The Voynich Ninja

As I see it, Theodore Petersen got the tail wrong (it points towards the root on the right, and possibly it is connected to it) and added a limb to the right that isn’t there. Probably the phantom limb is due to dark ink being faded at the bottom and the green paint not perfectly filling the dark ink outline. The following image was manually edited based on one of Koen's photographs.
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You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. has a plant (Alfrugia?) with a root that is “made like a swallow” (in modo arundinis). The image is just an example of how twisted the images of animals can be, in particular if they are meant to illustrate plant roots, which is not clear for the Voynich "bug". But I wouldn't exclude that the "stinger" can represent a beak.
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“Arundo” for “swallow” is not frequent. That meaning of the word is documented in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. 
Also: "You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.: A Swallow is called Hirundo, as it were Arundo ab aere" (making it derive from "air").

(30-01-2025, 04:06 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm still in the US and I don't have Photoshop on this laptop which is really annoying. I did my best with GIMP to make this composition:

Top: old scans, newer scans, Theodore Petersen's sketch. 
Bottom: pictures of original MS.

I've tried to process the images I got from you, but, as I suspected, the models I had for TIFFs are basically useless here. These models attempt to capture statistical variation in neighboring pixels, potentially extracting information not visible to the naked eye. This kind of information is completely lost when images are compressed into JPEGs, that's exactly the way JPEGs compress images - by removing variations that are hard to perceive with the naked eye.

Just for the reference, two of your images processed by linear regression specifically trained on some of the ink in these images. As you can see, there is no new detail and quite poor separation of ink from paint/stains.

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The only interesting thing is, in all the images the models consistently mark a cross/ankh/dagger like shape immediately to the right of the unknown creature as ink. I'm referring to this shape from your photos:

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(15-10-2020, 10:08 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I just had a look at three other sources of Voynich MS images, and they seem to be consistent. There is no connection between this 'thing' either up to the plant or down to the root. The most instructive was the Petersen hand transcription, and I attach my camera picture of the relevant page.

Petersen suggests the name 'morsus ranae' or German 'Froschbiss', due to the presence of the frog, and whatever that other beast (no plant) is.

Hallo ReneZ,
Do you have some more photos from Petersons explanations and where one may find them? It seems that there are not many sources with his research notes.
If you have any will you post them?
br: Vessy

I no longer have my old (B/W) photocopy of the Petersen hand transcription.
I once started an initiative to have it digitised (in colour) but this did not work out.

I still think that it would be of interest to have it.