The Voynich Ninja

(09-03-2026, 11:52 AM)Fabrizio Salani Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(09-03-2026, 10:24 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(09-03-2026, 09:58 AM)Fabrizio Salani Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I have always found one detail interesting: the waveform I discovered was called a 'Tilde' (Titulus), and it was located to the right of the number 21, in the upper right-hand corner of the parchment's frontispiece. I discovered that, when placed before or after a number, it indicates an approximation.

"Page number about 21 or so"? Using tilde for approximation is a ~20th century innovation in mathematic notation.

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Hmm, I'm confused, what can we learn from it ?

(09-03-2026, 07:38 PM)Fabrizio Salani Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....

I suppose posting google search requests is generally useless, the results that different people see can and likely will be different. I suppose these were posted to demonstrate some point, but as I was looking through the results there was nothing besides some generic information about the use of the tilde, so I'm not even sure if these were meant to support your interpretation or contradict it.

Fabrizio, what is your opinion about that page? When could it be made?

- In the 1400s, at the same time as Voynich Manuscript itself?
- In the 1600s, in the times of Marci and Kircher?
- Or is it a modern 20th century work. possibly on some old page?

This is the way i see it.

Biggest issue : No provenance.

Carbon date the vellum -- but that only shows the vellum is hopefully in the right date range.

Aparently Chemical analysis can elucidate some of the seal wax components.[1]
Carbon14 dating can be applied to seal wax, possibly. [1]

It could be one of the copies that Barschius had made showing indeed that Barchius et al owned it at one time,
and if it exists maybe the others do to.

But it moves us no further on in regards to understanding the vms,
and only fractionally further on in regards to its history.

If real, it just confirms the Marci-Barschius-Kircher et al link.
    --corollary : that would be another hurdle for the highly athletic MFH theory to jump through.

We would have the additional information of an involved person with a seal of possibly A-G or G-A,
  --probably initial letters of a name.


If real, would it amount to a nice find but not much more than that ?


[1] New results with regard to the Flora bust controversy: radiocarbon dating suggests nineteenth century origin
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This page is one of the most fascinating pieces of the VM puzzle for me.

I've made 2 overlays:

[attachment=14548]

[attachment=14549]

The copy is too perfectly aligned for a freehand work, even by a skilled copyist. However it is not perfectly aligned. Or rather, the whole page is an improvement over the original.I don't know if the parchment is transparent enough to see the original page through it well enough to trace it. But the copyist must at least have marked key points and worked from there. I think he traced a sketch from the original and then slightly overworked it.

The ornate gallow is almost perfectly copied, but the copyist makes a mistake right at the start and adds a serif. As a result, the following 'd' does not fit in place and has to be moved right one space, cramming the first word together. However, by the end of the word, the copyist is back on track. Gallows of the first line are almost perfectly aligned. Then the copyist moves the 'dy' too far to the right merging it with 'ypchor'. Again, this does not result in moving the entire text. The copying mistakes aside, the copyist tries to correct the slant of the original text block and spread it out. This is especially apparent in the last line.

The plant is also extremely well aligned. The copyist increases the leaf serration and adds additional serration right of the leftmost fruitstalk. The fruit (?) of the left and right fruitstalk (but not middle due to the text) are sightly enlarged and the lowest one of the left fruitstalk is less curved. Leaf venation and shading are added. Apart from that, an extremely good match. Only further down the copyist gets more bold and adds a third leaf on the left and a completely new root system for whatever reason.

So now the big question is - why?
To me it makes no sense to make such a copy for Kircher in order to get a translation/solution. The page layout is reproduced extremely (unnecessarily) well, yet the text is copied sloppily and incorrectly. Readability is bad. Part of the plant is also reproduced faithfully, but then additional details are added. All in all it makes no sense from a practical standpoint. Even to a layman it must have been immediately obvious that this was a very 'creative' copy of the original text, and thus not exactly helpful for a deciphering attempt. Unless we argue this specific sheet was itself created after an imperfect draft copy from the VM...

Not only is the VM odd in every aspect, there's also this equally odd copy as well.

I also find this mystery quite interesting, on its own merit.

Why? is the key question, but also: why on parchment?

I had not realised it aligns so well with the original, so that also begs the question: could it have been overlaid on the original book?

