Voynich Manuscript - Content

Content

The manuscript measures 23.5 by 16.2 by 5 centimetres (9.3 by 6.4 by 2.0 in), with hundreds of vellum pages collected into eighteen quires. It is made up of, depending on how some of its unusual fold-out multi-part pages are counted, approximately 240 pages in total. The top righthand corner of each recto (righthand) page has been numbered from 1 to 116, probably by one of the manuscript's later owners. From the various numbering gaps, it seems likely that in the past the manuscript had at least 272 pages, some of which were already missing when Wilfrid Voynich acquired the manuscript in 1912. There is strong evidence that many of the book's bifolios were reordered at various points in its history, and that the original page order may well have been quite different from what we see today.

Based on modern analysis, it has been determined that a quill pen and iron gall ink were used for the text and figure outlines. Colored paint was applied (somewhat crudely) to the figures, possibly at a later date.

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