The Voynich Ninja

Bump nose, eyelid line, not quite all-over scales but close:

[attachment=5264]

Pos. Swiss or German, c. 1440s?

I am always sceptical when comparisons are made in books when the story is several hundred or thousand years older.
They have to appear in books at some point.
They change places too often. Copied, sold stolen, given away, carried off as war booty and copied again.

I saw the whole report about what the idiots destroyed. Including the temple of Jonah near Mosul.


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Skepticism is reasonable, that's why discussion is helpful, but it is a fact that stories have been passed on though the centuries, like the Trojan War, or tales of King Arthur, and, of course, the Bible. That's one reason why the KBR library is interesting as it provides a little glimpse of something that once was. And the emphasis for looking back at tradition was predominant then. Information came from past, not from discovery.

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So, when different manuscripts tell the same story, there is going to be a trail of transmission from older text to newer text. The transmitted story is going to be similar, but what about the illustrations. They may depict the same situation, but do they look the same? As in, are they clearly copied representations? By and large, they are not. Artists may depict the same scene, but the illustrations are different. None of the Jonah representations are the same: he's facing left, he's facing right, he's half-way out, he's on the run, he's dangling his feet over the edge.

As far as the comparison of fish heads, however, this is like alley cat heaven, There are several with enough similarity in form and detail that they might have come from the same hand. But we'll have to throw the little blue one back. Where did old Jonah get that sawed-off halberd, anyway?

Koen, it might be worth adding this example with a flowery center. It is not specifically intended to rotate (or to have a rotating arm attached) but it has multiple lobes:

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Bede, St. John's Ms 7

Sure does look like a big blue pin to me. It's the only major divider that crosses the red area.

Would it be general practice to try to use the representations in the text, or to use these as models for a separate construction?

Here's another one with a flower center.

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Morgan Library
Medical and astronomical texts
Germany, between 1450 and 1475
MS B. 27 fol. 55r
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This one even seems to represent a volvelle standing on a base.