The Voynich Ninja

"Michi ton" would be something like "<some thing> resounds to me", since "tono" is "to resoud, to thunder", but the conjugation rules suffer in this case, so... no.

(21-04-2016, 01:18 PM)VViews Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[font=Arial]Regarding the two enciphered words on 116v: they are often transcribed as [font=Eva]oror sheey. Looking at them with the Voyager, I read them as aror sheey.[/font][/font]

Just to note, I'd mark out two different "r"s on the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and generally in the manuscript. Let's say, the first group is "R", the second - "r". I composed a few examples for every group, you can see them in attachments.
According to this, the encifered notes looks like: "aRor sheey"
[attachment=285][attachment=286]

(21-04-2016, 04:26 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I agree that it is clearly aror, and not oror. I made some speculative considerations about this in my You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (Section 4). Actually, aror sheey occurs also in f104r. Job's VQP tracks it as a single word "arorsheey" in this instance.

Well spotted! I'd say it could be two words on 104r as well, there seems to be a smallish gap between the aror and the sheey.

Regarding finding a Greek version of the Alexander Romance, wikipedia lists a bunch of them here:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. .
They say:
"The oldest version of the Greek text, the Historia Alexandri Magni (Recensio α), can be dated to the 3rd century. It was subjected to various revisions during the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., some of them recasting it into poetical form in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. vernacular."
I agree it would be worthwhile to look for parallels in these, although I'll probably not be of much use here, considering my total lack of proficiency in Greek.

(21-04-2016, 10:56 PM), VViews Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(21-04-2016, 04:26 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I agree that it is clearly aror, and not oror. I made some speculative considerations about this in my You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (Section 4). Actually, aror sheey occurs also in f104r. Job's VQP tracks it as a single word "arorsheey" in this instance.

Well spotted! I'd say it could be two words on 104r as well, there seems to be a smallish gap between the aror and the sheey.

Regarding finding a Greek version of the Alexander Romance, wikipedia lists a bunch of them here:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. .
They say:
"The oldest version of the Greek text, the Historia Alexandri Magni (Recensio α), can be dated to the 3rd century. It was subjected to various revisions during the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., some of them recasting it into poetical form in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. vernacular."
I agree it would be worthwhile to look for parallels in these, although I'll probably not be of much use here, considering my total lack of proficiency in Greek.

I understand this was published by Kroll in 1926, reissued in 1968, but I found no free version in the internet. Maybe, someone has the book and can check.

Continuing about "oladabas". If the beginning is Greek, there is no "dabas" in Greek. On the other hand, the ending is Latin - "dabas" is second person imperfect for "do" ("to give")), but no "ola" in Latin. Actually the ending "bas" is characteristic for 2nd person imperfect, so the verb conjugated in such a way would be something like "olado", but there is no such verb in Latin.

Supposing it's not a "d", but an ornate "v", there is "lavo" (to wash), but no "olavo".



As to the "multos". If we suppose that it's not an "o", but an "e" (indeed the letter is strangely shaped and ambiguos), then "multes" is second person conjunctive of "multo" (= to punish). However, "te" as accusative or ablative from "tu" (= you) seems to be out of place after a 2nd person conjunctive, doesn't it?

The word "tar" is one of the words I find most difficult to figure out. The "a" looks quite similar to the "a" or "ei" in gasmich or geismich. They do not look like normal a's and I wonder if they should be read as "ei", "ai" or something else.
 There are too many strokes just to read "tar".

Comparison with Pal.Germ. 647 brings up a number of things:
- I did not see any abbrevations in Pal.Germ.647, or if there are, there must be few
- The text on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. does not seem to have a single "k"
- "d" and word final "s" in Pal.Germ. 647 look quite similar but can usually be distinguished anyway. Both "und" (German for "and""), and "uns" (German for "us") occur, also near each other.

The relevance of the second point is to decide which is which on f116v, and I believe that there is only one "d" namely the fifth character in oladabas.

Similarly, the text on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. has one more or less certain "v", which is in "vix". Whether the "u" in "multos" is really one remains uncertain to me. Thus, the symbols at the start of the words occasionally read as "valsch ubren" are likely both to be "p"s.

All "i"'s on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. are quite similar, but different from Pal.Germ.647. The one exception is the "i" in vix, which looks completely different from the rest and the question has to be why, or what this means.


Johannes Albus read the above-mentioned "ubren" as "pbrey" and argued that the final character would not be an "n" as this should not have a separate word-final form. Here, Pal.Germ. 647 seems to tell us otherwise.

To cut a longish story short, I don't believe that we have a concolidated reading of these lines just yet.

I am curious about the properties of this text and how they compare to a sample of voynichese the same size, specifically to a sample of either the "balneo" or "recipes" sections where sheey is most prevalent. How do they compare in terms of word length, entropy, etc?

If the word lengths matched with a section of Voynich text, we might have a clue about whether this page is a deciphering attempt of a section of the Voynich text or not. If we found a perfect match we might even know which one.

Anton - I was thinking the same way about oladabas. There are two other things we might consider: dropping of initial h-sound, which would give us something like holadabas. 

Or, that the o is a null, like many people consider it to be in Voynichese. This is unlikely, but made a bit more plausible by the presence of actual Voynichese in the same piece of text.

So holadabas or ladabas (la dabas?) are not entirely implausible. Initial h- drops very easily.

(22-04-2016, 06:13 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The word "tar" is one of the words I find most difficult to figure out. The "a" looks quite similar to the "a" or "ei" in gasmich or geismich. They do not look like normal a's and I wonder if they should be read as "ei", "ai" or something else.
 There are too many strokes just to read "tar".

...

René, I tried responding to your message here, but it got too long and I needed pictures to explain it so I ended up posting a blog.

For those who are interested:

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(22-04-2016, 06:13 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.- The text on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. does not seem to have a single "k"

Rene, on your opinion, could the first letter in the last word of the first line be "k"?

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(21-04-2016, 11:42 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Continuing about "oladabas". If the beginning is Greek, there is no "dabas" in Greek. On the other hand, the ending is Latin - "dabas" is second person imperfect for "do" ("to give")), but no "ola" in Latin. 

In Latin, olla (jar) = ola (varia lectio)

(22-04-2016, 06:13 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.- The text on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. does not seem to have a single "k"

...

It's possible that it does. They had some pretty weird ways of writing the letter "k" in the 15th century and one way was to write an "h" and then add an extra leg or two. The word after "vix" in the second line of the "charm" might be ahia or it might be aka. Since this scribe doesn't write terminal-s in the traditional way (assuming the 8 is an s), he also might not write k in the traditional way.