The Voynich Ninja

At the centre of f68v3 there is a T/O map. In the top right corner of the Rosettes foldout page there is a T/O map.

From my experience all or almost all T/O maps from that period represent the 3 continents Africa, Europe and Asia, with Asia represented as a half circle and the other two continents as quarters.

Sometimes there are other locations highlighted with the T/O map, sometimes not, sometimes just a list of other locations.

So on the rosettes folio I think EVA-asal is "asia".

I have been looking at the text in the top right quarter of the T/O map on f68v3 and the equivalent text in the bottom left quarter of the T/O map on the rosettes folio. This is the text that would correspond to "Europa". The text on the rosettes folio looks to me like an abbreviated version of the text on f68v3. However determining visually whether this is correct is very hard. So I would welcome opinions on this and arguments as to how can determine this.

I think we have in this case what Nick Pelling would term a block paradigm, albeit a small one. However this would be both an internal and external block paradigm.

Also, when I search on voynichese.com there are no examples of words starting EVA-opee so I wonder if this is due to transcription errors or whether words starting this way are very rare.

To me this indicates that we would really benefit from even higher resolution scans.

(I think the list in the half circle on f68v3 is likely to be a list of locations in asia.)

I should add that some T/O maps only contain drawings not text, however I am very inclined to the view that the drawings also represent Africa, Europe and Asia if anyone can demonstrate from text accompanying these drawings, but of course not on the T/O, that they do or do not represent Africa, Europe and Asia that would be interesting. I think these drawings sometimes differ as different people have illustrated the continents differently. I don't know, but there may be the rare exception.

These are the two T/O maps that I am referring to.

These two images show the quarter containing the text on the two different pages. They may not be at maximum resolution, so referring to the original scans may be wisest.

These close ups should help to make things even clearer.

That last letter in the rosettes T-O might be g or y. I don't think it's a as you mentioned on Nick's blog. The VMS a never curves down and to the left as far as I can recall.


The first letter in the rosettes T-O looks to me like a half-bench-P (cp or op squished together), or a unique glyph. In contrast, the one in the second T-O looks like op. Most of the time there is a clear separation between the o and the p. I don't think we should assume they are the same just because they are similar. There are many half-benches in the VMS and a number of uncommon combinations that look deliberate, not accidental.


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I don't think it's a good idea to refer to these as T-O maps. We don't know that they are maps.

And by the way, even if they are maps, they were not always labeled with Euro/Asia/Affro (they frequently spelled Afro with ff), sometimes they were named after Noah's sons.

(02-01-2020, 08:33 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.That last letter in the rosettes T-O might be g or y. I don't think it's a as you mentioned on Nick's blog. The VMS a never curves down and to the left as far as I can recall.

No you have misunderstood. Not on the rosettes, but on the f68v3 page.

(02-01-2020, 08:33 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I don't think it's a good idea to refer to these as T-O maps. We don't know that they are maps.

There are reasons other than the way they look that fits with the idea that these represent the earth. We can't prove they are T/O maps, but they certainly look like it and have you got a better hypothesis. There are 2 other T/O maps in the Voynich, but they do not contain text.

I don't know what the other transcripts have for this, but I interpret this as opch?ldg. (I can't tell if it's a or o and I sometimes wonder if there is a glyph that is deliberately written as in between a and o because there are many of them AND we should not assume these are the same as Latin "a" and "o"—for now they are just shapes that resemble Latin characters):

[attachment=3823]

I think it's an ink skip on the top of ch. It looks different from ee written separately. There are quite a few with ink skips, but sometimes the ink skip is a little more obvious than others. You get used to seeing certain patterns if you go through the entire manuscript glyph-by-glyph.

(02-01-2020, 08:33 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The first letter in the rosettes T-O looks to me like a half-bench-P (cp or op squished together), or a unique glyph. In contrast, the one in the second T-O looks like op. Most of the time there is a clear separation between the o and the p. I don't think we should assume they are the same just because they are similar. There are many half-benches in the VMS and a number of uncommon combinations that look deliberate, not accidental.

I am not sure whether the best place to start is by looking at other examples of Voynichese glyphs. It seems to me the best place to start is by doing one’s best to analyse the visual data that one has from the existing scan. Questions like how many distinct penstrokes we can count, What those penstrokes are, In which direction those penstrokes were drawn, In which order those penstrokes were drawn. It is true that seeing how the author has drawn other glyphs on other pages can give an indication i.e. how does the author normally draw an EVA-o and how an EVA-P

When drawing an EVA-o where does the author normally start and end? And likewise for EVA-P.
I think one has to ask if we have an EVA-oP then how did they end up being drawn so close together? What were the sequence of events as this then was clearly a small mistake and not deliberate?
Obviously I am being so focussed on this as it could have very important implications.

For example there are a variety of possible narratives. First the author was writing in a relatively small space for text, so that might have been a factor. One would assume the author drew the EVA-o first and the EVA-P afterwards, unless the author forgot to write the EVA-o and added it later. If the EVA-P was drawn 2nd then sure the author must have started at the top and drawn around and down mistakenly into the EVA-o. It could be that the author forgot to write the EVA-P and added it later.