I don't think people are making "claims" about what is there.
These are ideas, a variety of possible interpretations. Some are more plausible (or more likely) than others, but you need to throw a wider net when something is so small and ambiguous.
(11-11-2019, 09:22 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I don't think people are making "claims" about what is there.
These are ideas, a variety of possible interpretations. Some are more plausible (or more likely) than others, but you need to throw a wider net when something is so small and ambiguous.
Well that is fine then you can put my suggestion(or in truth mostly Nick's suggestion) in your net.
It's really a pity Brian Cham deleted or hid his two posts abot this inscription in the centre of the flower, we discussed some points raised in this thread back then. One of the first things we clarified (to my surprise) that the "4" was already written somewhere as such back then.
(12-11-2019, 12:40 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.You haven't even uploaded a drawing of where you see the four so I (and possibly others) don't even know what you are talking about. And I don't mean a drawing that adds lines that are not there. I mean a simple explanatory drawing that shows where it is (maybe a circle around the relevant strokes?).
Koen uploaded examples for his idea. He also uploaded examples of the IHS within the context of rayed designs. So that both shape and context are represented.
You haven't done that.
I know perfectly well what a medieval 4 looks like and everything I have said is consistent with that.
I will upload a drawing for you, though given the millions of medieval 4's that you have seen it is rather surprising that you can't observe what at least two distinct individuals have observed.
Again, Mark, it's fine to have criticism but then don't replace it with something worse. Like JKP says, the first glyph could perfectly be an "i" with a serif, as they were commonly written, but it simply lacks the horizontal stroke of a "4", medieval or not.
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As an aside, the discussion about omega and whether or not the capital form would be understood reminded me of something I read while researching Bernardino.
Quote:By far the most enigmatic letter in the monogram is the eta, which is pronounced like and is parallel to a Latin ‘E’, even though it looks identical to a Latin ‘H’.
‘IHS’ is thus an ambiguous combination, in which the first letter is both Greek and Latin, the last letter is a Latin translation of the Greek, and the middle letter is wholly Greek. The confusion caused by this mixture persisted for centuries, especially as people tried to grapple with the ‘H’ form, and to superimpose on it a Latin meaning which the letter lacked. Throughout the Middle Ages, as fewer people knew Greek, the ‘H’ of IHS was commonly considered to be an aspirated letter in the name of Jesus. Many considered the correct spelling of the full name to be ‘ihesus,’ and the three-letter monogram a straightforward,_fully Latin abbreviation of it. As a result, the abbreviated forms ‘I H M’ and ‘I H U’ were often given as accusative and otherwise inflected versions of the Latin. Some awareness of Greek, however, persisted throughout the middles ages^ Innocent III, for example, decreed that in Latin the name of Jesus is written I H S but pronounced ‘Iesus’. The debates about how the name was understood and how it should be written continued until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
From EMILY MICHELSON,
Bernardino of Siena Visualizes the Name of God (p. 160)
(12-11-2019, 11:32 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Again, Mark, it's fine to have criticism but then don't replace it with something worse. Like JKP says, the first glyph could perfectly be an "i" with a serif, as they were commonly written, but it simply lacks the horizontal stroke of a "4", medieval or not.
I don't regard that as something worse, it seems to me that what you suggest is something worse.
To quote Nick Pelling on page 173 of his book "The Curse of the Voynich":
"When viewing You are not allowed to view links.
Register or
Login to view. under a magnifying glass, the shape at the centre of the flower clearly seems to read '4175', with two short arcs beneath it."
Now Nick may have changed his opinion on it, I don't know. Nevertheless it is obviously not an opinion of one.
I cannot see a central bar in the supposed H in IHS.
Ultimately, to reiterate, the only way to arrive at a better determination is to have a higher quality scan.
(12-11-2019, 03:51 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.You think that's a 4???
Do you realize how SMALL that is? That's a pen width. It's smaller than the main text which is also quite small.
That's a vertical stroke with a hook or serif. Like the letter i, l, or the number 1. It was very common to add serifs on medieval text and numerals (especially 1).
I don't agree that it looks anything like a 4 if you take into consideration the scale.
The VMS is SMALL. It's the size of a trade paperback. The scans we have been given are BIGGER than the original manuscript.
Here is a screen snap of the mystery-scribble side-by-side with a V-word from the same folio. This is pretty much the exact width of the VMS in real life.
If I hold up a ruler to the screen, it almost exactly matches the ruler in the above pic. On my other monitor this pic is actually bigger than a real ruler.
Larger scans are not going to make it clearer. They will simply distort your perception of what a quill pen can do on textured vellum (which isn't very much at this scale).
Ultimately this is where we each make a visual interpretation of what we see on the page. What I see looks very little like IHS and much more a long the lines that I have suggested.
More data is always better than less data. Larger scans mean more data.