The Voynich Ninja

I posted a couple weeks ago about the red labels on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 2 , and about medieval medical astrology, and my idea that the labels may represent the body parts that medieval physicians associated with each sign of the Zodiac.

Here is a link to an academic scholar's summary of the traditional medieval associations of body parts and Zodiac signs:

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The relevant table is at the bottom of the page. I have also attached the table to this post.

Now, with my (quasi-Judaeo-)Greek correspondences of Voynich characters, as I have posted regarding the first four lines of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 1, I am able to identify a significant number of Greek body part names in these 12 red labels on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 2 . In particular, the body parts proceed in order from head to toe around the chart, as they do in the attached table.

I only list here the words for which I have interpretations at this stage.

I begin near 12 o'clock position on the chart:

[soy shr ...]
"tos mr ..."
Greek "tous mere ..."
"the parts ..."

Notes: I interpret the [sh] character with a more "closed" loop on top as a Greek "m", as opposed to the [sh] character with a more "open" loop on top as a Greek "t" or "d".
As I noted before, confusion of the grammatical genders of some forms was common in the Greek of the Byzantine period. Here we see the masculine plural article "tous" together with the neuter plural noun "mere".

From here, the body parts now proceed in order from head to toe around the chart, as in the attached table:

[shekchy ...]
"metis ..."
Greek "matia ..."
"eyes ..."

I admit I cannot explain the final "s" here, and it is possible the [y] character is serving more broadly as an abbreviation for various word endings, as does the similar-looking medieval Latin abbreviation symbol (often called "9").

[ykeo?y okchy]
no interpretation yet

[?cht?y]
"?hk?s"
Greek "kheires"
"hands"

The difficulty here is more with reading the word in the ms, rather than with the Greek interpretation. VViews has also noted on his blog the difficulty in reading this word.

[ykchykchey ykchys]
"stesthes stest"]
Greek "stethos"
"chest"

[chkchdar]
"hthvar"
Greek "tharre"
I interpret this word to mean the heart and surrounding areas of the body.
The modern Greek word means "courage", "ardor", etc.

[ykar ykaly]
no interpretation yet

[lkshykchy okar]
no interpretation yet

Note: It is not necessarily simple to determine the late medieval Byzantine Greek medical terminology for such body parts as "spleen" and "lumbar region"!

[chky chykchr chy]
"hits histir his"
Greek "(h)ystera"
"uterus, womb"

[ytees ytchos]
"skeet skhot"
Greek "sykoti"
"liver"

Note: If you look very closely and carefully at the gallows characters in these two words, you will see the faint traces of the top left loops, indicating that they were originally intended to be written as [t], not as [k].

[ykchys ...]
"sthist ..."
Here the ms appears to repeat the term "stethos" ("chest"), already listed in a previous label.

[ykecho ols eesydy]
I have an interpretation only for the middle word:
"ost"
Greek "osta"
"bones"

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Geoffrey Caveney

I'm very familiar with this. In visual form, it's called "zodiac man" and is in many 15th-century manuscripts. I figured it might be somewhere in the VMS as well.

In fact, I've often wondered if the nymphs around the zodiac symbols represent good and bad days for bloodletting, which was sometimes reckoned on a 30-day interval rather than monthly calendar intervals.

(22-03-2019, 07:04 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm very familiar with this. In visual form, it's called "zodiac man" and is in many 15th-century manuscripts. I figured it might be somewhere in the VMS as well.

In fact, I've often wondered if the nymphs around the zodiac symbols represent good and bad days for bloodletting, which was sometimes reckoned on a 30-day interval rather than monthly calendar intervals.

Yes, good point about "zodiac man". I have attached an example so readers can see what we're talking about. The actual complete illustration also listed the names of the Zodiac signs and body parts around the outside of the diagram, but the whole thing is too big a file size for an attachment here.

I'm very interested in your idea about the nymphs and good and bad days for bloodletting! Do you have an idea about what each such label might say, what kind of words and phrases they might use? Are there other examples of such day-by-day lists that we can refer to for comparison?

===

On an unrelated note, regarding my correspondences of Voynich characters to (quasi-Judaeo-)Greek phonemes, the most unexpected or perhaps unnatural one is probably the identification of Voynich [d] as either "u/v" or by extension "v/b/p". 

I note that the label next to the apparent illustration of the Pleiades is [doaro] (last character somewhat unclear). The first letter gives us a likely match between Voynich [d] and Greek "p" (or "p" in "Pleiades" in many languages).

Also, for those who can read Greek, the Greek Wikipedia page on the Pleiades: 

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notes that a more modern Greek name for the Pleiades is "Poulia". This actually matches very closely with my system's reading of [doaro] as "poAlA", understanding that the vowel matches are not always precise. It is also possible that the last character is [y] and it is just a generic symbol for a variety of final suffixes. In fact, a [y] at the end of "Poulia" would match the [y] at the end of "matia" in the "eyes" red label in my original post here.

