The Voynich Ninja

I've found a photo of my first attempt of using the self-made quill pen with actual ink. I think the empty pockets in the strokes are when the very tip of the quill bends a bit either because it's getting weak from use (or was just cut the wrong way), or because of putting wrong kind of pressure on it.

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In the W (top of last stroke) and Y (bottom of last stroke), one can see 4 different semi-parallel lines, it seems the fibers in the quill were separating? Is this happening anywhere in the VMS?

I think I saw something like this, but overall this doesn't seem to happen in VMS. I think that's the difference between a crow's feather with two simple cuts and no further processing or cleaning and a specially made quill pen used by a professional. My point is that it's not easy to make conclusions about what exactly happened to this or that stroke of VMS because there are too many variables at play.

I agree that where there are visually similar defects in several elements on a page, while absent on other pages, it's likely that all these elements were produced by the same instrument in one session. 

As far as I understand, we are now trying to identify whether the following sets of features 1 and 2 are of the same kind/origin. It's not clear to me that we know enough about the scribal practices to do this.


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(30-09-2024, 07:56 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I think that's the difference between a crow's feather with two simple cuts and no further processing or cleaning and a specially made quill pen used by a professional.

Of course, we don't know whether the writer here was a "professional," or whether the quill was prepared by someone who was good at making pens (was trimming a quill something each individual writer was expected to do, and know how to do, in this period?).  It would be interesting to check, as a side issue, whether similar defects can be found in books known to have been written by institutionally trained scribes, or whether they would typically have caused a page to be rejected as unsatisfactory and begun again.  Overall, when judging the writer's technical proficiency, it might be worth factoring in their ability to use a pen competently (and to know when to replace it) according to standards of the time.  Those standards could, I imagine, have varied by context, and been very different for, say, a scribe preparing an expensive Book of Hours, a notary drawing up a marriage contract, and a scholar drafting newly composed text.

I'm still unsure how to interpret differences in ink darkness "responsibly," but let me throw out just one example for consideration.  Here's part of a line on f31r:

[attachment=9301]

Rough initial impression (assuming a more-or-less linear mode of writing): the writer wrote [checKhey cheol]; re-charged the pen with ink (in some way that caused the following script to be especially dark relative to the rest of the page); went back to amend [cheol] to [Sheol] while it was at its fullest; then continued writing [qokedy ykeedy chedy], with ink starting to run out on the final [y]; re-charged the pen; and finally wrote [ldy], with so much ink flowing into the [l] that it pooled up and filled the loop, already leaving the supply running low again by the following [y].

Here I'm disregarding any factor that could cause the rate of ink flow to increase or decrease significantly between re-chargings, which may be a weakness in my analysis.  I'm also unsure whether the pen might not have been re-filled at a couple additional points with subtler effects on the resulting script.

But with that caveat in place, there are a couple details that puzzle me.  The [k] in [cKh] towards the left is fairly typical in having the top of its left "leg" significantly paler than the rest of the glyph, with the loop being darkest, and with the bottom of the left leg also being fairly dark.  The [q] also follows a pattern that seems to turn up frequently, where the top is dark but the bottom downward stroke is pale, with a sharp division.  What is it about the way in which these glyphs were formed that could have produced these effects again and again?

(30-09-2024, 01:03 PM)pfeaster Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Rough initial impression (assuming a more-or-less linear mode of writing): the writer wrote [checKhey cheol]; re-charged the pen with ink (in some way that caused the following script to be especially dark relative to the rest of the page); went back to amend [cheol] to [Sheol] while it was at its fullest; then continued writing [qokedy ykeedy chedy], with ink starting to run out on the final [y]; re-charged the pen; and finally wrote [ldy], with so much ink flowing into the [l] that it pooled up and filled the loop, already leaving the supply running low again by the following [y].

Hi Patrick,
I think it could also be that they wrote [checKhey c], recharged the pen, then added the plume of S and went on with [heol]. The leftmost c-stroke of Sheol is as faded as the final stroke of -y in checKhey, but the 'h' of Sheol is considerably darker (though less dark than the plume).

This looks like a retouch job, I can't think of a way these sharp changes in darkness without visible change in stroke width could have been produced in one go. If it wasn't for 'q', I could argue for a curvelet-based distance cipher ("Johannes Hasenbard" cipher, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) where each stroke is added separately (e.g., 'e' is put on the vellum first and then converted into 'y' or 's' later, likewise the left leg of k/t/p/f is added first and then converted to the full character later). However, once you have drawn a vertical stroke that goes well below the baseline, you can only convert it to 'q' in Voynichese, as far as I can see, so it's unclear why the top of 'q' could be darker than the descender in this case.

