In 1912, Wilfrid Voynich bought a mysterious manuscript written in an unknown script. 114 years later, its text remains undeciphered despite decades of study

In 1912, Polish-American antiquarian bookseller Wilfrid M. Voynich purchased a mysterious manuscript from the Jesuit College at Frascati near Rome. Written in an unidentified script by an unknown author, the manuscript has remained undececiphered for more than a century.

Today, the Voynich Manuscript, formally known as Beinecke MS 408, is held by Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Yale says cryptographic approaches have failed to decipher the text, if it is indeed encoded.