The Voynich Ninja

Paris wrote:

Quote:Here's an example of "te" latin.
We can admire it in south west of France, in a coffered ceiling of the castle of Dampierre-sur-Boutonne
It's written : .NEC.TE.NEC.SINE.TE. (not to you but not without you)

Hi!
I think, in Latin, it is likely : " Not by (with) you, but, not without you", therefore "te" in ablative.
If the second line of the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. contains Latin word "te" and word "carcere", it is reasonably to think that "te" means "de", where d is substituted by t. In this case: "de carcere portas" means "gates/doors from a prison". This idea is not new, but, probably, is more possible. Personally, I think that there are two words: "tar tere" or "car cere", or "tar ceve", etc.

P.S.
Nevertheless, perhaps, it relates to this psalm: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(19-10-2017, 08:43 PM)Searcher Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Paris wrote:

Quote:Here's an example of "te" latin.
We can admire it in south west of France, in a coffered ceiling of the castle of Dampierre-sur-Boutonne
It's written : .NEC.TE.NEC.SINE.TE. (not to you but not without you)

Hi!
I think, in Latin, it is likely : " Not by (with) you, but, not without you", therefore "te" in ablative.
If the second line of the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. contains Latin word "te" and word "carcere", it is reasonably to think that "te" means "de", where d is substituted by t. In this case: "de carcere portas" means "gates/doors from a prison". This idea is not new, but, probably, is more possible. Personally, I think that there are two words: "tar tere" or "car cere", or "tar ceve", etc.

This has been introduced by Dr. Damschen in "Klausis Krypto Kolumne" ( comment You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ):

f.116v.2: árchic/ton ólla dabás multás (t/d)e cárcere pórtas.


The verse scheme is:

_uu _uu _ _ _ _ _uu _ _


So it really seems to be a possible reading.

Btw, Dr. Damschen was the person who many years ago made a passing suggestion for the label to be "lab" in f116v. Nice that he is still active in Voynich studies.

However, I can't see how it could be "archic" or "multas" from the script point of view. I think that quite often there are two "flawed" directions in these marginalia interpretation. Either one proposes something valid in terms of language but ignores the way the letters are inscribed, or one is correct (to the degree possible) with the letters, but suggests something not very propable in terms of language.

With many pages of this thread (and much more pages elsewhere and years behind) discussing You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. it's perhaps amusing to propose a "clean start", but anyway what could I suggest?

Let's say we take "anchiton" as the starting point. At least "anchiton" makes sense in context with gates ("portas"), as shown earlier in this thread, and anchiton is a noun. After all, it may be not "anchiton", but, say, "michi ton", but one needs a starting point, and from all possible starting points anchiton looks to me the most solid one.

Now, let's suppose, from the fact that it is a noun and from its position in the line that anchiton is the subject of the sentence, or maybe the addressee. Even if it is not a noun but adjective relating to "oladabas", with oladabas being the real subject, anchiton and oladabas form the subject (or addressee) together.

Then we have "multos"/"multes" and "te". After that the sentence turns into something not very legible, until it comes to "portas". But let's try to reconstruct the stuff based on the assumption of anchiton as the subject/addressee and "multos" and "te" as word forms. "Multos" is plural accusative for "multus" (many, much). "Te" is ablative for "tu" (you).

What means ablative of "tu" in this context? It would mean that something happens "from you" or "out of you", with this "you" being anchiton if anchiton is the addressee, or being the reader if it is the reader who is the addressee of the message, instead of anchiton.

In other words, something is happening there "from/out of" the reader or the anchiton.

Now, irrespectively to what is the "multus" about (i.e. many or much of what is meant here), what would the accusative mean here? What context would welcome accusative?

The first line and the last line make us think that the language is rather German. I still consider it a cunning trick. Possibly, the text without the last line is very ancient, for example, from times of Varro, at least, partially, and partially transliterated from ancient Greek.
Pos leber umon *o**fer
anchiton ola dabas miltos te carcere (tartere) portas
1. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., anchiton (asbestos?), miltos (red ochre) are transliterated Greek.
2. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is one of ancient forms of Latin liber.
3. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. - one of ancient variants of Latin illa; ola or hola - transliterated from Greek "all".
So, the first line may be : If (somehow) your liberty ........
You have added all anchiton, miltos (or multos: many) the gates from the prison
I can't see multos here and don't know, what it can relate to in this line, as it is masculine in accusative plural.

