The Voynich Ninja

I am starting this thread to collect information that might support the hypothesis that quires 13 and 14, and possibly others, encode information from which a portolan map could be drawn.

This hypothesis is an extension of others, in that quire 13 imagery can be interpreted as a periplus, and quire 14 can be interpreted as a map, but which of course is not a physical mapping, but may contain hints as to how to draw a portolan map which would pull information from the imagery and text to draw a reasonably accurate map that can be recognized as such.

The rosettes may indicate the windroses that must first be drawn. I believe some of the imagery with regard to the rosettes, and within quire 13 may provide clues as to the locations of the centers of these circles, and places they link to.

For instance, the NW rosette shows what may be Vesuvius, the famous volcano. I believe the Alps are shown in the spiral, and as this is centred in the rosette, i posit that a windrose is to be drawn in the vicinty of the Alps, with one of the lines going through Naples.

In quire 13 on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. there stands a nymph in what appears to be Lake Garda, which is situated near the Alps. She holds a tool which could be a caliper or possibly a compass, and may indicate the exact location of the above noted rosette's center.


Resources

Here is a link to a cartography site which is involved with drawing portolan maps to back engineer the process. 
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.


Historical Examples

I will also be checking known portolans for similarities in case this may aid in corellating the data points against the text, or to help search for more clues in the imagery. So far the Catalan Atlas, one of the most famous of the portolan maps, seems a good match with what I have posited so far, and is also the map with pangolin-scale-like mountains, ie may have been referenced on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. in its portrayal of what I take to be the Alps. It is also said that the Venetian maps concentrated on the periplus info, ie they concentrated on shorelines, whereas the Catalan school included inland details. Due having seen indications of riparian alternate routes in quire 13, I believe this would indicate an alignment with the Catalan style of maps produced in Majorca and Barcelona, or someone following in that tradition.


Found in Pisa, thought to be made circa 1275 but could be 1375


1325-1350 


Pietro Vesconte, 1311 Venice


Pizigani brothers, 1367 Venice



Cresques Abraham, 1375 Majorca

Just adding the resource JKP recently posted to another thread.

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

One coincidence strikes me in that the Catalan map characterizes cities with similar round forts. 



These strike me as being very similar to the vms buckets in quire 13, and tubs or wells in the zodiac, which i had already considered to denote ports and architecture respectively.






This one combines the ports and the architecture, most resembling the buckets of quire 13.

The 12th century charts of Al-Idrisi are not to be missed. Even if they have no direct bearing on the VMS, they did set a new standard for cartography in the west and they are marvelous.

He was a Moroccan who spent many years in Sicily creating the charts for Roger II.

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Indirectly related to Voynichese... they are useful in assessing the language structure of Arabic labels. The initial labels were Arabic, Al-Idrisi's native script, but some of the charts have been transliterated into Latin characters. Once again, one notices that the natural language labels are far more positionally varied than VMS labels.

(03-03-2019, 10:03 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The 12th century charts of Al-Idrisi are not to be missed. Even if they have no direct bearing on the VMS, they did set a new standard for cartography in the west and they are marvelous.

He was a Moroccan who spent many years in Sicily creating the charts for Roger II.

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Indirectly related to Voynichese... they are useful in assessing the language structure of Arabic labels. The initial labels were Arabic, Al-Idrisi's native script, but some of the charts have been transliterated into Latin characters. Once again, one notices that the natural language labels are far more positionally varied than VMS labels.

Yes, need to find charts of any kind to get an idea of the structure. 

Although i can envision the determination of the windroses, i dont know what kind of coordinate system was used to plot the points. 

I know they went by pilot rutters but these are local descriptions and probably varied in their makeup from place to place. I read that compass bearings were not necessarily used, that it was triangulation that determined the location of a point from the angles of two known locations. In some cases it would be trilateration, with the actual distances being known.

If we know where Vesuvius is and we know some other line of sight location, like that point that juts out from Naples, we can figure out a third and so forth. But correlation to the imagery is one thing, the text correlation is another thing completely, and unfortunately most rutters dont exist either.



You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

This states sailors would travel north or south until the altura or height of the pole star matched that of the chart for their destination, then sail east or west on that altura until they hit land.

