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While home from work with the flu, I went browsing and
found this.
The pertinent text from the web page:
"At one point, a rival named Andreas Muller concocted an
unintelligible manuscript and sent it to Kircher with a note explaining that it
had come from Egypt. He asked Kircher for a translation, and Kircher,
reportedly, produced one at once."
This source for this is:
Mencken, Johann Burkhard. The Charlatanry of the
Learned. (De charlataneria eruditorum, 1715). Translated from the German by
Francis E. Litz, with notes and an introduction by H. L. Mencken. "First
edition." New York, London, A.A. Knopf, 1937.
Could this be the VMS? Did Muller enlist the aid
of Marci to spoof Kircher?
The Virginia Military Institute has a copy of this book,
presumably there would be more detail about the incident. The book sounds like it would be interesting reading,
even if it didn't throw any light on the VMS.
I found this on Adreas Muller
Muller was born in 1630, so if the de
Tepenec signature was geniune it would prove that the VMS was not the concocted MS created to fool Kircher, but if the signature
was a forgery...
It seems that Muller might have had the resources and
knowledge to produce a forgery that would fit the various statistical studies
that indicate the text is in a natural language. He creates a script to
represent chinese and starts picking words from random from his many tomes
of Chinese writings. Then he draws some weird
pictures and Ta Da!, the jokes on Kircher.
Baresch's second letter actually exists right? If it
definitely refers to the VMS then Muller probably didn't produce the VMS at the
age of nine.
I hope this readable, I think I am starting to run a
fever..
Robert
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