Certainly not after it was in the Beinecke.
Overlaid on a digital image is more likely, but that does not explain (perhaps even less) the various changes.

Then, this piece surfaced in Italy. And the wax seal adds to the mystery.

If this was part of a Barschius copy (the most 'spectacular' option) then:
- use of parchment makes little sense
- it appearing in Italy makes sense
- the A.G. wax seal makes no sense.

One prosaic option is that this is all a practical joke, not perpetrated by Fabrizio.
I vaguely remember that Fabrizio inquried about the cost of C-14 dating, but this is obviously costly, and I don't really see how it could be justified.

The problem with the alignment is that we do not know the distortion introduced with both the VM scan and Fabrizio's image. Certainly they are not zero but probably close. There is virtually no difference between the 2004 and 2014 scan of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. so we can assume distortion is very well controlled here. Yet, it takes quite a lot of fiddling with 3D distortion to create an acceptable overlay between the VM scans and Fabrizio's copy. In some places it looks like the copy shifted slightly in between, but then the copyist returned to the original alignment.

Options I see:
- copied from the VM, while slightly shifting, rotating the page
- copied from an early photograph of the VM, maybe with significant lens distortion / diversion from focal plane
- copied from a digital scan of the VM, maybe on a curved CRT screen
 
Were there facsimiles available before Fabrizio acquired this page?

(10-03-2026, 08:46 AM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Were there facsimiles available before Fabrizio acquired this page?

Probably only the French one (Le Code Voynich) but that is not to scale.

(10-03-2026, 01:25 AM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I've made 2 overlays:

Thanks, they are very helpful!

But you said later that you had to correct for perspective distortion?  That is an important detail.  Direct tracing (of the original, or, more likely, of a printed digital image) through a translucent vellum would of course introduce no distortion.  Use of a camera lucida may introduce some perspective distortion, depending on the position of the original and the copy.

The Beinecke scans have some perspective distortion (that any image editor can correct for), but also a more irregular distortion from the vellum not having been flattened out for the imaging.  As a result, the image is usually compressed to some extent near the binding gutter, or near the fold between two panels of a fold-out folio.  Did you see any sign of the latter in your overlay attempt?

There are older images of the VMS available online, both direct digital scans and photographs that were  later scanned.  The latter go back to the 1950s, or even earlier.  In those earlier images, apparently the pages were flattened with a glass sheet or whatever before being photographed. 

I recall that, in 2000 or so, we of the mailing list somehow got the email of the Beinecke sys admin, and we convinced him to make a couple of "bootleg" scans from the book for us, without permission from the librarians, using a document scanner.(Did I hear the sound of a librarian fainting?) I don't recall which page(s) he scanned, though.

At the Frascati conference there was at least one person with a physical fac-simile of the book.  IIRC he made it himself, from the available images.

All the best, --stolfi

Quote:The ornate gallow is almost perfectly copied ...

It is evident that the copyist did not know the Voynich alphabet, and thus several glyphs were distorted beyond recognition.  

He also seems to have struggled with the writing instrument, because the ink color varies inconsistently and the thickness of the strokes varies in an "unnatural" way.  

In fact, the letters do not seem to be drawn with a quill pen, whose square tip creates characteristic traces.  Maybe with a steel pen?

Quote:To me it makes no sense to make such a copy for Kircher in order to get a translation/solution.  The page layout is reproduced extremely (unnecessarily) well, yet the text is copied sloppily and incorrectly.

Agreed.  But maybe Barschius hired an artist who did not understand the purpose of the copy, and so "enhanced" it like copyists used to do when "copying" other manuscripts.

My best guess is that this was an attempt by a "VMS fan" to create a sort of facsimile, but with emphasis on beauty rather than accuracy.  That would explain why he added the extra leaf, and replaced the childish root by a more naturalistic one.

Didn't someone post here about an American book lover in the 1800s or 1900s whose hobby was to create whole "medieval" manuscript books, just for fun? 

I can't quite explain why, but to me the style of the drawing looks rather "modern".  The use of hatching (rather than darker paint, pastel, or watercolor) to show shading and relief seems to have become much more popular after 1500 as Europe switched from manuscripts to printed books and posters made with incised copper plates.  The standard style of the hatching lines also became more like that seen in copperplate prints.  I think I see this style in that page...

All the best, --stolfi