Analysis

The document has a storied history in which the alleged owners span from the Holy Roman Emporer Rudolf II, Athanasius Kircher, and John Dudley. For the few centuries that it was being passed through the hands of aristocrats, rudimentary decipherment attempts were underway. Most notably, the theory that Roger Bacon authored the manuscript began to circulate towards the beginning of this era (around the late sixteenth century). 

However, it is following the ownership of Kircher that the manuscript fell out of scholarly favor for a few centuries — until it was purchased by Wilfred Voynich in 1912. Voynich can be credited as the sole reason that the manuscript regained prominence. He immediately became a proponent of the theory that Bacon authored the script, and, alongside this, “enlisted William Newbold” as a cryptographer to decode it — thus causing it to emerge as a point of scholarly interest once more (Johnson, para. 8, 2013).

Researchers like William Newbold and John Tiltman, among others, explored methods of alphabetization and analysis of illustrations. These attempts included using prior botanical and linguistic knowledge to extrapolate information about the contents of the script (most notably by comparing the illustrations to North American plants and the writing to Latin). Though it will be seen that these  methods eventually fall out of favor compared to newer, statistical examinations, remembering their processes helps to understand how linguistics was shaped by decipherment methodology towards the end of the historical era of Voynich Manuscript research.   

Research conducted in an attempt to decipher the Voynich Manuscript in the modern day is characterized much differently than the earliest attempts. Though there has been some focus on the original methods of alphabetization (namely, by Gladyševa) and emphasis on illustrations (Gladyševa and Brumbaugh), there have also been a variety of emerging methods in the field. The most prominent of these is the introduction of statistical models to more efficiently analyze the characters within the Manuscript (Bowern and Lindemann, Shi and Roush, Montemurro). In addition to this, there was a significant shift from being focused on ‘solving’ the script as a whole to taking specific sections and placing them under close examination. “Scholars remain deeply divided” about the question of these efforts yielding meaningful results — in terms of creating a successful decipherment —, but much can still be gleaned from the works because of how they signal (and perhaps even pioneer) change within the field of linguistics (Johnson, para. 14, 2013).

Research conducted in an attempt to decipher the Rongorongo language began at a much later period than the work regarding the Voynich Manuscript. A significant reason for this is that Rongorongo did not become extinct until the nineteenth century, with the tuberculosis outbreak and concurrent forced removal of the native speakers of the language. J. Park Harrison is the first known researcher to have published any study on the matter in 1873. It quickly succeeded the language’s death and served as an initial basis for the older methods used to decipher languages – similar to those seen in some of the early Voynich Manuscript studies. Despite this, Harrison’s work, along with A. Carroll’s in 1892, remains the only testament of its kind within the era. Rongorongo did not formally rise to popularity as a linguistic mystery until the 1950s, when the modern research is noted to begin.

Modern research conducted on Rongorongo is considered to begin after the computational linguistics study published by Butinov and Knorozov in 1957. This includes the discontinuation of Harrison’s sign analysis method, in favor of reviving Carroll’s efforts and the creation of new statistical methods that are, perhaps, more innovative than those observed in the case of the Voynich Manuscript. The comparative work that has been done includes Barthel’s corpus of the language — which has been instrumental to the scholarly debate that surrounds Rongorongo today — and a similar study conducted by Viktor Krupa within the same decade. Both researchers focused on the prominence of the moon to the Rapa Nui’s culture, and utilized this to draw conclusions about the alleged contents of some of the tablets.

It was after the dwindling significance of the comparative work (around the turn of the twenty-first century) that newer methods began to emerge. The first of these methods comes from Steven Fisher, who used basic principles of phonetics and other linguistic features that are universal to every language to create a model that explains the contents of both Rongorongo and another linguistic mystery (the Phaistos Disc). It is from this that his work is regarded as unique, but certainly not critically acclaimed. Robert Schoch’s study works off of Fisher’s, in combination with a sign organization method of his own, to develop a less broad conclusion about the language. Finally, there are a few lesser-known studies that draw upon more technological and cultural components (as opposed to strictly linguistics) that have made an impact on the broader understanding of (Lastilla, Lipo, Orliac). 

The bulk of the historical research on the Indus Script that is significant to this study comes from the mid-to-late twentieth century — namely in the works of Walter Fairservis and his alphabetization of the script, C. Joythibabu’s depiction of past efforts done to comparatively study it, and G. R. Hunter’s sign analysis. Each of these has their broader place in the history of the Indus Script, which was first studied in an archeological manner in the 1780s and later became a focus of linguistic inquiry in the twentieth century. Unlike the Voynich Manuscript, and even Rongorongo (to an extent), the Indus Script has been the focus of much less scholarly inquiry. This has led to its history being relatively short and unchanging over time, though there are a few methods that align with those of the early research on the Voynich Manuscript that can be analyzed in more detail.

The Indus Script’s modern research has been largely characterized by controversy and staticity. Though the quality of being static is shown in many of the newer works, the controversy can be explained specifically by when Farmer asserted that the Indus Script does not encode any language. It is from this that he has been discredited by HARP, in part from the work of Rao — who, like Farmer, also conducts sign analysis in order to come to conclusions about the Indus Script. Though a variety of assertions have been made about the Indus Script in light of these disagreements, it ultimately can be regarded as static since the methods used to come to new conclusions have remained the same. This does not in any way diminish the value of researchers. Viewing the history of the script from this lens simply intends to highlight the interesting phenomenon of methods remaining unchanged despite issues stemming from research using similar practices.

Unlike Rongorongo, the comparative analysis that took place in the historical research of the Indus Script did not intensify (or even continue) in the modern day – nor did new methods develop from the lack of comparative work. This sets the stage for the Indus Script being a peculiar case; one that has not changed much over time at all, except for its slight refinement to only, most popularly, include the methods of alphabetization and sign analysis.