The Voynich Ninja

Anton

I haven't spent much time comparing both sections, but there is one instance where I was able to perform a little test. 

I had read the label of this plant as "talap".



It was soon clear that this would have to be a member of Artocarpus (like marang, breadfruit...). Several varieties are still called You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. today. I ended up settling on Artocarpus elasticus because it provided the largest amount of useful resources and has rather spiky fruit (this shade of green always signifies a fruit in f89). Its range was a bit too much Southeast Asian for my liking though, but everything pointed this way so I adopted it as a tentative ID.

Later, I noticed Diane had identified a large plant as Artocarpus as well (f3v). See her post You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. As you can see, both plants look different.

This difference can be explained by the different working of the mnemonics. In the small plant, the fruit and branches were depicted, allowing the artist to evoke the shape of Thalia the muse as a pronunciation hint for /talap/. (See my post You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).

In the large plant, a cross section of the fruit or flower is selected, as well as the leaves and a mnemonic root. So there is hardly any overlap in the depicted plant parts. Add to that the fact that Diane analyses this mnemonic as evoking the shape of a traditional boat that was built of this wood, and you get an image that looks totally different.

So now to the point of this reply. Let's assume for a minute that our independent analyses are both correct. In that case, there should be a good chance to find the label otaram somewhere in the text of the large plant, right? It doesn't have to be the first word: this would be the foreign name for the plant, so it could be mentioned anywhere - we don't know the internal structuring of the paragraphs.

Additionally, this would allow me to test my hypothesis that many sounds can be expressed in an ornate way, as well as a simple way. In this case, I would expect the ornate way in the small plants section, because it would want to stress the sounds that are relevant for the mnemonic. Specifically, in the large plant section I would predict the "ornate" r to be taken together with the preceding vowel, forming a bench ligature. The result would be otcham, read in the same way as otaram.

Much to my delight, this word was in the text of the large plant, on a place with a bit of prominence: second paragraph, second word. The below image compares both labels:



The big plant label (top) also appears in some other places. Interestingly, it is mentioned in the paragraph of another big plant, but further into the paragraph. The plant looks similar enough to be compared to the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. plant, so perhaps that is what the author is doing here: comparing the plants. 

A difficulty is that I don't fully understand yet which sound pairs can be represented by bench ligatures (and their different varieties) in which way. So right now, I can make guesses at best. In this case, it turned out remarkably well.

Marco:

Thx, very helpful.

I think, then, that the solution of the question of whether pharma section labels are plant names will depend on the degree of "plant overlap" between the two sections. If there is no to little overlap, then it is reasonable to expect pharma labels to be plant names. Any obvious overlap cases should be tested for the presence of the pharma label in the respective botanical folio.

We could also work the way around. Let's take all those pharma labels which do occur in botanical section and see if the plants in the respective botanical folios have anything in common with the respective pharma plants. For example: f88r, the first label with occurrences in botanical folios is oldar (upper row, fourth plant). Its botanical occurrences are f23v, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (twice) and f87v. Now: do plants in those three botanical folios look like the plant depicted in f88r? The solution of this question is complicated by that there are six labels for five plants in f88r, so we don't know whether we should look at the root to the right or to the left of oldar (but we could check both).

The second way is the simplest, since it assumes binary estimations (yes/no) of already preselected match candidates instead of making an expert selection of graphical matches.

A very good task for a contextual analysis, what do you think? If noone undertakes this, I'll do that myself as "Contextual Analysis of Voynich Objects - Part III", as soon as I am done with Part II ( : sigh : )

Hello Anton,
the task you propose seems to me potentially very useful.

I think there are three main possibilities:

1. The herbal and pharma sections were written by the same author and discuss different kinds of plants (as in the Cadamosto example: medical and alimentary plants). In this case, there should be a very small or empty intersection.

2. The herbal and pharma sections were written by the same author and discuss different aspects of the same plants (e.g. the “botanical” aspect and how to mix ingredients to produce compounds). In this case, we can expect a wide intersection (possibly close to 100%). I am not aware of parallels for this kind of organization, but I think it's the idea recently discussed by You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (the pharma section as an “index”).

3. The two sections were written by different authors. We can expect an intersection, but its impossible to say anything about its size (it depends on the degree of similarity between the two works). This case frequently occurs in Latin medieval manuscripts.

Unluckily, the possibilities that (2) actually is the case seem rather limited.

Here are examples of illustrations of the same plants from the Pseudo-Apuleius and Pseudo-Dioscorides treaties in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., Netherlands, end of the XII Century. We can certainly expect a certain degree of variation in both plant images and plant names.