Beinecke MS 408
An illustrated codex of about 240 pages in an unknown script, written by five scribes on calfskin of the early fifteenth century, with herbal, astronomical, balneological, cosmological, pharmaceutical and recipe sections. No reading of its text has survived testing.
Current account
No reading exists. The text is not a natural language written letter for letter, not a simple, homophonic or mixed-key cipher of a known language as far as those can be tested, and not the output of any procedure simulated so far. What it is: words built from a small set of parts in fixed positions, falling into ending classes; a vocabulary organised by sheet and subject; almost no information in word order; spellings adjusted at the start and end of the line by a rule the scribes shared; herbal pages that open with a word found on no other page. Of the kinds of text proposed, the notational ones (a constructed or category language, or a cue notation) are the least contradicted, but they are also the least tested, and the one notational prediction tested so far (lines as templates) failed. The book's pictures make it a medical and natural-philosophical compendium; who made it and for what is open.
Sections
- Herbal
- Astronomical/zodiac
- Cosmological (rosettes)
- Balneological (bathers)
- Pharmaceutical
- Recipes (starred paragraphs)
Held at 1
Cites 1
Part of 1
Copy of 226
Happened to 12
Cite it
Mysteries Department. (2026). Beinecke MS 408 [Artifact ART08HTW9BG1204]. https://mysteriesdept.com/r/ART08HTW9BG1204
@misc{mysteriesdept_art08htw9bg1204,
title = {Beinecke MS 408},
author = {{Mysteries Department}},
year = {2026},
note = {Artifact, catalog key ART08HTW9BG1204},
url = {https://mysteriesdept.com/r/ART08HTW9BG1204}
}