18-09-2020, 11:37 PM
The following is very speculative so I'm moving it out of the "Verbose cipher" thread before I even put it in there.
This also has nothing to do with any of what might be considered my own "pet" theories about the Voynich ms, currently or previously.
But my You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. of the Voynich ms text, and the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. on folio page f67v1, unexpectedly drew my attention to Arabic for a couple reasons. I wish to emphasize, Arabic would not by any means be my first candidate to be the language of the Voynich ms. Of course it is possible, like many languages are. My first inclination, like Ventris with Linear B and Greek, would be to first try to find evidence to rule out Arabic as a candidate language if possible, and see if such efforts succeed or fail. Ventris was led to the Mycenaean Greek hypothesis as a result of a line of investigation to try to prove that Linear B wasn't Greek, which to his own surprise failed and led to the opposite conclusion.
One of the VCI "Zodiac" labels reads <d'hrá>. I happened to discover that al-eadhra' is the Arabic name for Virgo (for Arabic-speaking Christians, Maryam al-eadhra' means "the Virgin Mary"). Now before anyone gets too excited, I have not been able to find many other such matches among Arabic Zodiac sign names, although the issue is apparently complicated by the fact that several different sets of Arabic Zodiac signs and names appear to exist, and who knows what the situation was like in the late medieval period. An investigation into Arabic in medieval Europe would also have to include the Maltese language, for example. But I digress. Another VCI "Zodiac" label reads <káás>, and the Arabic name for Sagittarius is al-qaws. Alas, this label is four "houses" away from <d'hrá>, while Sagittarius should only be three houses away from Virgo. More vaguely, the VCI Zodiac label <da aly> loosely resembles al-dulu, the Arabic name for Aquarius. At least <da aly> is two houses away from <káás>, the right distance from Sagittarius to Aquarius.
This is a curiosity, but hardly convincing. The best of the name matches, <d'hrá>, is the one in the "wrong" place in relation to the other two roughly similar names. And a quick check has not found any explanation for what the other nine label names might be related to. Of course at this provisional stage many of the phonetic values of the VCI transcription system could be completely wrong, but changes that improve other label names might also disturb the neat match of <d'hrá>. For now it is only a few curious names, which may or may not mean anything.
I must also mention that naturally I had to check the VCI transcription of the two label words near the group of seven stars that appear to represent the Pleiades. In fact I did this before I did the 12 "Zodiac" labels. The VCI readings of the two vords are <khaly> and <hajez>. Hejaz is the historically significant Arabian coastal region along the Red Sea, in which Mecca and Medina are located. Khali is the Arabic name of the large desert bordering Hejaz to the east. How this would be related to the Pleiades, I don't know. One wall of the Kaaba in Mecca is aligned with the rising point of Canopus, the second-brightest star in the night sky after Sirius.
I never delved much into Arabic in relation to the Voynich ms. I always figured that hundreds of millions of people around the world know the language so well already, that I never thought I could contribute much to such an investigation without a great knowledge of the language myself. I also figured if the ms was written in Arabic, surely someone would have figured that out and deciphered it already. But maybe everyone else has always figured the same thing too, so that the hypothesis has perhaps actually not been as deeply investigated as other well-known languages have.
The one tell-tale giveaway sign of the Arabic language should be the ubiquitous article "al-" occurring before a very large number of nouns in any text. It should be everywhere, unmistakable and impossible to miss. However, in the Voynich ms text, the VCI representation of <al>/<l>, which is the equivalent of EVA [ar]/[or], occurs predominantly at the ends of vords, not at the beginnings of them. A hypothesis of a "right-to-left" reading of the Voynich ms text is implausible, and in particular all the Arabic words cited above are the result of left-to-right reading of the VCI transcription. The only explanation I can think of to justify the Arabic hypothesis with the VCI character readings is that the author enciphered the text by writing the article "al-" at the ends of words rather than at the beginnings of words as in standard Arabic. This sounds bizarre, but after all we are dealing with a bizarre manuscript and text. One might perhaps compare it to the French argot "Verlan", in which the syllables of words are transposed. (Such an idea can also be considered for the many Romance languages with articles with "l", of which the word "Verlan" itself is one example.)
