The Curse of the Voynich PDF Download

Author: Nicholas Pelling
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780955316005
Category : Ciphers
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
For hundreds of years, the bizarre Voynich Manuscript has been the subject of intrigue and fascination. In this book, leading Voynich researcher Nick Pelling strips away the veils of deception to reveal the secret history of this mystery, looking at the people, the places and the politics behind this 'elegant enigma'.

Author: Wilfrid Voynich
Publisher: e-artnow
ISBN: 8087664191
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
This ebook is the complete reproduction of the preserved Voynich Manuscript, formatted for high resolution color ebook reader displays. The Voynich manuscript, also known as "the world's most mysterious manuscript", is a work which dates to the early 15th century, possibly from northern Italy. It is named after the book dealer Wilfrid Voynich, who purchased it in 1912. Much of the manuscript resembles herbal manuscripts of the time period, seeming to present illustrations and information about plants and their possible uses for medical purposes. However, most of the plants do not match known species, and the manuscript's script and language remain unknown and unreadable. Possibly some form of encrypted ciphertext, the Voynich manuscript has been studied by many professional and amateur cryptographers, including American and British codebreakers from both World War I and World War II. As yet, it has defied all decipherment attempts, becoming a cause célèbre of historical cryptology. The mystery surrounding it has excited the popular imagination, making the manuscript a subject of both fanciful theories and novels. None of the many speculative solutions proposed over the last hundred years has yet been independently verified. Illustrations: The illustrations of the manuscript shed little light on the precise nature of its text but imply that the book consists of six "sections", with different styles and subject matter. Except for the last section, which contains only text, almost every page contains at least one illustration. Following are the sections and their conventional names: Herbal: Each page displays one plant (sometimes two) and a few paragraphs of text—a format typical of European herbals of the time. Some parts of these drawings are larger and cleaner copies of sketches seen in the "pharmaceutical" section. None of the plants depicted is unambiguously identifiable. Astronomical: Contains circular diagrams, some of them with suns, moons, and stars, suggestive of astronomy or astrology. One series of 12 diagrams depicts conventional symbols for the zodiacal constellations (two fish for Pisces, a bull for Taurus, a hunter with crossbow for Sagittarius, etc.). Each of these has 30 female figures arranged in two or more concentric bands. Most of the females are at least partly naked, and each holds what appears to be a labeled star or is shown with the star attached by what could be a tether or cord of some kind to either arm. The last two pages of this section (Aquarius and Capricornus, roughly January and February) were lost, while Aries and Taurus are split into four paired diagrams with 15 women and 15 stars each. Some of these diagrams are on fold-out pages. Biological: A dense continuous text interspersed with figures, mostly showing small naked women, some wearing crowns, bathing in pools or tubs connected by an elaborate network of pipes, some of them strongly reminiscent of body organs. Cosmological: More circular diagrams, but of an obscure nature. This section also has foldouts; one of them spans six pages and contains a map or diagram, with nine "islands" or "rosettes" connected by "causeways" and containing castles, as well as what may possibly be a volcano. Pharmaceutical: Many labeled drawings of isolated plant parts (roots, leaves, etc.); objects resembling apothecary jars, ranging in style from the mundane to the fantastical; and a few text paragraphs. Recipes: Many short paragraphs, each marked with a flower- or star-like "bullet".

Author: Nick Pelling
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134447132
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
Providing essays, sources with questions and worked answers, together with background to each topic within Irish history, Nick Pelling provides a good foundational text for the study of Anglo-Irish relations. For centuries the relationship between Ireland and England has been difficult. Anglo-Irish Relations, 1798–1922 explores the tempestuous events from Wolfe Tone's failed rising to Michael Collins's arguably more successful effort, culminating in the controversial Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921. Classic struggles between key figures, such as O'Connell and Peel, Parnell and Gladstone, and Lloyd George and Michael Collins, are discussed and analyzed. The deeper issues about the nature of British Imperial rule and the diversity of Irish nationalism are also examined, highlighting the historiographical debate surrounding the so-called 'revisionist' view.

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781626542167
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
A facsimile of an object of unknown authorship that has been the source of study and speculation for centuries and remains undecipherable to this day.

Author: Richard Newsome
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1921961287
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
Gerald Wilkins, the world's youngest billionaire, is about to get more than he expected for Christmas. Gerald, Ruby and Sam are meeting up with Alisha and Gerald's Australian school friend Ox for two weeks of snowboarding in the mountains of California. It's a dream vacation. But soon after they arrive - by helicopter, with Gerald's butler Mr Fry at the controls, of course - the private chalet is attacked. Gerald and the gang escape through a secret passage, only to be pursued on snowmobiles by men with guns across frozen lakes and into the path of a cascading avalanche. Could this be the work of Gerald's nemesis Sir Mason Green, recently escaped from prison? Or is someone else behind the attack? Does the old dry cleaning ticket Gerald found amongst Green's belongings hold the key? And how does an invitation to join the secretive Billionaire's Club land Gerald in so much trouble? Join Gerald and his friends in the USA, the Czech Republic and a tiny island in Sweden for a new thrilling adventure. After all, with all that money, there's got to be more to the story.

