The Voynich Ninja

I saw there is confusion as to whether Leonardo or his brother Gregorio, or Gregorio's son Leonardo were involved in these. As Gregorio was a merchant, i think it more likely that he would be the one to be writing in Italian, whereas the elder Leonardo would be more likely to have written in Latin. Of course collaboration probably occurred, blurring the lines.

Interesting tidbit re Kraus.

Angelino Dulcert's 1339 portolan chart coordinates applied to Google Earth.


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I had a thought about the spindel, or thing. In one case i see it as pointing from Genoa to Venice then to the Danube Delta of the Black Sea, in a roundabout way. But now i see it as a possible windrose line as well.

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Also, i had the thought that the reason why some things may not look as they normally do in how they are laid out in quire 13 may be because they were working with piecemeal charts, or rutters. Just like Michael of Rhodes' copy page of the Atlantic coast. A snippet, just what you need to sail from here to there, wherever that may be. Then you collect those and turn them into longer ones to make a map of a larger area. I guess you check each one that comes along for more info. 





I suggest that the two are analogous, but without the eastern/upper shoreline, which is why it is drawn as though it is smooth like a pool, it is devoid of detail for those places, and there are far fewer places shown here. If we are lucky, we may get it filled in through the text. Or this may simply be a short and snappy here's whats around here. 

Looking at the eastern edge of the Italian peninsula only, look for sheltered ports. I see 4 that stand out the most as being partially open circles. There is a bucket for three of them, 1 2 and 4. 3, if you look closely at the nymph touching the edge of the shore, also has a half port line drawn next to her leg, it is analogous to the spur on the boot. As it is not coloured in a contrasting colour, it does not stand out. It might be slightly out of place, but i think that may be commentary on other maps.

When you look at the alternative, which they were starting to translate in 1406 in Florence, i believe, you could see why you might want to keep to the portolans. Here is a 1467 version of Ptolemy's Italy. There is the addition of the interior information like the mountains, rivers, and lakes. Or should i say lake, in this case, for the area we are looking at, but the shape and directions of everything are somewhat off. I guess that is the difference compass directions make. Here we can see the same 4 sheltered spots, 1 and 4 are little holes in the shore, 2 and 3 are mountains.



Is this why the vms shows this water body as horizontal when it is actually more like a 45 degree angle with north up? To comment on the positioning? To hide it? To comment on the east up tradition? And where is the spur? Is it those islands? No, but it should be nearby... it's that rock where the boot turns a corner.  So really the vms has it right, more similar to the portolan than the Ptolemy.

This next one shows enough to give it away but pretend it was just the western shoreline of italy, with land facing up,  or east up, so all the points on the western shore face down. Can you see where the mountains/arches come into it? It stands for the mountains down the centre of the peninsula, which sends rivers down to the ocean, it also resembles the tips and ports. The second last port is on a curve, shown by the water streams joining, which makes sense, imagine a corner with a mountain on each side, both of them would drain into the same place. The last port is on the toe of the boot, after the curve. 

The nymphs are the communities, their positions tell stories about them. I think the ones that have hands on hips means a rutter exists. That the Venice one is coloured gold makes me think this, because i recently read someone said no one should attempt the Venice lagoon without a rutter. I used to think that they knew their history was being shown in this pose, and i guess that would be true if rutters exist as it would tell other major history points like whether the society ever had a catastrophe, arms thrown back signifies this. Usually volcano related.




Anyway i can see better now how portolans came to be, they joined up bits and pieces and kept updating with new technology like compasses, and with these super rutters people could go farther and write better longer ones for the next one to follow. It was crowd funded, in a way.

Some interesting info here

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Ok just doodling so far, but i was plotting the labels from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. against a map of the areas i think they cover. I am at work so dont have time to investigate further right now but i saw a commonality in that the places on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. go east, north, then 3 northeast, then ENE to Marsailles, where this particular commonality line stops, ie the turns go in different directions from there.

So the east one started with or. This is my own terminology based on closest idea of what the glyphs look like to me  i will try to paste in voynich glyphs or convert to eva to show which i mean later. The north one started with ol. The northeast ones have o with a ligature which looks to me like r with l added to it. That seems pretty coincidental. I think it is known as k in eva. 

The next one has o followed by eva p i think. Looks like loopy p. This is eastnortheast in this commonality, 

There are 2 more on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that do the o plus rl ligature, (eva k i think) which now make me think my id of Florence for that nymph is incorrect, it is Venice that would be located on that line. So that is freaky.

I havent checked it against other places with these directions but they are not included in the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ones that go south, so that is heartening so far.

I will look at it better and explain better later but wanted to get this down for now before i forget since it has a hint of promise to it.


Edit...f82r has some examples and appear to be pointing that direction as well, incuding the pointing of the nymphs arm, although there are also a couple others on the lower right that would only be in the correct orientation if we start back around the other way from that nymph for the bottom part. More to look at.

If it were a simple sound-mnemonic, one might expect something like orient (east), and maybe oxident (as in the Greek x (chi), which is usually transliterated as ch) for occident for west, which is just an example, and doesn't quite work if ol is being used for north.

