The Voynich Ninja

So, there was a lot of of discussion a couple years back, and there are still unanswered questions about how the similarities might have come about. 

The centraal structure is called an inverted T-O to distinguish from the the regular T-O seen in geographical maps of that era.

Google search for combined terms "Oresme Velinska" pulls up some good articles, including this count which gets to 43, though I can see how you might easily find only 41.
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Also compare Harley 334 f. 29 which has Earth and stars very much like BNF Fr. 565. Harley 334 also was produced in Paris, though a bit later - second quarter of the 1400s. And see BNF Fr. 1082, an alternate version of Oresme, but with distinct differences, like no stars at all.

In the other examples above, the Earth is a pictorial illustration. The VMs Earth has been changed to a linguistic representation. The change from one method of information transmission to another method is called a code shift  Ostensibly it provides the same information (can't be sure with the VMs), but clearly the appearance is dramatically altered. It could not be more visually different.

The area of stars in BNF 565 and Harley 334 is quite similar - a blue background with scattered, golden stars of a design that resembles an asterisk. The stars of the VMs cosmos are different. They are polygonal. There is clear space inside the lines. And they are laid out in a nearly circular pattern, almost like beads on a string. This is a play on words, Two Latin words, 'cingere' and 'circumdare' were used for surrounded and encircled, without making a distinction. Clearly the VMs representation does make a distinction. This is again the same idea, the same structure, but presented with a diverse visual appearance.

Thirdly the cosmic boundary - clearly distinctive in all four examples. What is important about the recovery of traditional terminology is that it shows the line surrounding the VMs star field is a nebuly line. It possesses a cloud based etymology and connotation - a nebuly line is a cloud band is a cosmic boundary, the same structural element as BNF 565, but again with a distinctive visual difference. (Whether or not it's 43 or 41 undulations.)

So in the comparison of the VMs cosmos with BNF Fr. 565, each corresponding part is a structural match, yet in appearance the VMs almost seems to strive for maximum visual diversity. And IMO, that is the result of intentional obfuscation. Any further doubts about such trickery would seem to be resolved by the apparent placement of the this altered 'Oresme' cosmos inside a version of Shirakatsi's 'Eight Phases of the Moon' diagram. The combination of two such disparate sources seems intended to increase the difficulty of identification. Clearly it works.

The VMs IMO was not meant to simply inform the potential reader. It was meant to test and to quiz the potential reader. And for those who fail the quiz, too bad.

(27-09-2020, 10:09 PM)aStobbart Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(27-09-2020, 09:32 PM)R. Sale Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Nevertheless, it's an interesting combination of structural similarity and visual diversity.

Yes, but as far as a I know yellow stars over blue background (to represent cosmos) are not uncommon (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.), the t-o map orientation on the other hand...

I wonder, if the VMs is a draft or copy, what would the words in the t-o map represent? are these just labels or placeholders for a detalied drawing like in the book by Oresme? If that's the case, thats a lot of text for just "water"

It could say "Some believe there exist antipodes but the equator is thought impassable due to the heat." The Oresme inverted TO map is not the Isadore de Seville version of Africa Europe and Asia turned upside down, it is a more advanced version, where the top right hand quarter is the inhabited side (basically this is the old ecumene, the one in the TO map), the other top side is unknown, incognito (ie america in waiting) and the bottom half is water. There had for millennia persisted discussion of whether there could be land, and heaven forbid, people, on the other side of the equator.
Oresme thought that if there were antipodes , that they would occur only along the equator.

If a representation shows Europe, Africa and Asia, if it has lands and seas, rivers and mountains, if it has geographical features and cities, it's a map, not a representation of the cosmos. On the other hand, cosmic representations of the early 1400s are more "scientific". They have all the planets, sometimes the Earth is divided into the traditional four elements. The cosmic illustrations that are the found in the original comparison (*) are of a much simpler, basic structure.

* BNF Fr. 565 is a posthumous copy of Oresme produced in Paris c. 1410.
* Harley 334 is an even more posthumous copy of G. de Metz produced in Paris in the second quarter of the 1400s.
Both show an inverted T-O Earth, that is not geographical nor strictly elemental, but better described as pictorial.
Pictorial representations of Earth in cosmic illustrations are not that common. And the two best examples both came from Paris. Their dates are not set in stone, so there might be only 10, 15, 20 years between them. They could have been produced in the same workshop or even by a specific person.

As to the division of "inhabited" or "uninhabited", that could be the difference between "cultivated" and "uncultivated" which simply reflects the current situation, plus the fact that various areas went fallow after the plague.

The problem is trying to figure out why the VMs is such a good structural match for the Oresme cosmos and yet looks so different. Why are the Oresme and de Metz illustrations so similar to each other and yet are atypical of other contemporary cosmic diagrams? Why is the pond scene in de Metz (f. 57) so similar to the pond scene in the VMs (f79v)?

The evidence of a potential interrelationship seems plausible to me. And the events occur within the VMs parchment dates. Not every question has been answered by any means, but there doesn't seem to be a better explanation. If you had made the VMs, what is the explanation for all this?