Author: Jules Janick
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319772945
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description
Unraveling the Voynich Codex reviews the historical, botanical, zoological, and iconographic evidence related to the Voynich Codex, one of the most enigmatic historic texts of all time. The bizarre Voynich Codex has often been referred to as the most mysterious book in the world. Discovered in an Italian Catholic college in 1912 by a Polish book dealer Wilfrid Voynich, it was eventually bequeathed to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University. It contains symbolic language that has defied translation by eminent cryptologists. The codex is encyclopedic in scope and contains sections known as herbal, pharmaceutical, balenological (nude nymphs bathing in pools), astrological, cosmological and a final section of text that may be prescriptions but could be poetry or incantations. Because the vellum has been carbon dated to the early 15th century and the manuscript was known to be in the collection of Emperor Rudolf II of the Holy Roman Empire sometime between 1607 and 1622, current dogma had assumed it a European manuscript of the 15th century. However, based on identification of New World plants, animals, a mineral, as well as cities and volcanos of Central Mexico, the authors of this book reveal that the codex is clearly a document of colonial New Spain. Furthermore, the illustrator and author are identified as native to Mesoamerica based on a name and ligated initials in the first botanical illustration. This breakthrough in Voynich studies indicates that the failure to decipher the manuscript has been the result of a basic misinterpretation of its origin in time and place. Tentative assignment of the Voynichese symbols also provides a key to decipherment based on Mesoamerican languages. A document from this time, free from filter or censor from either Spanish or Inquisitorial authorities has major importance in our understanding of life in 16th century Mexico. Publisher's Note: For the eBook editions, Voynichese symbols are only rendered properly in the PDF format.

Author: Max McCoy
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 9780553561968
Category : Adventure stories
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
For centuries the lust for wealth and immortality has driven men mad. Now Indiana Jones is called to London to recover an ancient alchemist's manuscript rumored to contain the formula both for turning lead into gold and granting its owner eternal life. Certain that a missing British alchemist and an insane Renaissance scholar are involved in the theft, Indy--along with the alchemist's beautiful sister--travels to Rome, and straight into the hands of Mussolini's fascists. The mad scholar Sarducci has stolen the Voynich Manuscript, all right. But that's only half the story. The manuscript is really a map, leading into the desert and the most ancient and magnificent crypt in the world, where Indiana Jones will either witness an astounding miracle of alchemy--or become the tomb's next inhabitant.

Author: Marcello Simonetta
Publisher: Doubleday
ISBN: 0385526806
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
A brutal murder, a nefarious plot, a coded letter. After five hundred years, the most notorious mystery of the Renaissance is finally solved. The Italian Renaissance is remembered as much for intrigue as it is for art, with papal politics and infighting among Italy’s many city-states providing the grist for Machiavelli’s classic work on take-no-prisoners politics, The Prince. The attempted assassination of the Medici brothers in the Duomo in Florence in 1478 is one of the best-known examples of the machinations endemic to the age. While the assailants were the Medici’s rivals, the Pazzi family, questions have always lingered about who really orchestrated the attack, which has come to be known as the Pazzi Conspiracy. More than five hundred years later, Marcello Simonetta, working in a private archive in Italy, stumbled upon a coded letter written by Federico da Montefeltro, the Duke of Urbino, to Pope Sixtus IV. Using a codebook written by his own ancestor to crack its secrets, Simonetta unearthed proof of an all-out power grab by the Pope for control of Florence. Montefeltro, long believed to be a close friend of Lorenzo de Medici, was in fact conspiring with the Pope to unseat the Medici and put the more malleable Pazzi in their place. In The Montefeltro Conspiracy, Simonetta unravels this plot, showing not only how the plot came together but how its failure (only one of the Medici brothers, Giuliano, was killed; Lorenzo survived) changed the course of Italian and papal history for generations. In the course of his gripping narrative, we encounter the period’s most colorful characters, relive its tumultuous politics, and discover that two famous paintings, including one in the Sistine Chapel, contain the Medici’s astounding revenge.

Author: Craig P. Bauer
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691192294
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 636

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Book Description
"In 1953, a man was found dead from cyanide poisoning near the Philadelphia airport with a picture of a Nazi aircraft in his wallet. Taped to his abdomen was an enciphered message. In 1912, a book dealer named Wilfrid Voynich came into possession of an illuminated cipher manuscript once belonging to Emperor Rudolf II, who was obsessed with alchemy and the occult. Wartime codebreakers tried--and failed--to unlock the book's secrets, and it remains an enigma to this day. In this lively and entertaining book, Craig Bauer examines these and other vexing ciphers yet to be cracked. Some may reveal the identity of a spy or serial killer, provide the location of buried treasure, or expose a secret society--while others may be elaborate hoaxes. Unsolved! begins by explaining the basics of cryptology, and then explores the history behind an array of unsolved ciphers. It looks at ancient ciphers, ciphers created by artists and composers, ciphers left by killers and victims, Cold War ciphers, and many others. Some are infamous, like the ciphers in the Zodiac letters, while others were created purely as intellectual challenges by figures such as Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard P. Feynman. Bauer lays out the evidence surrounding each cipher, describes the efforts of geniuses and eccentrics--in some cases both--to decipher it, and invites readers to try their hand at puzzles that have stymied so many others. Unsolved! takes readers from the ancient world to the digital age, providing an amazing tour of many of history's greatest unsolved ciphers"--

Author: Monica Azzolini
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674070364
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 479

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Book Description
This study is the first to examine the important political role played by astrology in Italian court culture. Reconstructing the powerful dynamics existing between astrologers and their prospective or existing patrons, The Duke and the Stars illustrates how the “predictive art” of astrology was a critical source of information for Italian Renaissance rulers, particularly in times of crisis. Astrological “intelligence” was often treated as sensitive, and astrologers and astrologer-physicians were often trusted with intimate secrets and delicate tasks that required profound knowledge not only of astrology but also of the political and personal situation of their clients. Two types of astrological predictions, medical and political, were taken into the most serious consideration. Focusing on Milan, Monica Azzolini describes the various ways in which the Sforza dukes (and Italian rulers more broadly) used astrology as a political and dynastic tool, guiding them as they contracted alliances, made political decisions, waged war, planned weddings, and navigated health crises. The Duke and the Stars explores science and medicine as studied and practiced in fifteenth-century Italy, including how astrology was taught in relation to astronomy.