The Voynich Ninja

Re: "abiril" vs "aberil"  Post #1071

I'm no expert, but if a selection of 15th C. texts is examined with the criterion of discovering how was the letter "e" constructed by various writers, some likely relevant information can be found.

I would construct the lower-case letter "e' starting with a short horizontal stroke from left to right that then loops up and back in a rough arch that connects to the starting point and then follows through in the full curve below. All without lifting the pen. That is not how the letter is constructed in many medieval texts. The investigation shows the letter "e" constructed of two separate parts that are meant to be connected, but when the examples show more informal handwriting, that connection doesn't always happen. Then there can be a clear separation of the two parts.

I believe it is generally agreed that the VMs is an example of such a separation and that it is "aberil" with a two-part "e" that didn't get connected.

Aberil is a bit off topic here, let's discuss that in one of the month names threads. The handwriting of the month names is certainly different from that of f116v.

(27-08-2025, 12:54 PM)N._N. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Sorry, but this is clearly a misleading oversiplification. Everything we know about the manuscript, every kind of reasonable research reveals connections or information that we may not yet be able to piece together, but which might ultimately help getting closer to a solution, whatever that might be.

Perfect, but where does this contradict what I wrote?  Why was it a "misleading oversimplification"?

While collecting evidence, we must be well aware of what exactly it is about.  For instance, when studying the binding and cover of the book, we must keep in mind that the book was re-bound centuries after it was written, and that the cover is not original.  When analyzing the nymphs' hats, we must be aware that many of them were probably added by a later owner, again centuries after the original drawings were made. 

And, in particular, we must be aware that the person(s) who actually wrote the text and drew the figures on the parchment was quite probably not the same person who collected the information, chose the language, devised the script and the encoding, composed the text, and sketched the figures.

As I wrote before, I believe that the reason why no progress was made in the decipherment of the text in 600 years is that everybody jumped to the wrong conclusions about the language and contents, precisely because they tacitly but wrongly assumed that a certain mountain of evidence that has been collected was relevant to those questions.

All the best, --jorge

(27-08-2025, 11:27 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(27-08-2025, 12:54 PM)N._N. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Sorry, but this is clearly a misleading oversiplification. Everything we know about the manuscript, every kind of reasonable research reveals connections or information that we may not yet be able to piece together, but which might ultimately help getting closer to a solution, whatever that might be.

Perfect, but where does this contradict what I wrote?  Why was it a "misleading oversimplification"?

Unless I missunderstood your point, this is:

(27-08-2025, 09:30 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Again, the "Northern Italy" clues only tell us that the Scribe(s) who actually wrote the text on the parchment and drew the illustrations was/were from Northern Italy.  The "Southern Germany/Augsburg/Prague" clues only tell us about where the manuscript may have been ~200 years after that.  The similarities of the Michitonese lines and month names to specific scripts and languages, like German or Latin charms, only tell us what language the person(s) who wrote those bits meant to write them in.  

First, there are elements indicating the region north of the alps for the manuscript itself, but you know that anyway and it is not really my point.

Isolating the clusters of information (i. e., regional, temporal, on language, on expenditure...) to the degree you seem to suggest here is an oversimplification, because we know there had to be connecting elements. Someone had to bring the manuscript from the place of origin to whichever library(/ies) or  collection(s) stored it for the following 200 years and then to Prague. There has to be a reason why the information on these transfers was lost at some point, be it by coincidence or on purpose. We have to combine the historical, scientific, linguistic etc. data to come to reasonable conclusions. This is explicitly or implicitly done all the time, for example, when dismissing the identification of 93r with a sunflower.

Additionally, it is also misleading to characterize the knowledge about the writing as limited to what the author(s) "meant" to write, in terms of language or anything else. With today's possibilities in terms of technology, comparative material and general knowledge, we can identify aspects that the author(s) were unaware they would reveal. See, for example, the project by Koen G and Marco P on this particular folio.

Lastly, I strongly disagree with this aspect as well:

Quote:As I wrote before, I believe that the reason why no progress was made in the decipherment of the text in 600 years is that everybody jumped to the wrong conclusions about the language and contents, precisely because they tacitly but wrongly assumed that a certain mountain of evidence that has been collected was relevant to those questions.

This implies the VMS would require more creative, outside-the-box thinking that mostly ignores the historical evidence. However, there is certainly no lack of this kind of works, on the contrary. What you are suggesting here is exactly the approach of all the numerous people who claim they have solved the cipher and bring their 'deciphered' texts here, to youtube or even the odd overly credulous university website... The by far best work on the manuscript has been done by working within the boundaries that historical and statistical evidence set.

