One important thing is that it was nothing unusual for people to just write in books that we would now consider valuable. It was their property. In earlier centuries books were scribbled full be their owners.
Still, I see another problem. Marci wrote in his letter to Kircher that the previous owner (Barschius as we now know) spent years try to break the secrets of this MS, and Marci also sends Barschius' notes to Kircher.
So, if Marci knew of all these efforts, why would he consider that he could break it himself with a simple substitution cipher? Of course, this is just double-guessing but it is a bit odd.
Then, perhaps, he was trying to preserve Barschius' last or best or most representative attempt in the MS itself?
I am more puzzled by this issue than by the third column.
(10-09-2024, 01:40 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.So, if Marci knew of all these efforts, why would he consider that he could break it himself with a simple substitution cipher?
This doesn't seem too unusual to me, quite to the contrary. The thing invites substitution attempts. It just shows that Voynich solvers haven't changed much over the centuries
(10-09-2024, 01:40 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Marci wrote in his letter to Kircher that the previous owner (Barschius as we now know) spent years try to break the secrets of this MS, and Marci also sends Barschius' notes to Kircher.
So, if Marci knew of all these efforts, why would he consider that he could break it himself with a simple substitution cipher? Of course, this is just double-guessing but it is a bit odd.
Then, perhaps, he was trying to preserve Barschius' last or best or most representative attempt in the MS itself?
I am more puzzled by this issue than by the third column.
I do not know if Marci knew Barschius, but if he did, it could explain because Barschius was not a not a renowed scholar, so whatever Braschius had done might not have been any real value for Marci.
On the other had, as Marci wrote in he's letter to Kircher:
"This book bequeathed to me by an intimate friend, I destined for you, my very dear Athanasius, as soon as it came into my possession, for I was convinced it could be read by no one except yourself."
So if Marci was convinced that only Kircher could be capable of reading the MS, as soon as he saw it, it is quite natural that he wouldn't have had much interest to dedicate more effort for it. He might have just played with it for a while for excercise of intelligence and curosity, nothing much more. It quite probable that he had many more matters in he's hands and now MS was not his but Kircher's problem.
(10-09-2024, 05:40 PM)Scarecrow Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I do not know if Marci knew Barschius
He did. Marci also introduced Kircher to Barshius.
Source: You are not allowed to view links.
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Alchemical Diplomacy: Optics and Alchemy in the Philosophical Writings of Marcus Marci in Post-Rudolfine Prague 1612-1670
Dissertation by Margaret D. Garber, University of California, San Diego, 2002
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Thank you nablator. From your post it comes that Marci had a high regard for Barschius, and because of that it might be plausible that Marci didn't think he had much more to offer in the decipherment and handed the matter as quick as possible to Kircher, still doing what Koen says we all do at first, tryout a simple substitution excercise.
Of course it could have been part of a bigger thing Marci was doing as we do not have his papers nor correspondence between Barschius and Marci but I have a feeling that Marci left it alone as already a good one as tried it.
Many thanks for the MSI files!
I always thought this was the most promising approch to get new data out of the VM and hope we one day can scan the entire manuscript.
But I have a question regarding your blog post:
Quote:Folio 93r (above) may have been selected for imaging because of the stain that seems to match the color of the flower. The stain and the flower respond to the exposure in identical ways, suggesting that the stain is indeed the same pigment as the flower and was likely the result of a careless spill while the artist was working. It is noteworthy that the text is written over the stain. This confirms what study of other pages reveals – that the images were drawn and colored by the artists before the text was written by the scribes
I fail to understand what makes you conclude that the text was written over the yellow stain, at least from the single processed image of You are not allowed to view links.
Register or
Login to view. . It looks identical to the ink used to draw the outline of the plant and the circles that are (probably) supposed to be florets of the composite flower. Does that mean they were also drawn after the yellow paint was applied? I find that hard to imagine.
Also can we be sure that
all colors were indeed applied before the text was written? I think not. Yellow might be a special case. Unfortunately the green paint barely misses the text on this folio.
In any case, MSI appears to be a promising technique to detect the otherwise faded Yellow in the VM paintings.
(09-09-2024, 04:17 PM)pfeaster Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (09-09-2024, 02:23 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Good point - why did he feel the need to write on the actual MS in the first place? I would think that at this time in history and for a man of his position, paper would have always been on hand. If you are right that he probably practiced on paper, then why write on the MS if it is just an attempt? I find it all very confusing.
One possibility we might consider is that the vertical column of Voynichese glyphs on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. was written by a different person -- and at a different, earlier time -- than the two columns of Latin characters. It may even originally have served a function similar to the other vertical glyph columns found on f49v, f66r, and f76r, whatever that was -- the main difference being that it's written to the right of the main text block rather than to the left.
Someone (Marci?) might have seen a column of glyphs on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. -- with a large red glyph or symbol at the top -- and observed that it contained roughly the right number of entries to be an alphabetic key.
The two columns of Latin characters could then represent two hypotheses:
(1 = Left) That the large red symbol was not part of the cipher alphabet, so that the first "small" glyph corresponded to a, the next to b, etc.
(2 = Right) That the large red symbol was part of the cipher alphabet, so that it corresponded to a, the first "small" glyph to b, and so on.
Among other things, this explanation could help account for the presence in the column of what look like very rare glyphs -- i.e., they weren't originally written there to be part of an alphabetic key, and were only interpreted that way at some other, later point.
I think that's a very plausible suggestion. Which brings us to the question what the purpose of those columns is in the first place
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These two "f" seem to have been written by two different hands. What should be an "e" in the first column looks more like a Voynichese
s. Weird.
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These "h" and "i" letters (larger than the "h" and "i" above them) in the 3rd column do not match the order of the 3rd column, this is why "k" and "l" were added in the smaller more recent handwriting on the right, in a 4th column.
i
eee? h k
k
y i l
Certainly strange, good find!
Is there a match in handwriting between some of these letters and the marginalia?
They look like a different script to me. For example the loopless ascender on the "h".
For the "f" specifically, we see a strong downward curve to the right on the top. In contrast, the other marginalia show a straight horizontal line for the top of "f" and long-s.