned Egyptologist Prof. Gibbs said in the TLS article that he did his research for an unnamed "television network." Given that Gibbs' main claim to fame before this article was a series of books about how to write and sell television screenplays, it seems that his goal in this research was probably to sell a television screenplay of his own. Essentially, Gibbs rolled together a bunch of already-existing scholarship and did a highly speculative translation, without even consulting the librarians at the institute where the book resides. Many scholars and amateur sleuths had already reached that conclusion, using the same evidence that Gibbs did. The idea that the book is a medical treatise on women's health, however, might turn out to be correct. Unfortunately, he has no evidence for such an index, other than the fact that the book does have a few missing pages. Davis noted that a big part of Gibbs' claim rests on the idea that the Voynich Manuscript once had an index that would provide a key to the abbreviations. It doesn’t result in Latin that makes sense." She added, "Frankly I’m a little surprised the TLS published it.If they had simply sent to it to the Beinecke Library, they would have rebutted it in a heartbeat." The Beinecke Library at Yale is where the Voynich Manuscript is currently kept. Medieval Academy of America director Lisa Fagin Davis told The Atlantic's Sarah Zhang, "They’re not grammatically correct. However, this isn't sitting well with people who actually read medieval Latin. He provided two lines of translation from the text to "prove" his point. In his article, Gibbs claimed that he'd figured out the Voynich Manuscript was a women's health manual whose odd script was actually just a bunch of Latin abbreviations. The weirdly-illustrated 15 th century book has been the subject of speculation and conspiracy theories since its discovery in 1912. Personally I object to his interpretation of abbreviations." As Harvard's Houghton Library curator of early modern books John Overholt put it on Twitter, "We're not buying this Voynich thing, right?" Medievalist Kate Wiles, an editor at History Today, replied, "I've yet to see a medievalist who does. ![]() Further Reading The mysterious Voynich manuscript has finally been decoded As soon as Gibbs' article hit the Internet, news about it spread rapidly through social media ( we covered it at Ars too), arousing the skepticism of cipher geeks and scholars alike. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |