The British Museum is also sponsoring a companion exhibition, "Crowns and Ducats: Shakespeare's Money and Medals, " showing the importance of money in Shakespeare's plays.
Louis de Santangel and Gabriel Sanchez advanced an interest free loan of 17, 000 ducats from their own pockets to help pay for the voyage, as did Don Isaac Abrabanel, rabbi and Jewish statesman.
On the other hand, the text could just be gibberish and the book which may have been passed off to Emperor Rudolph as the work of Roger Bacon, a 13th-century natural philosopher, in exchange for the princely sum of 600 gold ducats a grand hoax.