The Voynich Ninja

(18-06-2024, 02:53 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.BNF Lat 6823

The plant (britanica) in left part of the folio 30r of the BNF Lat 6823  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. may be
the same than the VMS f33r.
The drawings have common elements: the roots, the shape of the leafs, the detail of the leafs (marked in green), the bottom of the flowers (marked in red). The top of the flowers are drawn in diferent perspectives but they are compatibles in my opinion.
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(17-06-2024, 12:37 PM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is definitely Smilax aspera, it is also marked as such on the page. A well-made and botanically more or less correct drawing. Heart-shaped alternate leaves with parallel venation and spiny margins and the zig-zagging spiny stem and tendrils at the base of the petiole.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is the corresponding Smilax illustration in the Morgan Dioscorides Very similar including the crossed stems. Curiously both lack a distinct root.

Adding an Smilas from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
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Hi all, 
I am new here so apologies if I make any mistakes or if my approach is incorrect, I am more than happy to learn  I found this discussion quite interesting especially because plant identification always seemed so iffy with the VM and very rarely there has been a case where the plant looks so clearly like something found in other herbariums, as is the case with the Smilax Aspera on f17v. The other great thing is that there seems to be two more occurences of the Smilax Aspera throughout the VM, on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and f99r. This is also great because Scribe 1 is the author of all 3 pages. 

I thought it would be interesting to go through f17v's text and see if there was any "word" that could potentially be a reference to this plant. Ideally, I would have loved to see a "word" pop up in f17v, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. without being common throughout the VM, i.e. an indicator that it could very well be the name of the plant. I have attached a little word document containing a transcription from Voynichese of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (there is only one correction, the second "word" on line 13 seems to be closer to "chal" and not "chol"), followed by a list of the "words" on the page and their presence throughout the VM, followed then by a list of "words" that are either on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. or You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. or both, and a table summarising the list as well as the "frequency" of these words throughout the VM. The last table I have obtained by removing the "words" that I thought appeared too often, were too short (2 characters or less), or had different positions on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that made it seem like they were not related to the Smilax drawing at the bottom. This leaves a list of "potential" names, obviously this is from my own judgement and I am far from an expert so feel free to play about and change things if you find it useful. 

This entire thing obvioulsy holds on the assumption that spaces are meaningful within the VM, which I am not so sure about, and wouldn't know where to begin to conduct this analysis without using inter-"words" spaces as a guide. 

Hopefully this is useful stuff

Dioscurides Neapolitanus
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Another extremely similar Smilax aspera with crossed stems

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My proposal would be to collect plant images from all available Dioscorides copies and sort them by names as they appear in the books. Then compare images for similarities and differences.

I can't believe the Vienna Dioscurides isn't fully available online!
I think it's the oldest surviving copy, created around 512. It contains plant illustrations from different sources. According to the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., one group looks natural and 3-dimensional whereas the other appearts flat as if copied from pressed source material. And while well drawn, some illustrations look nothing like the plant they are meant to depict or even contradict the text. The copist probably never saw the plant and more or less faithfully copied the original, sometimes making mistakes or mixing up plants. Literature cited is:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.: Medicina Magica. Metaphysische Heilmethoden in spätantiken und mittelalterlichen Handschriften. Graz 1972; 2. Auflage, Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, Graz 1978, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., S. 35–39.

Doesn't this remind us of the VM?
As I said, copying manuscripts was a lossy and 'noisy' process, we can think of it pretty much as the evolution of genetic material. There are copy errors, deletions, insertions, transpositions and recombinations and corrections with every iteration. Some of these lower, some increase overall quality. The Vienna Dioscorides was a copy of an older document and the source of the VM maybe was one or several additional copies away from the original. This explains some but by far not all oddities of the VM. Especially not the flowers.

Cod. Med. gr. 1, fol. 125r: Vienna Dioscorides; Byzanz, arround 512: Smilax aspera L

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(18-06-2024, 05:58 PM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.My proposal would be to collect plant images from all available Dioscorides copies and sort them by names as they appear in the books. Then compare images for similarities and differences.

Yes, we really do need some more structured approach. A lot is happening, but given the diversity of manuscripts around and their scattered availability, it is hard to build towards conclusions. 

My impression is that out of the Dioscorides MSS we have compared so far, the Chig 159 is a bit closer to the VM than the others. But this must be confirmed first.

