Re: Oh no, someone else has been at the Voynich manuscript ... but wait ...

One last point about the manuscript before the topic expires (or maybe it
has already). Suppose that I am a forger in the late Middle Ages, and I am
trying to produce something that I can sell at a fat price to a nobleman
who dabbles in alchemy. I dress up the MS with attractive pictures of
bathing nymphs and mysterious magical plants. But what do I do about the
text?

I invent a script which genuinely corresponds to the roman alphabet but is
extremely hard to read. Then I use this to write brief captions to some of
the pictures which I can show my victim, and convince him that they say
something in a Latinesque language that he can more or less understand.
That is enough for a sale; the main body of the text can confidently be
written in gibberish because the buyer will not have the patience to try to
decode it.

RH