Unknown Hands at Work / Explore
A closer look at the manuscript: its plants and written forms, the work of its makers, and the people who kept it.
The book’s chapters, opened for exploration.
Beinecke MS 408 · Yale University Library
Choose a starting point
Look at a page. Try a comparison. Read the account.
01 / The surviving object
Move through the transcribed folios, select any word, and see where that exact shape recurs: on the page, across the transcription, and on which other folios.
227 transcribed folios · Search recurring forms
Open the reader
02 / The work of making
Compare the sections of the book, the folios attributed to each of Davis's five hands, and the fourteen ordered slots that describe how the written forms are built.
From Chapter 2, Five Hands · Maps and comparisons
Compare the hands
03 / Comparing the writing
Pick one of the seven recorded batteries, choose a measure, and set the manuscript beside natural languages, solved ciphers and control texts. Every value opens its record.
Compare stored measurements and inspect their sources.
Open the bench
04 / The manuscript’s afterlife
Follow the dated record from the parchment to the Beinecke, with each entry carrying the project file and passage it was taken from. Ownership, contact and custody stay separate.
Letters, inscriptions and records of ownership
Follow the record
05 / Further reading
Twenty companion papers with their current status and claim. Filter by field, search the catalogue, and read the complete text in a page built for reading.
Full current text. PDF where the record marks one available.
Read the papers
06 / The supporting record
See where the displayed measurements come from, inspect their source records and check which datasets are ready to use.
Source records and validation status for each display.
Inspect the data
Cover study · Design in development
The book by Petr Kindlmann
Sixteen chapters on the manuscript’s materials, writing, pictures and later history.