The Voynich Ninja

I only have five minutes and then I have to get to a meeting, so this has to be quick, but I thought it might be worth a dedicated thread...

I've never been able to figure out this guy on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. :


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One of the things I've seen in medieval manuscripts that might be similar to this image is engineers using stakes and logs to build fording aids so soldiers or travelers can get across rough streams by sidling along the log and using it to grasp and balance.




But... since we're also looking at Christian-themed possibilities in the last few threads, I thought I would add this. Not all images of the crucifixion have the same kinds of crosses. I've seen several different arrangements of the two thieves with their arms behind their backs or above the logs as in this example. It's not exactly like the VMS pic, and there's only one log man in the VMS, but hey, if we are exploring ideas, might as well post it to get the thread doing...


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7th century Coptic crucifixion BL Or 6796; Dortmund c. 1475 by Derick Baegert (public domain)

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Vaux Passional, National Library of Wales Penarth MS 482D, c. 1503

No, it's not quite the same arrangement, I offer it simply as food for thought and discussion.

Hi JKP,

I don't know what the log/pipe the nymph is holding onto is, and I don't have an opinion on the interpretation of this scene at this point.

To me, it really doesn't look like the nymph is restrained or tied to the object in any way. 

For what it's worth I do remember this being discussed on this You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., where JuergenW suggested elements of carpentry, and ReneZ linked to Rich SantaColoma's page interpreting the object as a flotation device. Diane also made some comment over there about it being related to astrology.

For the record, as it stands now, I still think the heavy Christian themes may be a "project" in the large-plants symbolic content. This may or may not continue in other sections, but (again, at this time), I think any Christian references in other sections may be incidental or "supplementary" to the main meaning.

Such an object in the water and a guy clinging on to it, to me suggests it's part of a ship's mast after a shipwreck. But it's good to remain aware of a range of possibilities.

I don't think we'll extract any meaning if we take it out of context. You have to look at the whole illustration, not just snippets of it.

I completely agree, David, but the reason I cropped it was to show the vague similarity to the cross with the little extra stick in one of the examples. If I pasted the whole folio, that would be hard to see.

I really have no idea what he's doing, fording streams is the only good analogy I can think of, so I was hoping to get some ideas out before relating it to the rest of the folio. Isolating an image can sometimes provoke ideas that one might NOT think of when looking at something in context. I think of it as a brainstorming session.

Relating it to the context is always my ultimate goal, but sometimes it helps to zig and zag a bit to FIND that goal. Having a thread dedicated to the image gives us the time and space to do that.

The image does go with the rest of the page, to me it describes a complete water flow system from spring to gulf.

For me, this piece is the Persian Gulf, and the tube is a river, just as the Euphrates and Tigris are represented as tubes above it. I take the blob on the foot as a mnemonic for the placement of Quatar, which here appears to be under water as well, or perhaps just hidden in plain site by being the same colour as the seawater. Note that in comparison with reality this placement would fit very well if the northern part of the gulf were missing and replaced with river. This top area is represented in stages above this drawing. This is why i think this is not only a map of the area but possibly a story of its changes over time.

I think it says that the area now covered by water was once a river that rose slowly. In other places in the vms there are tubes that are vertical which i take to show flash flooding. This one does seem to double as a log, so i could support that idea, perhaps it is indicative of attempts to build dams, but which ultimately were also covered over. 

This falls in line with our current understanding of the Persian Gulf. However this would have occurred many millenia ago, some think at the end of the ice age, perhaps at the same time as the Black Sea Flood, there are various theories. One theory states there was a localized flood 5000 years ago which matched Holocene levels.

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As well, in older Persian area maps, it sometimes appears as though there is no Persian gulf, as though the rivers go directly into the greater ocean. This may be because the opposing side was not as well known, but by following the eastern shore it was known one would end up at the Indus river and thus that entire shore was that of the ocean or sea and was not considered a gulf per se.

10th century Ibn Hawqal map, translated to English


The cental bit is the two rivers becoming one and going upwards into the ocean, rather than a gulf. To the right from there is the pointy Red Sea, to the left is the Indus river. Above all that is Africa.

Various other maps from about the same time period offer alternative views, so it could be an interpolation from going through some of these maps and taking differences as changes over time, which, depending on the original timing of the information, could indeed be so, or just coincidentally so.

The Ptolemy style maps also put Qatar in a similar place and the top part of the goulf isn't drawn to reality, so that could be part of it as well, the vms matches better with reality than those do.

As to why the nymph is male, the other males in the quire i see as being related to alternative routes, ie by sea or by river. As we turn the page, i think we go on to Gujurat India then across to the Red Sea. It may be that this is the alternate route indicated, since it is not clear here on this page alone that the gulf is connected to the Arabian Sea/Indian Ocean, nor even the Strait of Hormuz or Gulf of Oman, although the text may clarify. However, these might be referred to on the next page on the way to the Red Sea from India. So in that way it works, you can indeed get to the Persian Gulf both by river and by sea, thus if this is indeed what male nymphs stand for, then he should be male. 

The river tube may simply mean the water runs through this waterbody and onwards, as indicated by the bit of green paint off to the right that seems to come from the tube. It also somewhat matches with modern shipping traffic lines.

As to the Christian imagery, i don't see it, he appears to be lounging of his own accord, without distress. Nor does it fit with the area i see as being described, therefore i can't support that idea.

Here's another image I have in my files. It shows two men bathing and apparently having a conversation, using a rod to support themselves (for comfort, I assume):

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Image credit: Walters Digital Library W.88

If you attached the log differently, with the upright support stakes partway in, instead of at the ends, it might look a bit like the VMS drawing.

Its a bit funny that you associate the log-man with Jesus on the cross, cause I do not see any similarity in it, to be honest.
The log-man has only 1 arm around the twig, the other is unused. Perhaps sewerhistory.org has a similar image somewhere. I did not look,

but I've read the paper on the mystical coptic text in the OR6796, that you display here;
it's an easy, short and free, but interesting read, by Joseph E Sanco. If you are interested look it up.

Quote:Davidsch: Its a bit funny that you associate the log-man with Jesus on the cross, cause I do not see any similarity in it, to be honest.

There's no similarity to Jesus on the cross. I never said there was.

There is a slight similarity to the two thieves on either side who are bound differently. They have their arms around the pole instead of being nailed to the cross—that's the significant part. It's an iconographical way of saying there is something different between the guys who are arm-looped and the guy who is nailed. It specifically associates stigmata and the mandorla-wound with Jesus.

In one of the pictures of the thieves, there is a smaller thinner support pole in addition to the main log, just as there are smaller thinner support poles in the VMS logman picture. Yes, they are in a different orientation—it's only a slight similarity, but I believe in putting a lot of ideas on the table if it's for something that has been particularly difficult to figure out. Then go through them and see where they lead.

Here the thieves look pretty relaxed considering their fate:



From a series of cuttings courtesy of the Victoria & Albert Museum