The alchemical herbal MS Florence, Bibl. del Dip. di Botanico dell'Universita 106, was created in Northern Italy, and soon found its way into the possession of the Northern French physician Jean (de) Ruel.

It changed hands a couple of times, but the other people remain anonymous.
It is now back in Florence.

The Voynich MS and an alchemical herbal would likely be of interest to similar people, and in fact this alch. herbal has a cipher alphabet on its first page.

Some amount of travelling by the Voynich MS between its creation and (probably) Augsburg is certainly possible, though indeed we lack the evidence.

(28-08-2025, 09:51 AM)N._N. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.First, there are elements indicating the region north of the alps for the manuscript itself, but you know that anyway and it is not really my point.

Yes, I should have added that the physical properties of the parchment tell us where the parchment was made.  But only that.  It does not even tell us where the manuscript was written.  Parchment made in Europe must have been exported to many places outside Europe for use by Europeans stationed there, such as ambassadors, merchants, explorers, etc.

As for the properties of the ink, it is a more complicated issue, which I will save for another post.

Quote:Someone had to bring the manuscript from the place of origin to whichever library(/ies) or  collection(s) stored it for the following 200 years and then to Prague.

If the Scribe was not the Author (which I think is all but certain), the manuscript "changed hands" as soon as it was completed, when the Scribe delivered it to the Author.  Then there is a substantial probability that the Author moved to another city or country during his lifetime, and took the VMS with him.

Then it probably changed hands and location many times in the next 200 years.  Consider that, just within a few decades in the 1600s, it went from Jacobus (in Tepenecz) to Barschius (in Prague) to Marci (in Prague) to Kircher (in Rome).  If the VMS was indeed the "600 ducats" book, in a few decades before that it went from Widemann (in Augsburg) to Rudolf (in Vienna or Prague) and then to Jacobus. 

Quote:There has to be a reason why the information on these transfers was lost at some point, be it by coincidence or on purpose.

Sure there must be reasons.  But we must be aware that the locations where the VMS has been, even soon after it was made, have little bearing on the location where it was put to parchment; and this is not the same as the location where it was conceived and composed.

Quote:Additionally, it is also misleading to characterize the knowledge about the writing as limited to what the author(s) "meant" to write, in terms of language or anything else. With today's possibilities in terms of technology, comparative material and general knowledge, we can identify aspects that the author(s) were unaware they would reveal. See, for example, the project by Koen G and Marco P on this particular folio.

I am not sure I get your point.  Again, the observable properties of the physical object generally tell us only about the Scribe and the scribing on the parchment, and about additions by later authors; not about the Author and the composition of the text (which must have been created first as a draft on paper).

Quote:[Your final comment] implies the VMS would require more creative, outside-the-box thinking that mostly ignores the historical evidence.

Indeed, I believe that.  Because the historical evidence that we have does not really imply anything about the authorship, language, contents, and encryption method.  The assumption that it does, which practically every non-crank Voynichologist has made, leads to a dead end: "The stats of the text say that it is natural language, and the historical and physical evidence implies that the language is European, but since the stats don't fit those of European languages or a simple encoding thereof, it must be some very complicated cipher."  My point is that the "implies" in this reasoning is a fatal logical error. 

Quote:by far best work on the manuscript has been done by working within the boundaries that historical and statistical evidence set.

Yes, there has been tons of very good work.  But what progress has resulted from it?  Has it led to the decipherment of a single word?  Or to any definite conclusion about the language and/or the "encryption" method?

All the best, --jorge

(27-08-2025, 11:27 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.As I wrote before, I believe that the reason why no progress was made in the decipherment of the text in 600 years is that everybody jumped to the wrong conclusions about the language and contents, precisely because they tacitly but wrongly assumed that a certain mountain of evidence that has been collected was relevant to those questions.

...

 The assumption that it does, which practically every non-crank Voynichologist has made, leads to a dead end: "The stats of the text say that it is natural language, and the historical and physical evidence implies that the language is European, but since the stats don't fit those of European languages or a simple encoding thereof, it must be some very complicated cipher."  My point is that the "implies" in this reasoning is a fatal logical error. 

...

Yes, there has been tons of very good work.  But what progress has resulted from it?  Has it led to the decipherment of a single word?  Or to any definite conclusion about the language and/or the "encryption" method?

I feel I could say a lot about these statements...but I think this is a debate that needs its own thread.

