The Voynich Ninja

In her paper "How Many Glyphs and How Many Scribes? Digital Paleography and the Voynich Manuscript" [Lisa Fagin Davis, 2020, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.] Lisa Fagin Davis identifies five different scribes. (Note: Back in 2020 I had already You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. about some odd points in Lisa Davis paper.)

As evidence for different scribes some different shapes for the glyphs EVA-k and EVA-iin/in are listed. The paper lists numerous smaller variations for both glyphs like "a very slight foot at the base of the second vertical" for EVA-k. However, the text is handwritten and it is not expected that each character is exactly written the same every time. In a response Lisa Davis explained this as: "My conclusions are based on tendencies visible over the length of a scribe's corpora" (see this You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).

However, as one of the main differences for EVA-k the paper lists the shape of the crossbar for EVA-k:
"Is the glyph formed by one or two strokes? Is the crossbar bowed, or is it horizontal? This is directly related to the previous question, since a bowed bar tends to result from a smooth directional change from the top of the first vertical, while a horizontal crossbar is the result of lifting the quill after completing the vertical." [Davis 2020, p. 172].

For <qokalshedy> and <okaral> in f103r.P.19 and P.20 it is indeed possible to observe that the crossbar in EVA-k crosses the first vertical (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).

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This can only mean that in this cases of EVA-k the glyph was indeed formed in two strokes. However, the paper assigns You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. to scribe 3 and mentions that a bowed crossbar would indicate that the glyph was formed in one stroke. This is obviously not the case here. But also for other pages assigned to scribe 3 it is possible to find instances for EVA-k written in two strokes (see for instance <kaiin> in f104r.P.32). In my eyes this result is interesting and requires at least an explanation.

Also interesting is figure 4 on p. 171 (see Davis 2020, p 171). This figure shows an image of the software Archetype. Davis writes that she used Archetype for identifying the scribes. I have installed my own copy of Archetype and therefore I know that the number in the "Other Images"-Tab plus one is the number of pages uploaded to Archetype. Figure 4 shows as number 43 which means that 44 pages were uploaded to Archetype. However, the VMS contains far more pages than just 44. There are more than 200 pages which include text. Unfortunately the paper didn't explain why only 44 pages were uploaded into Archetype.

However, earlier in 2020 Davis presented her findings in a talk at the BSA Annual Meeting. At minute 25 the video shows a slide with four groups for EVA-k (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). In this slide in the column to the right 6 instances of EVA-k from the stars section are shown. A little bit odd is that all 6 instances belong to folio 114r. Did that mean that Davis uploaded only a few folios for the Stars section into Archetype since she was starting with the assumption that all folios of a certain quire belong to the same scribe? But this wouldn't fit with her statement that "conclusions are based on tendencies visible over the length of a scribe's corpora".

Even more odd is that also the first column contains an instance of EVA-k associated with scribe 3. It's labeled as f94r. However, the other glyphs in the first column belong to folio 10r, 89r, 88r and 93v and the paper associates them with scribe 1. Also the second column lists glyphs associated with two different scribes: this are f40v (scribe 2) and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (associated to scribe 4). Unfortunately Davis only mentions the similarity for EVA-k for scribe 1 and 3 but is not mentioning or discussing the similarity she sees for EVA-k for the scribes 2 and 4.

The third column contains the biggest group of glyphs. They are all associated to scribe 4. For scribe 4 nearly all folios from the Zodiac pages were uploaded into Archetype. This rises the question why Davis has uploaded all the pages for the Zodiac section but not for the other quires? Davis explains the importance of the Zodiac section at minute 31. She quotes Renè Zandbergens website: "The very common character combination qo is almost completely absent in the zodiac pages and the rosettes page, but appears everywhere else" (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. minute 31 and Zandbergen 2019: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). Davis argues that the zodiac pages are important since the zodiac pages and the rosette page correspond exactly to the pages she has identified as scribe 4 (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). Davis sees this as confirmation of her work.

