(13-07-2020, 11:44 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.That's one of my favorite lunar volvelles. Egerton 848:
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thank you for finding the exact information. i had a heck of a time.
Happy to do it. I had it in my files.
I guess I shouldn't specifically call it a lunar volvelle. I probably should have said more accurately, "volvelle that includes lunar measurements". Not all of them included lunar references.
(13-07-2020, 11:55 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Interesting that it features directions to various towns, as far as I understand.
I say, supposing the guy would not disclose month names and zodiac names in Voynichese labels (which would make it too easy to decipher), and that specifying one reference point (such as the supposed Libra sign) effectively sets them all, - what other information would be hid in labels?
Anton, I very much like this idea.
What is further notable is that the number of stars in this diagram roughly corresponds to the number of large plant folios in the VMS.
The number of large plant folios in Quires 1-8 is 113. If we reasonably suppose that the missing folios 12r/v also contained large plants, then the number is 115.
Also, three bifolios are lost in Q8, but it is not known whether all of them contained plants, since this is the section of the MS where plants begin to interleave with text-only and diagrams. At most, these would add 6 more large plants, totalling to 121.
Later sections of the MS contain 16 more large plants.
Neglecting two missing quires 16 and 18, of which content nothing is known, we calculate the number of large plant folios as 129 confirmed and up to 129+8 = 137 potentially.
Returning to the diagram, the number of small stars is 114, the number of large stars is 21, thus 135 in total.
I can't remember which thread it was on, but I think I once mentioned that there were medieval astrologically-based gardens. I think at least one of them still exists (I believe it was at a monastery, but I cannot remember the name).
I have also sometimes wondered if some of the VMS diagrams might be garden plans (in a somewhat abstract sense).
If the number of stars matches the number of plants...
It was one of the Ros threads. This f67r1 diagram is similar to some there e.g. the top 2nd to left roundel - which has 13 sectors instead of 12 though.
As the VM is mostly plants it seems logical that there should be SOME explicit connection apparent between them and the stars.
Yes, I often thought of these diagrams as implicitly plant-centric.
Here's a sketch for an experiment:
Take all large plant folios.
Construct a set of vords of the size N=12, such that one, and only one, vord of the set occurs in each of these folios. A member of the set can be repeatable in a folio, but two or more members shall not coexist within a folio.
If such set can be constructed, then we have Zodiac names in Voynichese.
Quite probably there will be no exact solution, so the experiment should aim at a best-effort match.
Other sets can be tried, such as elements (N=4) or planets, but Zodiac is really the foremost candidate.
Hi Anton,
Im sorry im not too smart and i dont quite understand the details of your experiment.
You want one word that appears in all 129 Herbal folios ?
Then the next word of the set should appear in 128 herbal folios because '2+ members shall not coexist in a folio"?
Repeat until we have a set with 12 members ?
If you could explain a bit more that would be great.
A basic (i.e not exact) check of the Herbal folio words (TTtranscription) shows:
Just a sample ( top 18 and some others )
Code:
Word : How many Herbal folios word appears in (Max. 129)
('daiin', 120)
('chol', 88)
('chor', 78)
('dy', 74)
('dar', 66)
('chy', 62)
('or', 62)
('shol', 57)
('ol', 54)
('sho', 54)
('dain', 54)
('cthy', 52)
('aiin', 49)
('chey', 48)
('dal', 46)
('shy', 45)
('shor', 44)
('oky', 41)
('okaiin', 40)
('qotchy', 39)
('ypchedy', 7)
('qokchey', 6)
Hi Rob,
The idea is that each plant is associated with a certain Zodiac sign, and that association is manifested by mentioning that Zodiac sign name in the folio where that plant is described.
Insofar each plant is associated with only one (as the hypothesis goes) Zodiac sign, only one Zodiac sign name would occur in a given botanical folio. E.g. if a plant is associated with Aries, then only the word "Aries" would occur in the respective folio, not words "Libra" or "Taurus". However, the word "Aries" may occur more than once in the folio of the plant associated with Aries (why not?)
Each folio should contain one of the Zodiac sign names, there should be no folios which do not mention a Zodiac sign name (let's exclude that outsider folio with only three vords in it).
That's the "ideal case", I think there might be exceptions to these "rules", that's why I speak of the "best effort" approach. Conditional optimization, that's called.
Anton, the concordance I created years ago does have a few patterns like those you describe (correspondences between plants and zodiacs), but not nearly as many as I expected, and maybe not enough to really prove if something rational is going on.
I have a paper mostly written about some of these patterns on a specific folio. It's been sitting (waiting to be finished) ever since I finished the concordance (for years... where does the time go?). I will dig it out of the pile and see if it is postable, but I might not be able to do that before the weekend.
Could be tricky to build such a set.