I was looking at the man (bottom left) in You are not allowed to view links.
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What do people think? Is medieval carpentry completely wrong and/or do I miss something obvious?
Thanks for any comments in advance.
Juergenw,
Thanks for drawing attention to this. I've never seen anyone mention it before.
A somewhat similar object to the nail-pieced "log" occurs a few folios earlier, too.
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Having looked at them both, I'd like to write a commentary for the pair. Would that be ok with you?
f79r looks like a pipe (or log) that is staked - note the vertical lines either side of the figure.
The stakes, if that's what they are, aren't supporting the object, which is floating in the wáter waist high along with the person. Instead, they may be there to prevent it rolling around in the water?
Maybe they are depicting a way to manipulate logs (or whatever the object is) in water?
Juergen
granted that I've always said that *all* the anthropoform figures were meant for stars, not just those in the calendar - I think I might have to change my opinion that there is no astrology as such in the manuscript's imagery.
The short story is that I think the key here is that the text looks "almost Greek" and that in some cases it is pretty clear that the original makers had Greek as a language with which they were comfortable (e.g. the 'ule for the five elements).
In this case the two figures - yours and that I mentioned, refer I think to the two celestial ships. The female figure is the northern Pole figure whose ship turns..
the lower figure - and this is the bit related to astrology - is the Southern ship's master. The southern ship was believed unable to move from the depths of the southern sea/sky, 'detained' by the master.
I think what we see in your picture is an illustration of a passage from the Liber Hermetis, that where it describes the stars of the degrees of each zodiacal constellation, and what stars arise or sink with each.
In speaking of Taurus, its 21-23 degrees, the text (in Latin trans.) says:
... oritur qui detinet navem, Deus disponens universum mundum..
[there] arises he who keeps (or detains) the ship, the God that orders the whole universe.
Now, the keeper of the southern ship (and in this case he has not only run a couple of nails through it, but is hanging onto one) is traditionally the star Canopus.
The Liber Hermetis was very popular in medieval times, though now it is treated as a bit arcane and so mightn't appeal to many. Apart from anything else, it can be hard work if you don't enjoy reading earlier beliefs or astrology.
But that's what I think is being depicted in that detail. Canopus and the southern ship, which wasn't always imagined very grand, although always large in the heavens.
There is no single 'southern Pole' but two or three bright stars were used to point to where it ought to be. Another method was to take two stars we call the 'Pointers' and the Southern Cross (which the Arabic speakers called the Beam - i.e. of wood) and use them to find where the invisible Pole was.
So I think the lady refers to the north, about which the northern ship turns, which is an old form within Ursa major. Ibn Majid refers to it, but it's not part of the latins' tradition.
Hope this helps.
PS about carpenters. Informal medieval imagery, such as that in the roof-bosses of Norwich cathedral, did seem to know about a northern as well as a southern ship and they often picture Noah, as carpenter, working on one of them: I think the northern ship.
Also, earlier medieval works sometimes identify the two ships with the 'elect' and the damned, showing Christ with his manifest calling in the saved, and in one or two cases the opposite for the 'former testament' or manifest.
(21-02-2016, 02:01 PM)david Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.f79r looks like a pipe (or log) that is staked - note the vertical lines either side of the figure.
I saw the vertical lines. These -representing pegs -actually are the reason why I think it is a wooden log and not a pipe.
You mention water: I am not entirely sure that that was the original intent or message to be conveyed. I have a strange feeling that that could be a sort of medieval 'comic strip'. Water, however, makes sense in a figurative sense, where all life (and forms of life) originated (NB: in connection with the following page - I post that separately later, also see the mermaid thread and the You are not allowed to view links.
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et homo natus in piscibus' making water the source of life).
The carpenter (if I may call him like that) is surrounded in that section of the Voynich Manuscript by plenty of women. Interestingly, Aristoteles in
De generatione animalium (1.22) refers to the male contribution to the embryology and genesis as 'carpenter' (the male contribution being of immaterial, forming character whereas the female contribution is the 'material' part).
(21-02-2016, 01:41 PM)Diane Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Juergenw,
Thanks for drawing attention to this. I've never seen anyone mention it before.
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Having looked at them both, I'd like to write a commentary for the pair. Would that be ok with you?
Diane, sure I asked for comments, so please feel free to contribute.
I wouldn't say impossible, but it will be very hard to find anything that hasn't been discussed before....
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Well, if we're going down the flotation device route (hadn't occured to me I must admit, probably because the figure is only leaning on it not holding onto it) a log under the arms must be the most primitive device around.
That and pig's bladders, I should imagine.
But the stakes go right through the object - so it must have been bored to be pierced with the two stakes. It's also clearly a long object, much longer tan the person leaning on it.