It is notable that the penultimate letter in the word "mi/ult*8" is a little bit illegible. It looks more like o, but the strange one. If we suppose that it can be letter a, we get the word "milta8" or "multa8". I admit that, in this case, it can relate to the word "portas" (many gates from prison). Indeed there are one more possibility - "8" can be not "s", but "t", therefore three words: daba8, mi/ulta8 (or mi/ulca8) and porta8 can be read as dabat, multat (mu/ilcat) and portat. This leads to such result : Anchiton gave ...., he punishes you with a prison, passes N/M........ 
I think, both variants are possible, it depends on that, what the words "ola" and t/car-t/cere" really mean.

It seems a bit weird to me that this scene would be written in the 2nd person, though poetically it's not impossible. Has anyone looked for the Gog Magog story in Alexander romances?

Apparently carcere can also mean the starting gates in horse races, which existed already in antiquity. Not that this helps much..

(19-10-2017, 09:54 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I think that quite often there are two "flawed" directions in these marginalia interpretation. Either one proposes something valid in terms of language but ignores the way the letters are inscribed, or one is correct (to the degree possible) with the letters, but suggests something not very propable in terms of language.

I think that's a very fair expression of the problem.

Tweaking Dr Damschen's reading slightly to:

árchicon Oladabás, multos de cárcere pórtas

you can get a perfectly comprehensible verse which would mean 'Ruler Oladabas, you carry many men out of prison.'

This means assuming Oladabas is a proper name, which seems something of a cop-out.  But it allows us to read 'multos' rather than 'multas', which seems to fit the letter-forms better.  It also means we can take 'portas' as the verb of the sentence rather than splitting 'oladabas', and in any case I don't see why one would use the imperfect 'dabas' rather than the perfect 'dedisti' to mean 'you gave.'

And I'm sure I read somewhere last night that Dr Damschen had explained 'archicon' as a word derived from the Greek 'archon' meaning 'ruler,' although I can't immediately see where.  In my ignorance, I wonder if it may be some kind of magical title used to address spirits, good or bad?  My Latin is okay, but my school didn't offer demonology as a subject so I'm only guessing!

But for an incantation or release spell, physically or metaphorically to mean deliverance from the bonds of sickness, does this look vaguely plausible?

Searcher:

Yes, the problem in referring "multos" to "portas" is that "multos" is masculine while "portas" is feminine. The correct expression in accusative would have been "multas portas".

But that could be a mistake. Searching across google books, I find the expression "multos portus", which is correct neither, is it?

However, I cannot see the penultimate letter of "mult*s" to be "a" even remotely. The shape of "a" is quite consistent through all its occurrences in f116v, except for the penultimate "a" in "oladabas", but neither of the two looks like the letter in "mult*s" even remotely. I can't see it even as an "a" later corrected into something else. For this letter I see two possibilities.

My first choice would be a pen-slipped "o". Sometimes (but not always) the "o" shape in the VMS is comprised of two halves - which is especially true for the Voynichese o. The "o" in "oladabas" is an example of a plain text "o" of such kind.

My second choice would be an "e". This guy writes "e" as modern "c" (see in "cere/tere". Perhaps in this case he was not satisfied with the shape of "e" that he put down, and "improved" it to look more like "e". As such, the "e" in "ubren" approaches to what we see in "mult*s" .

"Multes" would not be a word form of "multum" no more, but second person present conjunctive of "multo" (to punish).

For "portas" (which is inscribed far less ambiguously), two possibilities exist as well.

The first one is plural accusative of "porta" (gate). The "gate" would theoretically fit into the context of "anchiton" (which is substance for to cover gates).

However, another valid reading is second person present indicative of "porto" (to carry). That's the way that Damschen explores.

One can note that the abundance of second person forms in the discourse, together with the explicit "te", strongly suggests that the spell is an "address" or "invocation" of some kind, whether to "anchiton" or otherwise.

I will post about "**** *ere" later.

Quote:Has anyone looked for the Gog Magog story in Alexander romances?

That was the first thing that I suggested back then when "anchiton" was demystified, but, apparently, noone has ready sources at hand. There is an old book by Anderson called "Alexander's Gate, Gog and Magog, and the Inclosed Nations", and its modern edition is priced at only $10 on Amazon...

Quote:Ruler Oladabas, you carry many men out of prison

That would be a weird ruler, typically the direction is quite the opposite.

That mark on the bottom of the "o" in imiltos (or whatever that word is) doesn't look accidental to me. It looks like a caret deliberately placed below rather than above, perhaps as a pronunciation marker or as an invented letter to express something slightly different from a conventional "o".