So maybe we should take the plants we have compared now, and compare them over all illustrated Dioscorides MS we know of, then see if the Chigi really stands out? If maybe there is a better one? I will make a new thread.

Juan Sali: that one's a bit tricky because there are closer flowers in the VM. It is clearly aware of these type of flowers with "scales", but does not draw them on this folio. See You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (a bit) You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ... 

Davidma: welcome to the forum! The problem I am personally having with this approach (which may have to do with my lack of sleep) is that there are so many variables. Two similar plants may have very different names. Also, honestly I would have no idea how to proceed even if suitable "words" were selected.

Highly relevant literature:

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I found the authors conclusion an eye-opener. If text and images were transmitted independently and illustrations were chosen and recombined from multiple sets of stock paintings, this leads us directly to Diebold Lauber's workshop. Rather than assuming the VM authors copied illustrated books we should consider the hypothesis that they chose and modified existing illustrations with or without direct connection to their text. Gemini would be such example where an unrelated stock image was adapted and both texts and images could have been combined from a multitude of unrelated sources and modified for their intended purpose.

(18-06-2024, 07:36 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.My impression is that out of the Dioscorides MSS we have compared so far, the Chig 159 is a bit closer to the VM than the others. But this must be confirmed first.

So maybe we should take the plants we have compared now, and compare them over all illustrated Dioscorides MS we know of, then see if the Chigi really stands out? If maybe there is a better one? I will make a new thread.

I will be happy to add to that thread with what I already have, but the proposed enterprise is a huge one, and like I already wrote, this must have been done and published already.

Here is a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., even just the front matter (pages i - lxxviii) contain a wealth of relevant information.

I have not yet been able to check this, but this looks like another good resource:

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(12-06-2024, 11:42 PM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(11-06-2024, 11:01 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It is worth noting that also in 'legitimate' herbals, the quality of illustrations can vary greatly.

Not only drawing quality but also accuracy.
Chig.F.VII.159, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. indeed appears to depict a hellebore, there is a very similar drawing in the Morgan Dioscorides M.652, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. labeled as Helleborus melas which is translated as You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[/i] from the balkans It looks like the common You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Both drawings appear detailed and well made - but have nothing in common with any species of hellebore. Neither flowers, stem, leaves or root. Most hellebores are acaulescent, they don't have a stem. The leaves and inflorescences emerge directly from a rhizome and they do not have any sort of bulb either. The flowers are radically differend from the orange discs in the Dioscorides. The question is - why? One reason may be that the plant was confused and mixed with White Hellebore which is You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., a completely different monocot. To add to the confusion, there is also You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. which has dark flowers but is otherwise identical to White Hellebore whereas Black Hellebore (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) has white flowers. This is why Linnaeus invented the binary nomenclature to combat the confusion of countless identical or conflicting vernacular names. Also both helleborus and veratrum are mountain species that city folk would not commonly encounter. Especially not in Southern Europe. Only the rhizome was traded so most lowland dwellers would never have seen the living plant, even when using the ingredient.




I have posted similartites to other herbals here, maybe we should merge this somehow?
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Just following up on this, I had a quick look through past posts about plant identification and I am fairly certain You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is Herba Paris, both due to the stem, leaf shape, and specifically the "dark" berry fruit on top and the leafy bit underneath (although it is poorly drawn and has an extra leaf). I was trying to crosscheck it with Chig.VII.159 to see how the authors represented Herba Paris in the Discorides, however Herba Paris as a name was created by Pietro Andrea Mattioli in 1568, so both the VM and the Latin Discorides would call it something else. On page 1150 of his "You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view." Mattioli basically tells us that people erroneously identified this plant as "Aconito Paradalianche". Aconitum is shown to be on 39v on the index of the Latin Discorides, however the drawing only refers to the general family of the Aconites, with a short list of other members of the family underneath the heading, amongst which is our Aconito Paradalianche aka Herba Paris. This seems to indicate 2 things, that perhaps our plants are erroneously labelled due to tradition as is the case with the Herba Paris being called Aconito Paradalianche (which, as argued by Mattioli, is a different plant, as could be the plant labelled Helleborus which does not look like a Helleborus at all) and it could very well not be shown in our Discorides not because it is a made up "Voynich" plant but because it is grouped together with other members of the specific plant family as seems to be the case for the Aconito Paradalianche. Maybe other Discorides/Herbariums written before the mid 16th century show drawings of our Herba Paris? This also seems to indicate that the authors of the VM had access to a variety of books on the matter and/or drew from real life samples too.