Preprint: Statistical evidence for Syriac pharmaceutical vocabulary in the Voynich Manuscript
Posted: Tue Apr 14, 2026 10:28 pm
I'd like to share a preprint presenting computational evidence that the Voynich Manuscript encodes an Aramaic pharmaceutical text in the Syriac tradition.
The approach (termed DANI — Drug Appellation Nomenclature Inference) maps the EVA transcription to Syriac consonant skeletons and matches them against a 1,389-entry lexicon of attested medical vocabulary. Key results:
87.0% corpus coverage, z = 3.83 against 500 random permutations (p < 0.001)
14 statistically validated text-image correspondences between decoded vocabulary and independently identified plant illustrations (Fisher's combined p = 6.66 × 10⁻¹⁶)
A vowel disambiguation layer recovers 7,007 tokens into specific Syriac words, including 130 tokens of kuḥlā (collyrium/eye medicine)
Terminological analysis places the text within the Sergian translation tradition (6th century CE)
I want to be upfront about confidence levels: I estimate 40–50% the tradition is specifically Syriac, 10–15% word-level decode accuracy, and 5–10% the full pipeline survives specialist review. The framework is designed to be falsified.
The preprint is available on Zenodo: https://zenodo.org/records/19583306
I welcome critical feedback — particularly from anyone with Syriac or Aramaic expertise.
Brady Defibaugh
The approach (termed DANI — Drug Appellation Nomenclature Inference) maps the EVA transcription to Syriac consonant skeletons and matches them against a 1,389-entry lexicon of attested medical vocabulary. Key results:
87.0% corpus coverage, z = 3.83 against 500 random permutations (p < 0.001)
14 statistically validated text-image correspondences between decoded vocabulary and independently identified plant illustrations (Fisher's combined p = 6.66 × 10⁻¹⁶)
A vowel disambiguation layer recovers 7,007 tokens into specific Syriac words, including 130 tokens of kuḥlā (collyrium/eye medicine)
Terminological analysis places the text within the Sergian translation tradition (6th century CE)
I want to be upfront about confidence levels: I estimate 40–50% the tradition is specifically Syriac, 10–15% word-level decode accuracy, and 5–10% the full pipeline survives specialist review. The framework is designed to be falsified.
The preprint is available on Zenodo: https://zenodo.org/records/19583306
I welcome critical feedback — particularly from anyone with Syriac or Aramaic expertise.
Brady Defibaugh