Could this be the meaning of the stars beside the zodiac nymphs? Interesting how altura can also mean period, as in time of the past. Is that why the tails on some of the stars? 

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

This describes an unpublished portolan. It is interesting, there are some correlations, like mentioning the guadalquivir river in passing, but going on to Gibraltar. It mentions glass manufacture at Murano, evidently this is not mentioned in any other portolan. It compares to others, and it seems that parts of each describe what I have seen outlined in quire 13. The Compasso da navegare seems to match best, although i need to read more.

Diane had her account deactivated but she asked if I could add this resource to the thread, The History of Cartography entirely online:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 

I would comment more here but I'm afraid I know too little about this subject, I should read up when I have time..

(03-03-2019, 10:30 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Diane had her account deactivated but she asked if I could add this resource to the thread, The History of Cartography entirely online:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 

I would comment more here but I'm afraid I know too little about this subject, I should read up when I have time..

Yes, this is a wonderful resource, years ago i saved all the pdfs in case this page should disappear. The history of cartography is basically a history of the world and how people have grown to understand it. Ironically, they are all stored away on my dead laptop. But since the page still exists it is probably easier to access directly 

So thank you, and please extend my thanks to Diane as well, for the link to the entire collection. The resource I reposted of JKPs above is one of the pdfs in the collection, chapter 19 of volume 1.

I really do need to learn more too, all i know is what i remember of my readings back when i first looked into the manuscript and saw the geographical connections that i still do. i am definitely not very well versed in reverse engineering of portolans, but the possibility that it could be the case that portolan coordinates might be encoded needs to be investigated, so i will give it a go, but it will probably take awhile given my starting point is one lacking in experience in both portolan charting and vms text decryption, or even solid understanding of what is known so far re its structure, but it does appear that language translation has so far been unsuccessful, so perhaps it is names and coordinates.

Feel free, anyone, to comment with your thoughts on this process, no matter your expertise, it may help to direct my search into the possibilities.

At the moment i am searching for examples of an actual sailing handbook of the time to see how the details are laid out, but so far it is just descriptions thereof that i have found, which don't describe the part i am after. But so far the correlations with most of the amalgamated versions starting in southwest Portugal and travelling clockwise around the Mediterranean, and other main ports mentioned, i think there is a chance that part of the vms might be one of these examples, if not all of it.

Here is a portolan of the Atlantic coast copied by Michael of Rhodes, and an English translation. It kind of reminds me of f76r, although it is probably a coincidence.





Lots more interesting stuff on the site
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

LOL!

Linda, I was just going to post a link to the Michael of Rhodes example, and then I decided to read the thread before posting and there it is.  


Yes, I think it is important to include examples of how text without diagrams was also very much part of how they recorded this kind of information.


In connection to this...

I spent a lot of time reading medieval itineraries, (which were frequently used to "map" land journeys). It's fascinating to see how people's perceptions of how to get from one A to B were written down.

Some of them are so detailed that they are like small books (not as long as the VMS, but still quite a few pages). They are written point-by-point in a way similar to the Michael Rhodes text, and would fit quite naturally as companion material to the portolans. They are usually recorded as a long list of short paragraphs.

The "Three itineraries of Bartolomeo Fontana" kept me reading for hours. Even though it is 16th century, it gives a great deal of insight into foot travel as it was in the 15th century. It has all the major stops and then goes into detail about each of the "minor" stops in each of the major stops. And what is REALLY interesting about it is that it mentions many of the stops (places to stay) that one would never know about from just looking at a map (e.g, small monasteries where one could stay overnight like in a hostel). I was absolutely fascinated by how it encapsulates a walking trip of northern Italy.

Also not to be missed are the "strip" maps. These are fascinating too and remind me of the VMS in many ways. Strip maps are not geographically accurate in the same sense as modern cartography. They are go-from-here-to-here maps, with landmarks, and thus the north-south-east-west idea is not adhered to in the same way in the drawings. In other words, you end up with "pathways" between landmarks (very reminiscent of the VMS).

Oh, and I keep forgetting to post that Matthew Paris is significant in the 13th century because it includes not only the itinerary, maps, and winds, but also numeric tables (for calculating Easter) and calendars. In other words, like a "handbook" for travel.