I searched for top 100 manuscripts from 1380-1439 on digitale-sammlungen.de and picked those that had color scans of high quality, and then checked a couple of pages from each looking for ink density irregularities. I tried to find any examples of a sharp border between the dark and light ink within a single pen stroke. I couldn't find any comparable to that in VMS. There are a few examples where there is at least some resemblance (marked with red arrows). Overall these are the examples of the largest variation in ink density I could find, which is still far, far smaller than that in VMS.
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Your examples of EVA-q with faint descender are quite interesting. Isn't that exactly what we see with p-like letters in the You are not allowed to view links.
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Is it possible that this is a bizarre consequence of the presumably imperfect way the VM scribe(s) cut their quills, which caused ink to flow differently depending on the type of stroke?
(02-10-2024, 08:51 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Is it possible that this is a bizarre consequence of the presumably imperfect way the VM scribe(s) cut their quills, which caused ink to flow differently depending on the type of stroke?
I think it's the speed. This happens a lot on
y. Some final
o and
a in transliterations are actually
y with a faint tail.
For example, it was difficult to recognize the
y here on You are not allowed to view links.
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P.S. It also happens a lot on
ch when the horizontal line is almost invisible.
I see, they're really swooping those swoops
(02-10-2024, 09:24 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (02-10-2024, 08:51 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Is it possible that this is a bizarre consequence of the presumably imperfect way the VM scribe(s) cut their quills, which caused ink to flow differently depending on the type of stroke?
I think it's the speed. This happens a lot on y. Some final o and a in transliterations are actually y with a faint tail.
For example, it was difficult to recognize the y here on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. before the new multispectral processed images:
P.S. It also happens a lot on ch when the horizontal line is almost invisible.
This would also have implications on the theory that differences in length or orientation of the tail have different meaning. Because a) it's hard to control the shape of the tail when writing with so much momentum and b) if the scribe wrote many tails so fast they're barely visible this implies that he didn't care much about their legibility, just "it has a tail".
I think the bottom right example in post #21 (spu) is a good parallel. Finding parallels is not straightforward for several reasons, e.g.:
- ink in the Voynich manuscript is thinner (more water) than in most manuscripts;
- possibly, the original powder was coarser, which caused it to mix more poorly with the water;
- in the early XV century, vertical descenders were usually doubled in cursive scripts: to avoid lifting the pen, it was moved down and the up overlapping the downward stroke; the cursive samples in post #21 appear to show such doubled descenders (check all occurrences of p); but in the Voynich manuscript (marginalia included) vertical descenders were traced with a single downward stroke.
- the shapes of frequent Voynich characters are often rare in early XV century manuscripts. In particular, number 4 was usually written like EVA:l l (see second sample below).
Here are some details from You are not allowed to view links.
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These are excellent examples, and quite close parallels to the Voynich MS, in my opinion.
I suspect the scribe of the St.Gallen MS is more expert. The strokes from upper left to bottom right (and possibly v.v.) are consistently broader than those from bottom left to upper right (and v.v.).
The example p196a suggests a touch-up, just like in many places in the Voynich MS. However, I don't know if that can really be concluded.
We need to remember that iron gal ink is originally quite light, and it only darkens after writing, due to a chemical reaction (oxidation) with the parchment. I could easily imagine (but do not know) that varying properties of the parchment could cause the effect that we see.
Is it possible that the scribes stop the ink flow (i.e. remove all pressure from the nib) and use the flourish to "clean" whatever is left on the tip of the pen? The purpose of this could be to reduce the chance of dripping when the pen is lifted to start a new stroke or to re-dip. In that case, some parts of letters are written with a free ink flow and others with a little bit of ink that was left on the pen, which may result in a less concentrated stroke.
(I am writing this without any knowledge of the subject).
(03-10-2024, 08:42 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.We need to remember that iron gal ink is originally quite light, and it only darkens after writing, due to a chemical reaction (oxidation) with the parchment. I could easily imagine (but do not know) that varying properties of the parchment could cause the effect that we see.
Thank you Rene, I didn't know/remember that. The St.Gallen ms is written on paper, so that's a major difference. The nature and quality of the folios is another factor that has an impact on the final result and probably one more variable that makes finding close matches difficult.
I've found the same kind of sharp transition from the dark to light ink in EVA y on You are not allowed to view links.
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By the way, there is a barely noticeable second stroke to the right of EVA y above (marked with a grey arrow). This looks like an image artifact, but it's also present in MSIs, so could be an actual very faint stroke.
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