  The late medieval Voynich Manuscript (VM) has resisted decryption and was
considered a meaningless hoax or an unsolvable cipher. Here, we provide
evidence that the VM is written in natural language by establishing a relation
of the Voynich alphabet and the Iranian Pahlavi script. Many of the Voynich
characters are upside-down versions of their Pahlavi counterparts, which may be
an effect of different writing directions. Other Voynich letters can be
explained as ligatures or departures from Pahlavi with the intent to cope with
known problems due to the stupendous ambiguity of Pahlavi text. While a
translation of the VM text is not attempted here, we can confirm the
Voynich-Pahlavi relation at the character level by the transcription of many
words from the VM illustrations and from parts of the main text. Many of the
transcribed words can be identified as terms from Zoroastrian cosmology which
is in line with the use of Pahlavi script in Zoroastrian communities from
medieval times.