Another possibility, related to out of order ciphers, is retouching to make the order of writing less obvious. E.g., first the scribe would put symbols in the order of encoding and then rewrite them with fresh ink to make them appear written sequentially.

There are similar patterns on f26r, which is available in the MSI set, I wonder if it's possible to detect two separate outlines there under the dark ink.

(01-10-2024, 07:39 AM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I think it could also be that they wrote [checKhey c], recharged the pen, then added the plume of S and went on with [heol]. The leftmost c-stroke of Sheol is as faded as the final stroke of -y in checKhey, but the 'h' of Sheol is considerably darker (though less dark than the plume).

That's a fair observation, and that sequence would make more intuitive sense.  It's also true that [ch] generally seems to have been written as [c] first, with [h] added afterwards, which is likely to have happened here too.

My suspicion that the plume on the [S] was written during the same "charge" (is there a better term?) as [qokedy.ykeedy....] rests on a subjective impression that the ink in both cases is conspicuously darker than the ink anywhere nearby on the page -- so much so that it stands out visually at a higher zoom level.  This doesn't seem due solely to the sheer quantity of ink; to either side, we can see cases where a lot of ink was present but spread outward, and the overall color ended up somewhat paler after the ink dried (the [l] in [ldy] is a prime example).  Here the ink instead seems (briefly) to be more concentrated, with more color suspended in less liquid (or else liquid that didn't pool outward for some reason).  I don't know what could cause that.  If iron gall ink is left unstirred, does the coloring agent gradually settle (and become denser) towards the bottom of an inkwell?

Without being sure of the mechanism for this, of course I'm not in a position to rule anything out.

(01-10-2024, 07:59 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This looks like a retouch job, I can't think of a way these sharp changes in darkness without visible change in stroke width could have been produced in one go.

At least in the visible light scans, I don't see any sign of a separate outline under the darker text, and I'd be surprised if the retouching had been done so precisely as to leave none of the original peeking out from underneath.  I suppose the darker text could have been added at a different time, but that would have left rather a large gap beforehand, in an unexpected place in mid-paragraph.

(01-10-2024, 12:58 PM)pfeaster Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.At least in the visible light scans, I don't see any sign of a separate outline under the darker text, and I'd be surprised if the retouching had been done so precisely as to leave none of the original peeking out from underneath.  I suppose the darker text could have been added at a different time, but that would have left rather a large gap beforehand, in an unexpected place in mid-paragraph.

I've collected all qo's from f31r. The transition between light and dark ink looks interesting. I think you are right that retouching, unless done very meticulously, should leave some of the original visible. I find it hard to explain the sharp and almost horizontal division between the dark and the light part in some of the q's.

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One possibility comes to mind: if the vellum doesn’t absorb liquid readily and the strokes remain as tiny patches of liquid for a while, then ink from new strokes could flow into the previous ones. For example, if the ink in the inkwell separates into light and dark layers, as you suggested, dipping into the lighter layer could create a faint vertical stroke for a ‘q’, and then redipping to make a denser horizontal stroke could cause some of the ink to flow into the vertical stroke, partially coloring it. I’m not sure if it’s possible to recreate this scenario to test it. What would be a good household substitute for vellum with a similar surface?

Update: interestingly, almost all o's here are in dark ink, there is only one, the leftmost in the second row, that has a faint bit.

Update 2: looking at the second qo in the last row, 'q' here is written as a vertical stroke with a hook at the top and a downward left diagonal changing to the horizontal stroke. I was not sure about the way it's generally written.

[quote="oshfdk" pid='61607' dateline='1727789122']
Я не был уверен в том, как это обычно пишут.
[/цитировать]
Для написания лигатур писцы использовали несколько видов чернил (темные и светлые) и различные письменные принадлежности.
Темные элементы лигатуры — это начальные буквы слова, а светлые элементы — конечные буквы.

(01-10-2024, 05:06 PM)Hider Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Для написания лигатур писцы использовали несколько видов чернил (темные и светлые) и различные письменные принадлежности.
Темные элементы лигатуры — это начальные буквы слова, а светлые элементы — конечные буквы.

The scribes used several types of ink (dark and light) and various writing tools to create ligatures. The dark elements of the ligature represent the initial letters of the word, while the light elements represent the final letters.

That's interesting, I wanted to say something like "I don't think there are two types of ink here, in a few places there is a very smooth gradient from the dark color to the light color" and then I couldn't find a single example of this on f31r. There are characters with various shades of medium-dark to light ink, but whenever the ink is really dark, either the whole character is dark or there is a very distinct border between the dark and the light parts. Also there are many examples when the light ink parts of different characters appear close to one another, as if there were some invisible wax spots on the page which prevented the ink from taking.