The Rohontsi Codex is a mysterious manuscript, similar to the Voynich manuscript, but researchers have more solidarity on the issue of its origin. This is a 12 by 10 cm book, 448 sheets in volume, containing from 9 to 14 lines of text. The 87 pages of the book are filled with illustrations depicting religious scenes, social life and military campaigns, as well as signs of world religions - the cross, crescent and solstice. The text in the book is written from right to left and bottom to top. The number of unique characters used in the Codex reaches almost 800, which is ten times more than in any known alphabet.
The Rohontsi Codex was kept in the collection of the Battsiani aristocratic family from the Hungarian city of Rohontsi (now the city of Rehnitz, Austria). In 1838, Count Gustav Batziani presented the manuscript as a gift to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and it is kept in its collection to this day.
Examination of the Rohonzi Codex paper showed that it was most likely made in Venice in the early 16th century. The first attempts to study and decipher the Code date back to the early 19th century. It was studied by the Hungarian scientist Ferenc Toldi in 1840. Professor of the Prague University Josef Irechek, together with his son Konstantin, studied it in 1884-1885. Bernghard Jung, a professor at the University of Innsbruck, several other researchers and even artists worked on it.
So far, no one has been able to decipher the Codex in this way, but it will not be difficult to find many versions of its possible translation. Among researchers there is an opinion that this document was falsified by the Transylvanian antiquary Samuel Nemesh, who lived at the time of the discovery of the manuscript.
Literati Samuel Nemesh was a controversial figure. He was born in the city of Maroshvasharhei (now Targu-Mures) on the territory of present-day Romanian Transylvania and was engaged in historiography, linguistics, was a major philanthropist and book antiquary, and also traded in ancient noble letters, diplomas, and antique weapons.
In addition, Nemesh was no stranger to the various nationalistic sentiments that were popular in the era of romanticism in the first third of the 19th century. In particular, he argued that some of the biblical characters were Hungarians. Obviously, his passion for collecting antiques was directly related to his nationalist sentiments. He was ready to fight if only the relic was of any significant value to the history of his people. If Nemesh could not find enough impressive artifacts, he made them to provide his country with politically significant "primary sources".
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After his death in the middle of the 19th century, a series of scandalous revelations followed, and many fake artifacts were revealed. It all started with parchment with prayers from the time of the Hungarian king András I (1046-1060), which was acquired by Gabor Matra. This historical document was of great importance for the study of Hungarian ethnogenesis and the history of the ancient Hungarian tribes in particular. The renowned scientist and traveler Janos Erni wrote an entire study based on this parchment. In his work, he also referred to the wooden book Turoc, which the Hungarian Academy of Sciences received from Nemes. In 1866, Karol Szabo proved that the parchment, as well as the Turoc book, were forgeries. The announcement stunned Hungarian scientists.
This entailed a thorough study of the entire "legacy" of Samuel Nemesh and the discovery of fake books, ancient maps, fragments of text and other objects not just anywhere, but in the National Library, respected antique collections, museums and other places. The Rohontsi Code also fell under suspicion.
Nemesh was a skillful forger, very passionate, prolific and thorough. Perhaps the Code was also made by him in order to distort the historical truth and become one of the authoritative historical documents, which in some way could be part of nationalist propaganda. But the evidence that it was a fake was still insufficient.
The language in which the manuscript was written is unknown. Some researchers, confident in the authenticity of the Codex, believe that it may be an ancient Hungarian rune script. According to other sources, in Dobruja (a region in Romania), similar letters or symbols are engraved in old caves. Many versions remain: the Dacian language, early Romanian, the Polovtsian language, even Hindi.
Szekean Hungarian runes
A systematic study of symbols was first undertaken by Otto Giurk in 1970. He looked for repetitive sequences to find the direction of the letter. He owns the version that the pages are written from right to left, top to bottom. Hungarian linguist Miklos Loksmandi did several computer studies of the text in the mid-1990s. He confirmed the conclusions of Giurkom, adding at the same time several of his own: the symbols "i" and "ii" are the separators of sentences, and the case endings, which are usually characteristic of the Hungarian language, are not in the text. Statistical analysis allowed scientists to conclude that the language of the manuscript is a syllabic or logographic system.
Romanian philologist Viorica Enachic offered her own version of the translation - this is supposedly the story of the Wallachian people in their opposition to the Polovtsy and Pechenegs. Another interesting hypothesis concerning the language of the codex from Rohontsi was proposed by the Indian Mahish Kumar Sinh. He claims that the Code is written in a regional Brahmi script that he can read. The codex as Singh reads it is the beginning of an apocryphal Gospel, previously unknown, with an introduction from prayers that passes into the story of Jesus' infancy.
Be that as it may, the riddle of the Code, which came either from the depths of the Middle Ages, or from the workshop of a Transylvanian craftsman, remains unsolved to this day.
Materials used by Ekaterina Golovina