25-01-2026, 01:40 PM
Here's my take on 17r and 116v, from the draft of my forthcoming book (so not finalized, in other words):
"The manuscript ends – and likely always ended – with the originally-blank page 116v. Early in the manuscript’s history, someone recorded a pseudo-Germanic inscription at the top of that page. The inscription is faded and damaged, and the transcription below is not at all certain:
pox leber rinon rutpfer
+ anchiton oladabas + miltos + te + c[ ] cere + portas + m +
six + marix + morix + vix + ahia + ma+ria +
<oror sheey> palsch ubren so nim gas mich
The same scribe wrote a second marginal inscription – also somewhat, but not clearly, Germanic – at the top of folio 17r, an inscription that was made more legible by recent multi-spectral imaging. As with the inscription on f. 116v, however, both the transcription and the interpretation of this inscription are uncertain: “Mallier aller luc[em? est?] her vall omnia <otaiol oim>”. Both inscriptions include a few Voynichese words (in angled brackets above), suggesting that they may be roughly contemporary with the creation of the manuscript. That contention is confirmed by the water-damage to the inscription on f. 17r: the inscription must predate the waterstain in the upper right corner of that leaf, which itself predates the current (15th-century) structure of the codex."
"The manuscript ends – and likely always ended – with the originally-blank page 116v. Early in the manuscript’s history, someone recorded a pseudo-Germanic inscription at the top of that page. The inscription is faded and damaged, and the transcription below is not at all certain:
pox leber rinon rutpfer
+ anchiton oladabas + miltos + te + c[ ] cere + portas + m +
six + marix + morix + vix + ahia + ma+ria +
<oror sheey> palsch ubren so nim gas mich
The same scribe wrote a second marginal inscription – also somewhat, but not clearly, Germanic – at the top of folio 17r, an inscription that was made more legible by recent multi-spectral imaging. As with the inscription on f. 116v, however, both the transcription and the interpretation of this inscription are uncertain: “Mallier aller luc[em? est?] her vall omnia <otaiol oim>”. Both inscriptions include a few Voynichese words (in angled brackets above), suggesting that they may be roughly contemporary with the creation of the manuscript. That contention is confirmed by the water-damage to the inscription on f. 17r: the inscription must predate the waterstain in the upper right corner of that leaf, which itself predates the current (15th-century) structure of the codex."