Unfortunately Davis did only mentioned the fact that the Zodiac pages behave statistical differently at the BSA Annual Meeting but not in her paper published later in 2020. In the paper Davis writes "I have sent my preliminary results to a professor of linguistics who is running several different linguistical analyses on the Voynich as part of a long-term class project and her own research" (Davis 2022, p. 179). This is unfortunate since someone not aware of the BSA Annual Meeting can get this way the impression that Davis wasn't knowing of the qo-pattern while identifying Scribe four. In 2021 Claire Bowern published together with Sterneck and Annie Polish the paper "Topic Modeling in the Voynich Manuscript" and as expected Bowern writes: "the astrological section is always clustered next to hand 4, although it is worth noting that both hand and illustrative topic classifications come from Lisa Fagin Davis’s work" [Sterneck et. al. 2021, p. 15 You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.]. Needless to say that a reference to Renè Zandbergens statement about the Zodiac pages is also not given in Claire Bowerns paper.

In a recent You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Lisa Davis explains why Scientific evidence-based methodologies are important in Voynich research. Decide yourself if her paper in Manuscript studies is indeed based on scientific evidence.

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I have long been of the opinion that in several cases it is a question of 2 different symbols.
The characters distinguish one marker.

Example.

Some addition: The paper from 2020 also contains a short statement about the stars section "The entire Quire is written by Scribe 3 with the exception of folio 115r, where the first twelve lines were written by Scribe 2." [Davis 2020, p. 177]. This statement is contradicted by the fact that the first 18 lines on folio 115r appear darker. This can only mean that at least these 18 lines were written with the same quill and therefore belong to the same scribe. What arguments did Davis present for her idea that only some of these 18 lines were written by Scribe 2? Unfortunately beside the short statement no further explanation is given in the paper.

However, there is a video from 2021 "The Voynich Manuscript with Lisa Fagin Davis" presented by the Beinecke Library at Yale. In this video Davis gives some details for folio 115r (see minute 68@You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). Davis is arguing that the darker color of the first 18 lines would indicate a different scribe. Consequently she assigns all 18 lines to scribe 2 (by using a red rectangle). In my eyes this argument is unconvincing since the change of a quill or the sharpening of the quill etc. could also explain the color change. Moreover, such an argument also contradicts the statement that it is possible to use the shape of EVA-k and EVA-iin to distinguish between scribe 2 and scribe 3. In the video Davis even argues that the use of these "glyphs is really consistent from hand to hand" (see minute 58@You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).

A little bit odd is that in the video Davis speaks about 115 verso instead of 115 recto. Davis argues "if you go back and forth you can convince yourself that every line is written by a different scribe". To make things even more confusing Davis uses an image of folio 34v as illustration for scribe 2 on folio 115r.

So why did the paper only attributes 12 lines to scribe 2 whereas in the video 18 lines were attributed to scribe 2? (Side note: There is another folio where in fact the first 12 lines appear in darker color. This folio is 105 recto. So maybe the number of lines is correct and the reverence to folio 115r is just a typo? But if this the case why Davis didn't notice this mistake while preparing the video presentation?)

Thank you for taking the time to review my work so carefully, Torsten. In my plenary lecture at the upcoming conference, I will introduce the methodological underpinnings of Latin Paleography and explain precisely how I have applied those principles to the script and scribes of the Voynich Manuscript. I hope you will attend.

(04-11-2022, 04:09 PM)LisaFaginDavis Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Thank you for taking the time to review my work so carefully, Torsten. In my plenary lecture at the upcoming conference, I will introduce the methodological underpinnings of Latin Paleography and explain precisely how I have applied those principles to the script and scribes of the Voynich Manuscript. I hope you will attend.

Thank you for your response. 

Paleography for a known writing system like latin can normally assume that each scribe has some experience in writing and had already developed his own style. However in the case of the VMS this assumption is not granted. The VMS is the only example of its kind, therefore one possibility is that the writing system was designed to write only the manuscript we know. In this case the scribe did start with little experience and was becoming more fluent over time. 

We know that the Currier A part was written before Currier B and we if we look at the manuscript it becomes obvious that Herbal in Currier A is written more "legible" than Herbal in Currier B. You even describe the writing in Currier A "as broadly spaced and seems to have been written more slowly and carefully" (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). This would fit with the hypothesis that the scribe wrote Currier B more fluently since he had more experience in writing Voynichese. However, what we didn't know is if the writing style in Currier A is changing over time or not? This is the question I'm interested in.