This also has nothing to do with any of what might be considered my own "pet" theories about the Voynich ms, currently or previously.
But my You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. of the Voynich ms text, and the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. on folio page f67v1, unexpectedly drew my attention to Arabic for a couple reasons. I wish to emphasize, Arabic would not by any means be my first candidate to be the language of the Voynich ms. Of course it is possible, like many languages are. My first inclination, like Ventris with Linear B and Greek, would be to first try to find evidence to rule out Arabic as a candidate language if possible, and see if such efforts succeed or fail. Ventris was led to the Mycenaean Greek hypothesis as a result of a line of investigation to try to prove that Linear B wasn't Greek, which to his own surprise failed and led to the opposite conclusion.
One of the VCI "Zodiac" labels reads <d'hrá>. I happened to discover that al-eadhra' is the Arabic name for Virgo (for Arabic-speaking Christians, Maryam al-eadhra' means "the Virgin Mary"). Now before anyone gets too excited, I have not been able to find many other such matches among Arabic Zodiac sign names, although the issue is apparently complicated by the fact that several different sets of Arabic Zodiac signs and names appear to exist, and who knows what the situation was like in the late medieval period. An investigation into Arabic in medieval Europe would also have to include the Maltese language, for example. But I digress. Another VCI "Zodiac" label reads <káás>, and the Arabic name for Sagittarius is al-qaws. Alas, this label is four "houses" away from <d'hrá>, while Sagittarius should only be three houses away from Virgo. More vaguely, the VCI Zodiac label <da aly> loosely resembles al-dulu, the Arabic name for Aquarius. At least <da aly> is two houses away from <káás>, the right distance from Sagittarius to Aquarius.
This is a curiosity, but hardly convincing. The best of the name matches, <d'hrá>, is the one in the "wrong" place in relation to the other two roughly similar names. And a quick check has not found any explanation for what the other nine label names might be related to. Of course at this provisional stage many of the phonetic values of the VCI transcription system could be completely wrong, but changes that improve other label names might also disturb the neat match of <d'hrá>. For now it is only a few curious names, which may or may not mean anything.
I must also mention that naturally I had to check the VCI transcription of the two label words near the group of seven stars that appear to represent the Pleiades. In fact I did this before I did the 12 "Zodiac" labels. The VCI readings of the two vords are <khaly> and <hajez>. Hejaz is the historically significant Arabian coastal region along the Red Sea, in which Mecca and Medina are located. Khali is the Arabic name of the large desert bordering Hejaz to the east. How this would be related to the Pleiades, I don't know. One wall of the Kaaba in Mecca is aligned with the rising point of Canopus, the second-brightest star in the night sky after Sirius.
I never delved much into Arabic in relation to the Voynich ms. I always figured that hundreds of millions of people around the world know the language so well already, that I never thought I could contribute much to such an investigation without a great knowledge of the language myself. I also figured if the ms was written in Arabic, surely someone would have figured that out and deciphered it already. But maybe everyone else has always figured the same thing too, so that the hypothesis has perhaps actually not been as deeply investigated as other well-known languages have.
The one tell-tale giveaway sign of the Arabic language should be the ubiquitous article "al-" occurring before a very large number of nouns in any text. It should be everywhere, unmistakable and impossible to miss. However, in the Voynich ms text, the VCI representation of <al>/<l>, which is the equivalent of EVA [ar]/[or], occurs predominantly at the ends of vords, not at the beginnings of them. A hypothesis of a "right-to-left" reading of the Voynich ms text is implausible, and in particular all the Arabic words cited above are the result of left-to-right reading of the VCI transcription. The only explanation I can think of to justify the Arabic hypothesis with the VCI character readings is that the author enciphered the text by writing the article "al-" at the ends of words rather than at the beginnings of words as in standard Arabic. This sounds bizarre, but after all we are dealing with a bizarre manuscript and text. One might perhaps compare it to the French argot "Verlan", in which the syllables of words are transposed. (Such an idea can also be considered for the many Romance languages with articles with "l", of which the word "Verlan" itself is one example.)