The Voynich Ninja

Looking at the facsimile, no. 
The mouth is drawn in and there is no hole.

The nose looks like a fingernail hole.

The mouth is the mouth of the spewy mound (at least that's what it looks like to me. All the spewy mounds have openings at the top for stuff to come out).

I don't see eyes, I see a row of dots.


Hopefully I am interpreting it as you intend, but I don't see a giant. The style would be too modern if this were a face.

The facsimile doesn't have a hole there. 
The face is probably pareidolia. 
It's actually an inked in hole and above a series of dividing lines, each with a dot in, and a continuation of the decorative band above.

Yeah, the eyes are part of a row of dots that start at the bottom. I think it was originally a spray coming out of the "spewy mound". But this image is in the crease that's so badly damaged.

The hole (I am trying not to say mouth) is unusual in the manuscript. Is there anything like it elsewhere? The covering with ink?

Not sure if we're talking about the same thing, David. This is how I see it:

The mouth of the pareidolic face is a regular drawing of one of those volcano-like mounds. There's another one spewing something else top right. This is a recurring theme in certain VM pages, to have tube-like openings spew various "elements" or forms of matter or.. either way, various patterns.

[attachment=4471]

The "nose" is what really makes the face, but I think it is not there. Because of repeated folding, the parchment here is very brittle, and some holes have formed. You can see a similar blemish nearby, outside of the face. I marked these with green arrows and photoshopped them away in the bottom right.

On my view, it looks like a peak of a fortified tower, while I can't explain why it is here, on the top of the "volcano".

(25-06-2020, 12:02 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The mouth of the pareidolic face is a regular drawing of one of those volcano-like mounds. There's another one spewing something else top right. This is a recurring theme in certain VM pages, to have tube-like openings spew various "elements" or forms of matter or.. either way, various patterns.
[attachment=4472]

Possibly, the right "volcano" depicts excape of some liquid, but the left one shows, perhaps, a kind of a funnel, designed, as a tower, meaning the entering of the liquid. In another words, an outlet and an inlet.

Let's forget about the face (it's driving me mad  ) 
My thoughts are along searchers lines. You can see the crenellations. 
(damn but it still looks like a face! A representation of Dante's inferno is my pet personal whacko theory for this one, which I won't attempt to defend. In which case, we're looking at the giant. )

David, I'm all for finding hidden meanings, including faces (tendrilface is real!). But in this case, the illusion of a face is created by an external event, namely the deterioration of this area in the vellum. On the one hand, much of the ink has faded, removing the "spray" pattern. And on the other hand, a slit in the material together with lighting conditions of the scan, create the illusion that a nose has been drawn.

I do agree about the presence of crenellations. I can't quite agree with Searcher's suggestion that the fortification is placed atop of the volcano though. The opening of the volcano is separated from the building by the matter erupting from it. So it's more like an eruption, and the ash or whatever else reaching a nearby city.

I wonder if some description of an eruption might be behind this. Take the famous letters from Pliny the Younger to Tacitus (source: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ) 

Quote:About one in the afternoon, my mother pointed out a cloud with an odd size and appearance that had just formed. From that distance it was not clear from which mountain the cloud was rising, although it was found afterwards to be Vesuvius. The cloud could best be described as more like an umbrella pine than any other tree, because it rose high up in a kind of trunk and then divided into branches. I imagine that this was because it was thrust up by the initial blast until its power weakened and it was left unsupported and spread out sideways under its own weight.

I find it especially interesting how various forms of ash and debris are described:

Quote:The ash already falling became hotter and thicker as the ships approached the coast and it was soon superseded by pumice and blackened burnt stones shattered by the fire. Suddenly the sea shallowed where the shore was obstructed and choked by debris from the mountain.

And:

Quote:Meanwhile, tall broad flames blazed from several places on Vesuvius and glared out through the darkness of the night.

(I just re-learned that Pliny the Elder - the one whose texts we often use - died in this event)