The Voynich Ninja

@JKP

When I saw your snake, I immediately thought of it. Coat of arms of Bellinzona
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Ah yes, that is also the Visconti serpent. It's a good example of how modern concepts of nations can really distort one's view on the historical political situation. (Bellinzona is now in Switzerland).

I really like the city wall as it stands now (image from the wiki). I don't recall ever having seen anything as close to the bottom stretch of merlons on the rosettes foldout.

[attachment=3632][attachment=3631]That was a crazy time. It's hard to tell whom what belonged to when.

The Long Wall is only partly standing. It was 600m long.

Marco, awesome. Thank you for that!

I didn't even think to interpret it as two words. I wasn't sure what to make of it.


And thank you for making the instructions for getting a link to a specific folio even clearer. I didn't "get" it the first time you posted (that I had to do those steps in thumbnail mode). I'm chronically tired when I post on the forum. I often work through the night and really don't get enough sleep, but it got through my skull the second time. 

The image that it borders the vertical text is interesting too:



It has figures within decorative pillar-like/tent-like enclosures (on the left). It's almost as though the VMS umbrellas and grotto-like coverings are the same sort of idea even if they are drawn very differently.

(02-11-2019, 05:27 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Marco, awesome. Thank you for that!

I didn't even think to interpret it as two words. I wasn't sure what to make of it.

I had no idea either. Luckily, the text is so obvious that googling the first words of the following page brought it up 

(24-10-2019, 02:42 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Upside-down the part on the left looks like the Leo symbol, Leo is a sun sign.

In fact, there is often a red "star" on zodiac depictions of Leo (and the VMS feline has a red splot that looks like candle wax but also somewhat resembles the red suns on a number of zodiac Leos):

With my experience, this does not resemble IHS here. There is also no other context for this religious text.

@JKP, This upside down, is a very good observation, because now it can clearly be seen the second symbol is u-shaped. 
So I looked up, Omega-u words. 

There are none, however, the letter omega itself could be meant here: ωμέγα. or Orion. or Osiris.

As Omega being the last letter in the alphabet, there are very little words. Perhaps there is a plantname which starts with Omega?

------- added later:

Just reading this:

quote: 
bi3mw: According to the McCrone Institute report, glair (eggwhite) was used for clear or the color white.  I just can't remember where white was used in VMS. 
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[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]Yes, That's an idea.  The Greek word for egg:  ωόν = egg,  ove[/font]

David, reading it upside-down, if that were ov (using omega shape for "o") with a line over the v, and if one were reading it in Latin, it would be the abbreviation for ovum and its homonyms.

The shapes u/v were interchangeable and it didn't matter if the macron was straight or curved, it generally meant the same thing.

Yes, from the Latin perspective. 
But it is clear that Omega is a Latin letter, that's why I looked at it from the Greek perspective which makes more sense.

I'm always on shaky ground when I talk about Greek because I can only read a tiny bit of it (mostly names) and I haven't studied the scribal abbreviations as much as Latin (the concepts are very similar, sometimes the same, but some of the shapes go in different directions and Greek has a lot of ligatures) but... even though I've suggested the shape in the rays looks like omega, more often in medieval manuscripts one would see it written as ω rather than the Ω shape.

A couple of the reasons that [font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=sans-serif]ω is much more common are 1) m[/font]any scribes didn't bother with capital letters and 2) some scribes would enlarge the lowercase letter rather than using a different shape for the capital letters.[/font]


Now, if we consider for a moment that it might be [font=sans-serif]Ω, then the choice of the shape MIGHT depend on where the person saw or learned it. For example, if they learned from manuscripts, more often they would see [font=sans-serif]ω. But, if they learned from looking at old monuments (e.g., Greek sarcophagi or mosaics), then they would sometimes see ω and sometimes Ω:[/font][/font]

[font=sans-serif][font=sans-serif][attachment=3657][/font][/font]

[font=sans-serif][font=sans-serif][font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][font=sans-serif]So, if it is [font=sans-serif]Ω then there may have been a deliberate choice to use the less common Ω shape or... maybe it's not omega.[/font][/font][/font][/font][/font]