The Voynich Ninja

I have just received an email from:

Doctor Charalambos Dendrinos,
Senior Lecturer in Byzantine Literature and Greek Palaeography,
University of London

He was interested and pleased to see the letter.

He says:

"Τhe letter is written in Greek minuscule (with many spelling errors) and signed by Theodore Xanthopoulos, the Turkish aga’s emin bei and ardamarios, responsible for collecting taxes from the ports (skalla, skallomata) of Avlon (in Albania). The letter is addressed to the guild of the merchants in Florence and confirms the renewal of the operation of a company (syntrofia) with a certain Florentine merchant Metastianos, as requested by the Florentine authorities. The letter is dated Wednesday 1st May, without mention of the year."

He may produce a more complete translation.

Needless to say I am disappointed as there are not a huge number early 15th century ciphers surviving and this one looked quite distinctive and unusual, which made it look intriguing.

I will inform the archive that the inventory entry is quite wrong.

There is not a lot more to say, though it does demonstrate that archives can get things quite wrong in their inventories; it is not the first time I have noticed something mislabelled. Nevertheless with so many documents to classify it should hardly be surprising that archives make mistakes from time to time.

Thanks to those who correctly identified it as it has saved me some time from studying it. The purpose of my question was to determine whether it was an early 15th century cipher and it is clear it is not a cipher.

I'm glad you found a definitive answer!

Thanks for posting the good Doctors reply, it's always nice to get a resolution in these matters even if it's not the desired outcome.

Too bad

But all that glitters is not gold.

In my experience when I have contacted academics to ask questions such as this they are usually very happy to help. They are often happy to have been referred to a document that they were not aware of. They are also often happy that someone else has taken an interest in their academic specialism.

I contacted a specialist in this instance as I wanted a definitive answer about this letter. If other people hadn't suggested this Greek minuscule possibility then I would not have known who to contact.

Hi, Mark:  Here are the possible years in the 15th century for the letter.
1409, 1415, 1420, 1426, 1437, 1443, 1448, 1454, 1465, 1471, 1476,
1482, 1493 or 1499.  All have a Wednesday, May 1.

Of course, this assumes the century classification was correct - hopefully that’s the case.  Maybe there is something in the letter that would narrow it down.

Sorry it’s not a cipher but glad you got some answers.

Michelle

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(12-08-2022, 03:49 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Τhe letter is written in Greek minuscule (with many spelling errors)...
...He may produce a more complete translation.

This would be a great gift for us who are trying to "read" the manuscript.
And I would like to see how far his error correction could extend.