12-08-2026, 05:06 PM
To say that the water of Quire 13 is green because it was copied from De Balneis Puteolanis strikes me as mere conjecture, entirely without foundation.
There has long been a presumption that De Balneis was a work upon which the authors of the Voynich manuscript drew. While it is certainly impossible to prove this, what can be stated with certainty is that the two works have nothing to do with each other. For this reason, the idea gaining ground in recent years is that Quire 13 deals more with human biology than with balneology. Although all this is pure speculation.
I recently cited the 2011 article by the american scientist couple Lincoln Taiz and Sandra Lee who hypothesized that Quire 13 deals with plant physiology, with the female figures representing the souls of the plants. It was the first time an alternative vision was proposed—a hypothesis that also had the merit of linking all, or nearly all, parts of the Voynich and giving them a unified meaning.
As I believe everyone already knows, I have a different idea regarding Quire 13; nevertheless, it is one that attempts to offer a comprehensive view of the codex—assembling all its sections—and moves away from the encyclopedic concept that seems to prevail. The images in the Voynich convey a single message.
There has long been a presumption that De Balneis was a work upon which the authors of the Voynich manuscript drew. While it is certainly impossible to prove this, what can be stated with certainty is that the two works have nothing to do with each other. For this reason, the idea gaining ground in recent years is that Quire 13 deals more with human biology than with balneology. Although all this is pure speculation.
I recently cited the 2011 article by the american scientist couple Lincoln Taiz and Sandra Lee who hypothesized that Quire 13 deals with plant physiology, with the female figures representing the souls of the plants. It was the first time an alternative vision was proposed—a hypothesis that also had the merit of linking all, or nearly all, parts of the Voynich and giving them a unified meaning.
As I believe everyone already knows, I have a different idea regarding Quire 13; nevertheless, it is one that attempts to offer a comprehensive view of the codex—assembling all its sections—and moves away from the encyclopedic concept that seems to prevail. The images in the Voynich convey a single message.
) Hot springs are typically turquoise. Thus painting them royal blue (with ultramarine or azurite) would be just as wrong as painting them green -- and green pigments were cheaper than blue ones. And outdoor ponds with significant, ahem, fertilizer content will turn green from algae.