There are many alternatives to sound mnemonics, however. If it goes round in a circle assigning different values, for example, then the assignments would be different.

Another possibility is that they are reference labels (e.g., to a companion text or to other sections of the VMS text).



I have numerous charts that illustrate how these syllables behave in the manuscript (which includes info on biglyphs). I've been chasing them down for years, trying to figure out exactly how they work (not just in the labels, but in the text, as well). I promised Geoffrey I would try to post it this weekend (I have to move the charts from the Appendix into the body so it's easier to relate them to the text, and I can't do it until the weekend, probably not before Sunday). I think it might help prevent a lot of re-inventing of the wheel. It's more than 40 pages.

One of the things I've tried to watch out for is whether the same "chunks" mean something different in different parts of the manuscript and it may be true in some instances. I'm not completely sure of this, but I've been investigating it. Years ago I created a "concordance" of every token in the VMS and their relationships to the same token in other sections (it took more than 1100 pages to describe this). What came out of it was not what one would expect if it were natural language. From that point on, I've been trying to look at it from other perspectives.

I am looking forward to that post, to learn what relationships you have found, and to see how it might correlate. I just added an edit to my previous message, still holding true for the next glimpse i took, but will have to look at it all long and hard.

In a way, we're on parallel tracks.

A rutter is, in a sense, the mariner's version of an "itinerary" (which is what they call written instructions for a foot journey in those days). I spent a lot of time reading itineraries because I thought there might be something there that related to the VMS text (I still think it's possible).


Whether it's one or the other doesn't even matter, in a way, since the evidence would slowly add up to some of the same kinds of information (distances, directions, stopping points, etc.), so this is pretty cool, actually.

(07-03-2019, 08:35 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In a way, we're on parallel tracks.

A rutter is, in a sense, the mariner's version of an "itinerary" (which is what they call written instructions for a foot journey in those days). I spent a lot of time reading itineraries because I thought there might be something there that related to the VMS text (I still think it's possible).


Whether it's one or the other doesn't even matter, in a way, since the evidence would slowly add up to some of the same kinds of information (distances, directions, stopping points, etc.), so this is pretty cool, actually.

It is! I am really hoping it will amount to something significant. 

I do see interior travels too, although they generally follow rivers. Interesting note i read the other day which kind of joins itineraries with baths...vicarello cups. But not relevant, placed there 2000 years ago, found 200 ago. Still cool though and gives a glimpse as to their form. 

Ok i lost some ramblings about labels in quire 13, but the gist of it was that the trend continues to point to o standing for ports. 8 seems to indicate inland locations, or that tributaries must be taken to reach them, they are not on the main river. 8o seems to indicate river deltas or origins, which i guess makes sense, as a combo of a port and an inland location. I get this idea from the labels of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
There is also 8a which also occurs elsewhere like You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. i think it means it is the end of the road for your boat, cannot follow the water any farther. In You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. it is the rise of the Danube. 

Other beginnings of labels i am not sure of are  so, sa, 4o, r, Y, l. That last one is weird since it appeared to occur as a direction sign with o from what i gathered from f80r. Maybe something else going on there. Maybe it did not mean north? Maybe it means inland, not on or following water. That works for the Murcia one on f80r, the water route for her is on the other side of her, in the direction of the spindel. But what i take to be the Florence port on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is ololol. It is inland but on the river. So inland works i guess. Maybe it also means starting point. Murcia we got to by river from near Cadiz, then to Cartegena, then along the coast. Could that be it?



Here that works too, it is the first port of the river, gotten to by going northeast, indicated by k

The others go southeast, indicated by t

And that is how the Danube kind of lines up too. But i am not sure which the direction glyphs are for the ones that dont start with o. I have to look at it more. There is okork and otol so what does it mean to have o within the rest of the glyphs. Northeast then east northeast, southeast then north?





The one where l occurs as the first glyph is on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. where the labels are all doubled up on top of each other in a straight line, hard to get a sense of direction out of it to tie it to a location.

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. seems to mention all the initial ones i have mentioned above in its listing to the side, plus it lists k which i took to be a direction glyph. That seems pretty coincidental. Other suspected direction glyphs not listed...and there seem to be 3 versions of s in the list, dont know what that is about.


The glyphs following these beginnings are postulated to be directions from whence they were approached.

Oh. There are a couple labels starting with ch, but this is not in the list of f76r. Unless the extra s s explain this, they kind of all look c related...

Just putting the alphabet here so i can figure out which glyphs are which as i have not dealt with text before and am getting used to it.

A
B
C
D
E
f
G


H
I
J
k
L
M
N
O
p

Q
R
S
t
U
V
W
X
Y
Z


Just wanted to record my ramblings at first glance, hopefully it will develop into something more cohesive. 

I just realized the ololol one for Florence maybe means 3 ports at this starting point, ie because the are all on the river. Florence, Empoli and Pisa. They would be north compared to everything else on that water body. Murcia would be north of Cartegena but also to the west. But also encompassing it as a region. As Florence does to Empoli...Pisa is inland too, but once wasnt. By Strabos time it was 4km from the shore, now is more like 10km. Inland still works. 

Cant seem to work the fonts very well especially when editing. Just more ramblings.