Amazingly, there are still texts in world history that cannot be read. Hundreds of cryptographers, linguists, mathematicians have made efforts to decipher them, but in vain. The mystery remains unsolved.
Voynich manuscript
The Voynich manuscript is perhaps the most famous of all the mysterious texts in history. This manuscript (estimated to be over 500 years old) became available to the general public only in the 20th century. In 1912, second-hand bookseller Wilfrid Voynich was lucky enough to buy it at the Society of Jesus Book Sale. 18 years before his death, Voynich tried to decipher the mysterious text, but did not achieve any success in this.
The Voynich manuscript is a riddle within a riddle. It is not known in what language it is written, it is not known what the drawings in this book represent. The authorship of the manuscript at various times was attributed to Roger Bacon, and John Dee, and other alchemists, but no concrete evidence for any of these versions still exists.
Of the alleged versions of the origin of the manuscript, two are the most interesting, although they are polar. According to the first, put forward by the American cryptographer John Stoyko, the text is written in the language of Kievan Rus, without the use of vowels. The cryptographer is sure that the manuscript is a collection of letters from the mysterious ruler of Kievan Rus named Ora with the Khazar ruler named Manya Koza, written during the war between Russia and the Khazars. In support of this version, we can say that the manuscript depicts the city walls with dovetail-shaped teeth. Such in the 15th century were only in Northern Italy and … the Moscow Kremlin.
According to another version, the manuscript is of Aztec origin. This hypothesis was put forward earlier this year by scientists Arthur Tucker and Rexford Talbert. They began their study of the manuscript with drawings and recognized many of the plants as endemic to South America. Researchers have put forward a version that the text was written in one of the many extinct dialects of the Aztec language, Nuatl, and was written in the 15th century by a representative of the Aztec elite who was in Europe.
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These are only two versions, but the manuscript still remains unsolved. You can also take part in the decryption. The manuscript is also presented in electronic version.
Book of Soyga
The name of John Dee, physician and alchemist of the Elizabethan era, is associated with another mysterious text. This is the so-called Book of Soyga. John Dee has devoted his entire life to trying to decipher this treatise on magic and the paranormal. For this, he constantly traveled to Europe and met with Edward Kelly, who was the chief specialist in magic at the time. According to legend, a magic crystal helped John Dee to decipher the book, with the help of it Dee allegedly established that the text that worried him was written in the Garden of Eden, and only Archangel Michael could read it. Dee also believed that the Archangel was the author of this book.
For a long time, the text of the book was considered lost, but 20 years ago, two copies of it were discovered in England at once. Cryptographers immediately began to try to read the text, but the Book of Soiga remains a mystery to this day.
Kryptos
In 1990, a sculpture was erected in front of the CIA headquarters, which is a curved copper sheet with 865 symbols, divided into four sections. It was created by the artist James Sanborn. Certainly not alone. The cipher was helped by the former head of the CIA's cryptographic center, Ed Scheidt. The text turned out to be so intricate that they still cannot solve it entirely, although both amateur cryptographers and professional decryptors from Langley were engaged in this.
Sanborn and Scheidt used different types of encryption to encode each section, deliberately making spelling mistakes, which made the decryption process more difficult. 97 characters (fourth section) of Kryptos have not been read yet. The first part of the encrypted message turned out to be the author's text "Between the darkness and the absence of light lies the nuance of illusion." The second one contains the text of a telegraph transmission with the coordinates of a point near the monument. The third section is a distorted record of the archaeologist Carter, who found the tomb of Tutankhamun.
Rohontsi Code
Another enigmatic manuscript similar to the Voynich manuscript is the Rohontsi Codex from the library of the Batyanni princes in Rehnitsa. When in 1838 the representative of this family Gustav Batyanni presented almost his entire book collection to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, a richly illustrated manuscript written in an incomprehensible language was found among other priceless books. So far, no one has been able to decipher it. It has been argued that it was written in an ancient right-Hungarian language mixed with Sumerian hieroglyphs; in Dako-Romance, Brahmi and Hindi.
The Rohontsi Code has played a role in the national identity of the Hungarians. The mixture of potential Old Hungarian with the language of an ancient civilization spoke of the ancient origin and greatness of the Hungarian people. From here, scientists have issued a version that the "Rohontsi Code" is another falsification of the antiquarian Samuel Nemesh, who was working at the same time the manuscript was found. He was a nationalist to the bone, even tried to prove that there were Hungarians among the biblical characters. Many forgeries of antique manuscripts and maps that distorted the history of the Hungarian ethnos belong to his hand. True, in his own favor.
Rongo rongo
The history of rongo rongo is a sad example of how one can quickly destroy a language. These wooden plaques with the unique writings of the inhabitants of Easter Island were first found in 1864 by Bishop Ayraud, who claimed to have found similar texts in many homes. Only now, no one could read them - the majority of the able-bodied population was taken from Easter Island into slavery two years earlier. According to historians, the last native who knew rongo rongo died in 1866.
Today, more than one generation is struggling to decipher the language of Easter Island. The text of the tablets is a hieroglyphic script. According to some hypotheses, these are magic formulas aimed at increasing the yield.