(27-08-2025, 08:35 AM)N._N. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Welcome from another relatively recent member! From my point of view, your post is a good approach to the matter and perfectly understandable without a linguistics degree. The reading of the first sentence in particular seems interesting.

Thanks!

(27-08-2025, 08:35 AM)N._N. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.My only issue with the interpretation as some Romance language/dialect from the Pyrenees or even further west is that it complicates the history of the manuscript significantly and is at odds with most of the other information pointing to Northern Italy/Southern Germany/Augsburg/Prague, both for the manuscript's creation and the first appearances we know of. Sure, ~200 years is a lot of time to circulate within Europe, but every transfer would have increased the probability of leaving traces behind, beyond some barely understandable notes.

When I first tried to interpret what was written on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. I deliberately tried to remain a bit ignorant about what others have said about the provenance of the ms so as not to bias myself linguistically. Having gone back and read/watched some material on the topic I agree that the Pyrenees are at odds with what others have said. But I stand by what I wrote! If you believe my letter categorizations (another issue entirely!) then that's where the linguistic evidence points.

Having reflected on my post in the month that's passed I've had a few more thoughts:

• I believe text of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is multilingual (a Romance language and a Germanic language). If one person authored all of it, we can assume that person was multilingual. What types of people would have been bilingual in an Occitan-like language and a Germanic language at this point in history? (This is not a rhetorical question -- I don't know!) 
  
• If the first few lines are written in a Romance language, it seems to be an as-yet undocumented variety (perhaps spoken in a remote area and seldom written), or to be the author's non-native language, or both. 
  
• In my interpretation of the text, it is a message written to someone else so that that person might read the words aloud. Something like, "Here, this is the part I'll read aloud, or you can do it if you want: ..." as if these are notes for a ceremony. If this is the case, then maybe  it's the addressee and not the author who is the native "Romance X" speaker. 
  
• I really believe that <d> is used in place of <l> by this person. I know it seems weird. There were a couple of important sound changes in this region around this time: 1) the pronunciation of word-final /l/ as [w] or[u] in French and some dialects of Occitan (but not in Catalan) and 2) a sort of strange sound change that happened in Catalan around the beginning of the 15th century where what was Latin /d/ in some contexts came to be pronounced as [u] word-finally (as in peu 'foot'). This means that both <d> and <l> would've been used in the region to represent word-final [u]. My thought is that the scribe confused them. To confuse them, you'd have to both be familiar with a spelling tradition where <d> stands sometimes for [u] and not be familiar with Old French and Occitan and Castilian spellings that would've used <l> for words like tal and Olasabal/Olaçabal.
  

Anyway, all of this is to say that I think the Romance language of this text is not necessarily the native language of the person who wrote it. My interpretation doesn't necessarily mean that the manuscript originates in the Pyrenees, but I do think that some connection to that region seems to be a piece of its history. Maybe this multilingualism suggests some degree of itinerancy by the manuscript's users.

On searching it looks like Marco clarified the latin use of "N/NN" a few years back on another post regarding "+N"
But here are some other examples I stumbled on in charms

+ And [entering] with them into the house of Simon Peter, Jesus saw his [Peter’s] kinswoman lying sick and feverish. But standing over her he called out the fever and immediately it departed and she served Him. Syon + Syon + Syon. In memory of your beloved son, ruler of the world, free .N.

“as the wax melts, let N. melt”

The capital N (or NN) was for Nomen/Nomen Nominandum - A name to be named
("portas+N+")

That paired with info like the below, makes me think it's a 15c "charm" with pseudo-nonsense stuff mixed with intelligible speech. 
Trying to read it coherently or place it, is probably akin to working out the words the magician said to make the rabbit come out the hat. shazzam! 

"4.3.2. Magic nonsense
Once the performer has accomplished the ritual and repeated the charm three times, he must also repeat a set of words and names (Ysaac bapsiul afilo anaba floch bilo ylo, lines 26-32 of f. 165vb). This particular sequence, also known as voces magicae, is in fact a sequence of words having no relation to the language of the text in which they appear. And even if the modern linguists can trace some of them back to Greek or Hebrew, their importance in the charm lies not in their actual meaning, but in their supposed magical power. The use of gibberish formulas was very common in ancient Greek and Latin charms, but it is seldom used in Old High German charms. The number of gibberish formulas increases only after the 13th century, when also the number and the types of charms transcribed in manuscripts increases. As Passalis (2012) points out, nonsense or pseudo-nonsense words are very common in charms and are usually mixed with intelligible speech. In the Pervinca charm we might recognise some names such as Ysaac, Adonay, Eloy, Iesu, but the other words are probably distorted names of some ancient deity."