The Voynich Ninja

4 was not written like this in the Middle Ages. Also, the horizontal bar is an optical illusion, it is not there.

The letter "i", on the other hand, was written like this.

It's fine to disagree, but then at least offer an alternative that's actually better, not one that requires even more squinting.

(11-11-2019, 02:52 AM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Well to me it looks like a 4. Without a higher resolution scan I suppose we can't resolve what has been written there. From my research four was often written 4, though that was not the only way it could be written. I never suggested the numeral "7", though I am not sure that you are right that it looked quite as different from the modern 7 as you suggest.

No, it was NOT often written "4" in the early 15th century, it was usually written l. It was SOMETIMES written 4, but definitely with less frequency. By the late 15th century, it was often written "4", but some scribes were still using l (probably the older ones).

Quote:Whether you look at manuscripts every day or not does not resolve the question of what that shape is, this is largely a visual question.

If it's a visual question, then looking at manuscripts every day does make a difference in familiarity with the shapes. I am very familiar with how they wrote four and how much variance there was from scribe to scribe. I have collected hundreds of samples of medieval numerals and charted the transition from IIII (up to the late 14th century) to l (very late 14th century to early 15th century) to 4 (mid- and later-15th century, with a smattering of scribes using it in the early 15th century).

Quote:It is worth noting that according to some the "4" occurs often in the manuscript, if this is a 4 then it might be worth comparing with those examples i.e. 4o 4P etc.

I don't know who is saying that "4" occurs often in the manuscript. The SHAPE for 4 occurs with a certain amount of frequency, but the older shape for four (the l shape) occurs with much greater frequency.


I'm not even sure where you are seeing "4". The first three strokes are not "4"-shaped. They are not even connected. On the left there are two vertical strokes, the first with a slight hook (which was common for vertical strokes and sometimes the number 1) and underneath is a slightly curved horizontal stroke (almost like a tail on a "y" except it's not connected to the two vertical strokes). No one wrote 4 that way.

(11-11-2019, 07:23 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.4 was not written like this in the Middle Ages. Also, the horizontal bar is an optical illusion, it is not there.

The letter "i", on the other hand, was written like this.

It's fine to disagree, but then at least offer an alternative that's actually better, not one that requires even more squinting.

Even JKP acknowledges that 4 was sometimes written like this.

Given the resolution of the scan we can argue what we see and what we don't, without a higher resolution scan it looks like we won't be able to agree on what is there and what not, so ultimately I can only give an interpretation, not originally my own. Therefore your idea of what is required as regards to squinting is yours not mine.

Quote:Mark Knowles: Even JKP acknowledges that 4 was sometimes written like this.

I acknowledged that four was sometimes written like modern "4" but I also said it did not look like the strokes on the left of the VMS marks. Those are three separate strokes and how do you explain that curved thing underneath that is similar to a tail on a y (but not connected). There isn't any style of 4 that has that.



I grabbed these samples quickly, so it is only a small subset of the samples I have and you'll have to ignore the numbers for internal record-keeping (the date is on the top), but it's enough to show how they transitioned from Roman Numerals (which were very common in the 14th century), to the style of 4 used in the late 14th century and early 15th century (l) to a more modern 4 in the late 15th century:



Note, the one from 1385 might be a later addition. It's in similar ink to the main text, but the style is a bit different. I don't have time to double-check it right now, but if it's a gloss, it probably belongs to a later time period.

(11-11-2019, 09:41 AM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Given the resolution of the scan we can argue what we see and what we don't, without a higher resolution scan it looks like we won't be able to agree on what is there and what not, so ultimately I can only give an interpretation, not originally my own. Therefore your idea of what is required as regards to squinting is yours not mine.

While I agree that amount-of-squinting is an inherently subjective measure, higher resolution scans would not make any difference. The text is unreadable not because we are missing some tiny details that could be revealed by a microscope, but because the overall shape of the characters is unrecognizable: the text is so small and poorly executed that one cannot even tell which alphabet was used, if the text was meant to be read upside-down, how many distinct glyphs are present.

A second similar example may be useful for resolving a dispute and understanding the omega symbol. 
[attachment=3674]

I am fairly sure this is irrelevant, but here is a possibly unusual uppercase-i in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. line 12 ("Illabi"). If one wants to see our mystery-word as three letters, it could possibly be
 ?IS

(11-11-2019, 11:03 AM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(11-11-2019, 09:41 AM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Given the resolution of the scan we can argue what we see and what we don't, without a higher resolution scan it looks like we won't be able to agree on what is there and what not, so ultimately I can only give an interpretation, not originally my own. Therefore your idea of what is required as regards to squinting is yours not mine.

While I agree that amount-of-squinting is an inherently subjective measure, higher resolution scans would not make any difference. The text is unreadable not because we are missing some tiny details that could be revealed by a microscope, but because the overall shape of the characters is unrecognizable: the text is so small and poorly executed that one cannot even tell which alphabet was used, if the text was meant to be read upside-down, how many distinct glyphs are present.

A higher resolution scan could make it clearer the strokes that were used to construct this text and therefore what the author was trying to write. Anyway I imagine that at this time there are no such higher resolution scans available, so until such a scan is available then everything remains uncertain and a higher quality scan may not help much, but then again I think it may.

Marco is right about the resolution, we can already see clearer and larger than with the naked eye. Higher resolutions will only lead to weirder theories about stencils.

That I is similar indeed, and in that case it would be acceptable to read the last bit as "IS" like you say. The first part remains strange, with what looks like a disconnected descender or some diacritic.

(11-11-2019, 05:17 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Marco is right about the resolution, we can already see clearer and larger than with the naked eye. Higher resolutions will only lead to weirder theories about stencils.

That I is similar indeed, and in that case it would be acceptable to read the last bit as "IS" like you say. The first part remains strange, with what looks like a disconnected descender or some diacritic.

I appreciate that the resolution is higher than the naked eye, but that does not mean that more cannot be observed with a still higher resolution. It reminds me of the tiny writing on the antikythera mechanism; there having even higher resolution on the images helped. In fact I think a higher resolution scan would be vital, given the claims of what is there or not, in determining what is there.