Prophecies: the babel of tongues and the words of the dead
Riddling prophecies, each answered by its plain everyday solution
The page carries only text in Leonardo's mirror-script, written upside-down (capovolto), with no diagrams. It gives a group of prophecies (profezie) in his favourite riddle form: an ominous prediction followed by its mundane solution. Here the confusion of tongues resolves into 'a German with a Turk', men turned into birds that steal food from tables into flies, and those who flay their mother and turn her skin upon her into the tillers of the soil.
On this page
Of the confusion of tongues
A prophecy that the human race will come to such a pass that men will no longer understand one another's speech. The riddle's answer is disarmingly literal: 'a German with a Turk.'
Men risen as birds that steal food (flies)
Men will come out of their graves changed into birds and fall upon other men, snatching the food from their very hands and tables. The stated solution is flies (and wasps).
Those who flay their mother (the tillers of the soil)
Many will flay their mother and turn her skin back upon her. The answer is the labourers who plough and till the earth.
Lending an ear to the dead (reading good books)
Happy will they be who lend an ear to the words of the dead. The solution: reading good works and keeping them.