The Voynich Ninja

In my thorough research in ciphers from the time of the Voynich I have been very conscious of how much evidence has been lost to history. I have guessed that less than 1% of cipher keys and enciphered letters survive. This is on the basis of having a good idea of a sizeable portion of what survives; obviously I can't have seen everything and it is hard to quantify that of which I am unaware, however given that I have investigated the main European archives having such material I would be very surprised if I haven't seen at least 25% and at most 90%. I could again estimate the rough number of cipher keys/cipher ledgers and enciphered letters from around that time then in existence. These figures leads me to think that less than 1% of this original material survives to the present day.

I wonder how much of other kind of material survives. I would expect that a higher proportion of beautifully illustrated manuscripts survive. I wonder if enciphered letters were more likely to have been destroyed than other letters. So maybe enciphered letters are less likely than other documents to survive. Maybe cipher keys, proportionally, are more likely to survive than enciphered letters, however there also would have been many more enciphered letters than cipher keys.

I guess that crude estimates of the quantity of material surviving and the likelihood of a given document surviving can have some use in searching for documents be it in archives or online.

I would say that a lot of cipher letters from your time would have ended up in state or noble family archives, so would have had a higher probability of surviving than most correspondence of the era.

(07-12-2022, 08:59 PM)davidjackson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I would say that a lot of cipher letters from your time would have ended up in state or noble family archives, so would have had a higher probability of surviving than most correspondence of the era.

It is very possible that you are right that it is more likely that they survive. I obviously haven't investigated what non-enciphered correspondence survives so I have no means of estimating.

There have been many attempts to determine how many manuscripts from the medieval period are lost. No one really knows, of course, but a recent analysis estimated it could be as high as 90%. More on that here:

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It's a tough journey from there-and-then to here-and-now...not just victims of the predictable dangers of fire, flood, war, rodents, etc., but also books that fell apart from overuse or were intentionally destroyed through censorship or vandalism or used as binding waste or dismembered to be part of the capitalist biblioclasm of the twentieth-century. Like its fellow medieval manuscripts, the VMS is a heroic little survivor!

(07-12-2022, 10:39 PM)LisaFaginDavis Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It's a tough journey from there-and-then to here-and-now...not just victims of the predictable dangers of fire, flood, war, rodents, etc.

The first item on your list rings bells. The 1447 Milan fire in the Castello di Porta Giovia and the 1483 Venice fire in the Palazzo Ducale are responsible I think for the destruction/disappearance of a lot of cryptographic material from the early 15th century. Those two fires have really hampered my research as both Milan and Venice were two of the major users of ciphers in the early 15th century. So one is forced to look elsewhere for evidence of the cryptographic techniques used by these two states.

(07-12-2022, 10:39 PM)LisaFaginDavis Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.No one really knows, of course, but a recent analysis estimated it could be as high as 90%. 

Like its fellow medieval manuscripts, the VMS is a heroic little survivor!

Which makes one wonder what other fascinating medieval documents have been lost to history.

The statistics on manuscript survival are an Ozymandian terror. For example, almost all Old English poetry survives in just four manuscripts written within about 50 years of each other (maybe more, but likely a single lifespan). All the other poetry from all the other generations? Who knows. The fates of these four manuscripts were not always secure: one was simply left behind in Italy 800 years ago by an unknown traveller, another was nearly burnt to ashes three hundred years ago.

Some of the most valuable works in Middle English also barely made it through: the Ormulum, the Ayenbite of Inwit, the Book of Margery Kempe, civic Mystery Plays, all survive in single manuscripts. Brut and Owl and the Nightingale survive in just two copies each. The earliest known description of an English parliamentary sitting (rather than just the clerk's record) survives in a single manuscript, from an abbey library which is known to be 95% lost.

(However, speaking from an English position, I understand that survival of administrative records is actually pretty good. If you're interested in knowing whom Richard Tattles of Bumby bequeathed his third best heifer in 1415, then you're in luck.)

Don't even get me started about the Cotton Fire, Emma! It's amazing anything survived that blaze. Here's a nice article about the conservation of the remnants that survived that night in 1731: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Having thought a little more about it I would correct myself, I think more than 1% of cipher keys survive maybe more than 5%. I say this as a few cipher ledgers survive and one can guesstimate the number of ledgers there would have been at that time e.g. one per significant political actor. However I would stand by the claim that less than 1% of enciphered letters survive. I think one can guess at the least amount of enciphered letters there must have been e.g. on average significantly more than 1 letter per cipher key.

(08-12-2022, 02:45 AM)LisaFaginDavis Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Don't even get me started about the Cotton Fire, Emma! It's amazing anything survived that blaze. Here's a nice article about the conservation of the remnants that survived that night in 1731: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

I was curious that the conservators of the time left a "surviving" manuscript in its damaged condition without treatment.