The Voynich Ninja

I have many examples of the abbat/abbato/abbas/abbati/abbatis group of words (which are often abbreviated the same or nearly the same), but I didn't index them so it's difficult to find them in my files, but I located this one, which shows how the long macron runs horizontally through the ascenders.

The sample also has a vertical tilde, which I call the "squiggle" apostrophe, which I keep mentioning because there's a similar shape (with a few more wiggles) in a similar position on folio 1r of the VMS (this is an extremely common Latin abbreviation symbol):

Examples of three very common abbreviation symbols.

All three of these shapes are included in the VMS and while they might mean something different, they are positioned in a way similar to Latin scribal abbreviations except for the fact that the curved macron in the VMS is associated mostly with EVA-ch (to create EVA-sh) and only occasionally is added to other characters (e.g., a few instances of 4o have curved macrons). In languages that use Latin abbreviations, the curved macron can be added to any word.

Note that the curved macron is used by many scribes in the same way as a vertical tilde (the "squiggle" abbreviation), probably because it's quicker to write it this way:
 


Examples of straight and curved shapes that resemble macrons in the VMS:
[attachment=2225]

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This is why I mentioned upthread that we really haven't defined what we mean by a set of character glyphs in the VMS. If you search for 4o with a curved macron in medieval manuscripts, it is hard to find them, and they are usually late 15th century. But if one accepts that macrons can go on any letter in languages that use Latin scribal conventions, and then surmise that VMS glyphs might be a combination of character shapes and abbreviation shapes, then there are many manuscripts that use this convention.


The Takahashi transcription (the most popular transcript) does not include these macron-shapes.

(01-07-2018, 09:30 PM)davidjackson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.How common would it have been in this type of script to mix abbreviations with Litterae Oblongatae? Doesn't it lead to confusion?

I think it is a mistake to compare Imperial charters with something like the Voynich- The peculiarities of the script of I. ch. are mostly Echtheitsmerkmale, signs of authenticityt, kept as a secret in the chancery and the originals were kept under lock and key for obvious reasons. It is not likely someone like the V. author had ever seen one-

Helmut, it's very interesting to hear that.  If they were kept the way money is kept, locked away and out of the hands of those who weren't supposed to access to them, it seems like there are a few possibilities...

• the designer (or scribe) independently invented the embellished forms (this seems less likely),
  
• the designer or scribe saw them in another context (in some other kind of manuscript),
  
• the designer had some kind of job (maybe a clerical job?) that involved legal documents, or
  
• the designer had access to documents that were old and thus no longer had any legal value, and thus perhaps were accessible, or
  
• [feel free to add anything I missed].
  

(02-07-2018, 09:01 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[feel free to add anything I missed].

#6 Profit!

An Imperial charter kept its value until the end of the old Empire in 1803/06,it was treated accordingly and most of the forgeries of I.Ch. were made because the original was lost in a fire or something. In nearly all of these cases you find the forgery out because the forgers were not able to copy the embellishments and abbr. and so on of the original, they were signs of authenticity


My personal opinion is that the Voynich scribe really 'invented'  what we call gallows, but he took them not out of the blue but derived them from initials and 'Auszeichnungsschriften,/emphasis' and gave them his personal specific meaning.

Helmut, I agree with you, I also suspect the gallows were invented, out of shapes that were familiar in scribal traditions.


But there are also embellished gallows in the VMS, with long horizontal bars, loops, dots... I've seen litterae elongatae in many kinds of manuscripts but always leaned toward the legal manuscripts as their possible inspiration and thus didn't pay as much attention when I saw them in other kinds of documents. I didn't build a mental map of where litterae elongatae occur outside of the legal realm, which I now regret because I'll have to go back over old ground. From what you've mentioned, it seems less likely that they would be seen outside of closed circles.


I've sampled quite a few litterae elongatae, but it would take time to revisit them and make some sense of them.

I remember Barb Lat 525 had a number of them on the first lines but I can't remember what it was about (maybe ecclesiastical). Also Barb Lat 2724, but I can't remember what that was about either (I used to be able to keep all this in my head, but after a few years, it starts to blur together). Reg Lat 1480 had some. Paladii Ruilii...

I remember CLM 29586 has many, but maybe it's a legal document, I can't remember. I can't take time to look at the original to check during the workday.


Those are the only ones I can remember off the top of my head. Maybe it's enough to get some sense of where litterae elongatae show up most often in other kinds of manuscripts.

About
[attachment=2675]
posted by MarcoP on the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. thread.

This fairly common style of Cursiva, in Latin texts, is most evocative of Voynichese glyphs, is there a consensus on this?

Another example with letters similar to EVA-aineoyursmgk: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

Does this style even have a name/area of origin attached to it? From my sampling of digitized manuscripts online it seems to be much more common in central Europe than in England, Italy and France but I could not find any specific information.

Nablator,

the Voynich script is most  likely based on a  late Medieval Gothic cursiva, whatever other people may tell you, which means your observations are quite correct.

For first informatio use Bischoffs Paleography or the Derolez book about Gothic script

I just stumbled across this.  Published today.  It is not Voynich but Merlin and Arthur related.  A language that they are trouble in reading.  Reminds me of Voynichese a little.You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.