Geoffrey

Sorry lads! But in this page no any stars or zodiak"things". I like to believe and see some cosmical or mistery stuff,but there is nothing about.
The text said short story when the young boy rushed to the doctor and apologized about an early visit in the misty morning.His father at spring time jumped from a cart and damaged his leg.The old man had a like kiosk and they lived just from income from selling something(probably fruits).The doctor saw that leg was dislocated(mishaped) and did some small surgery.The leg was fixed by some kinda wool, wax, and metallic wire. And like in other pages doctor never charged any one.At summer time the old man was capable to open his kiosk and working.At the morning he was so happy, because of first customer approaching.
Thats it....no mysteries))))

(22-03-2019, 03:15 PM)Aldis Mengelsons Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Sorry lads! But in this page no any stars or zodiak"things". I like to believe and see some cosmical or mistery stuff,but there is nothing about.
The text said short story when the young boy rushed to the doctor and apologized about an early visit in the misty morning.His father at spring time jumped from a cart and damaged his leg.The old man had a like kiosk and they lived just from income from selling something(probably fruits).The doctor saw that leg was dislocated(mishaped) and did some small surgery.The leg was fixed by some kinda wool, wax, and metallic wire. And like in other pages doctor never charged any one.At summer time the old man was capable to open his kiosk and working.At the morning he was so happy, because of first customer approaching.
Thats it....no mysteries))))

Only one question about these translations: Did Aldis use left button, middle button, or right button predictive text to generate them?

The bloodletting lists come in many different forms. Often it's just a list of dates and whether they are good or bad (textual). Sometimes it's a calendar form like a chart.

There are also drawings of "vein man", that are similar to "zodiac man", which show locations for blood.

I don't have time to grab examples, I've been up all night have to work now, but they're not too hard to find if one is aware that they exist.

Geoffrey and JKP, a couple of coincidences: one is Antonio's volvelles, at least one of them included calculations for bloodletting, although i dont know what the instructions are, and the other is that when i checked EllieV's body parts identifications from quire 13, they went from foot to head when looked at in the page ordering advised by my geographical interpretation, although i cant remember whether all of the zodiac was represented, it struck me as being a bit spotty but maybe some associations were still to be made.

(22-03-2019, 03:50 PM)Linda Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Geoffrey and JKP, a couple of coincidences: one is Antonio's volvelles, at least one of them included calculations for bloodletting, although i dont know what the instructions are, and the other is that when i checked EllieV's body parts identifications from quire 13, they went from foot to head when looked at in the page ordering advised by my geographical interpretation, although i cant remember whether all of the zodiac was represented, it struck me as being a bit spotty but maybe some associations were still to be made.

Thank you Linda. I will look up EllieV's body part identifications in quire 13, but could you possibly give me a brief summary of Antonio's volvelles, or where I can go to locate the information? Sorry, I haven't had time to go through all the other posts and threads in the forum in complete detail. Thank you again for these very helpful pointers.

Geoffrey

(22-03-2019, 03:30 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The bloodletting lists come in many different forms. Often it's just a list of dates and whether they are good or bad (textual). Sometimes it's a calendar form like a chart.

There are also drawings of "vein man", that are similar to "zodiac man", which show locations for blood.

I don't have time to grab examples, I've been up all night have to work now, but they're not too hard to find if one is aware that they exist.

JKP, a brief and promising follow-up on the good/bad days for bloodletting, etc., in the individual month and day Zodiac charts:

The Greek word for "no" is "okhi" (sometimes transcribed "ochi"; the consonant is hard like the end of "Bach"). The Byzantine forms were the same. The Ancient Greek forms were "oukhi" or "ouki" or "oukh" or "ouk" or just "ou".

If you look for example on the Zodiac page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 1, you will see just in the inner ring of 5 nymphs/days, that 3 of the 5 labels begin with [ote], and a 4th one begins with [ot].

My system interprets Voynich [ote] as Greek "oki" or "okhi".

According to this interpretation, each day's label is saying something like "don't do this thing on this day", then "don't do that thing on that day", then "don't do this other thing on this other day", etc., etc., etc.

Geoffrey

(22-03-2019, 06:27 PM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Thank you Linda. I will look up EllieV's body part identifications in quire 13, but could you possibly give me a brief summary of Antonio's volvelles, or where I can go to locate the information? Sorry, I haven't had time to go through all the other posts and threads in the forum in complete detail. Thank you again for these very helpful pointers.

Geoffrey

Here is the volvelle, it is the first one which was said to contain the bloodletting instructions, in this pdf. 

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The first one is British, a 1424 copy of 1386 Kalendarium of Nicholas of Lynn, not sure re the other but it may be another copy as well, there are evidently 16 manuscript copies and one printed copy surviving.

Funny, here is a simpler one with zodiac man. From a late 14th century copy of the same manuscript, no less.



Here is a blog post which includes more excerpts from that version, including bloodletting and urinalysis.

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Here is EllieV's anatomical blog post 

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With regard to my page order suggestion for quire 13, it is 76, 80, 84, 77, 78, 81, 82, 75, 79, 83.

Hope this helps