The Voynich Ninja

@Koen: Can you highlight where you see a rivet? I can not find it.

Sorry I only have my phone right now. Not really a rivet, but the bottom half of the oval appears disconnected from the top part. On the right side of the oval there appears to be a circle which could be seen as a joint between both parts. But again I'm not sure at all. I just have a hard time seeing the bottom part of the oval completely connected to the rest of the object, if that makes sense.

(it's really difficult to explain these things without my trusty Photoshop)

(27-07-2021, 03:14 PM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This illustration looks to me like the nymph is drinking from a vial. Do you see it that way, or do you see something else ?

I see it as a vertical striped tube but the little bit on top does not appear to touch her mouth, so i do not believe she is drinking. 

In my interpretations, that hands back pose means something has happened in the past to wipe out a large segment of the population, and that its history is lost. That she is standing in a tub that attaches to nothing tells me the place is an island, and the upside down finial tells me it is an island built of volcanic rock. 

I believe the page to be a mnemonic representation of the Aegean sea, so given my interpretations of the upper drawings on the page, i think this is Santorini, aka Thera, but stands for the larger area of the Cyclades. I think the little bit at the top of the tube circle is a reference to Crete, it is shaped a bit like it, partially covered by a wave, if you think of it in a south up orientation, especially if the part inside her hair is Karpathos et al. (Koen's rivet can be the two northwestern peninsulas) It is located in real life in a circular circumference with Santorini as the center. Santorini's volcanic eruption 1600s BC caused the waters to rise (the striped tube, tubes are rivers, vertical river is a flood, note the center is black and not blue, so the water is not the cause, but the effect.) The eruption wiped out much of Crete and presumably all the other islands within the circumference, so they share that history. Rhodes falls just outside that circle and has its own stories, so it is still drawn, to the right of it on the page.

That the Minoan society (which inhabited both Santorini and Crete) was destroyed was written about by Herodotus, although he did not seem to know the cause. Crete was a Venetian colony from 1204 well into the 17th century, (most the rest also, on various timelines) so i think it plausible that some of its its geologic history had been ascertained by the time of the vms, from such things as layers of ash, etc, since that appears to be an interest of the vms creators also. 

Whether or not it was intended, it can certainly be used as a mnemonic to assist in drawing the Aegean sea and telling a bit of its history. However i do not know what the lines at the knee would signify.

This is a later portolan but i like it because the central rhumb lines are in the general vicinity to show the circle i am referring to. As is often the case, the vms page is aligned with northwest at the top, so look at a north up map on the diagonal to compare regions.

Thanks @Linda, I haven't thought of such a far-reaching interpretation myself.

It's kind of strange.

If I had to interpret the two red lines, they look like they are the cheeks. As if she were blowing on the spoon (or whatever).

I agree Aga, she is definitely blowing and this is important. There are other nymphs that use the same expression. You can see this most clearly on the cheek closest to the object, it is round/puffed up.

That's interesting, the rounded cheeks gave me ( among other things ) the idea that the nymph would drink something. As if the mouth cavity is filled with liquid.

Glorious ambiguity! Can the artist create that intentionally?

From a late 13th century copy of the Liber Floridus, a dragon holding seven small stars in his tail. 
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[attachment=5787]

This is supposed to represent the dragon taking down a third of all the stars in the sky, which probably means that the number seven can be arbitrary.  *horror vacui intensifies*

Good question. If the dragon is at the bottom and 7 stars at the top, then the bull should also be up there.
If that is the case, then it could be the Pleiades.
Do you have the whole picture ?