It's almost an established fact that there are few visible textual corrections in the vms. Would a scribe be able to wipe ink off without leaving traces before drying on 15th century vellum? Like a time limited "undo" in today's terms. If yes then that might partially explain the small number of visible corrections.
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(05-03-2016, 08:04 PM)lelle Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It's almost an established fact that there are few visible textual corrections in the vms. Would a scribe be able to wipe ink off without leaving traces before drying on 15th century vellum? Like a time limited "undo" in today's terms. If yes then that might partially explain the small number of visible corrections.
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Thanks
It's not an established fact, it's something someone said that has been repeated many times.
There are many mistakes, some corrections and some apparent additions.
Yes, some inks can be wiped off with acidic substances (look at the righthand side and top of Folio 1r). Also the de Tepenec signature at the bottom. Corrections are not always done by wiping away the original, sometimes the shape is carefully amended with additional penstrokes.
The ink used for the Voynich MS is iron gall ink, which has a very light brown colour. It turns dark as the result of a chemical reaction with the parchment which sets in fairly immediately. It leaves the scribe almost no time to wipe it off, and something will 'enter' the parchment in any case.
The most common way to
erase a piece of writing is by scraping the parchment.
Otherwise, the text may be amended as mentioned by JKP.
It's of interest to add a quote from a letter by Anne Nill, which is most probably one of the souces for the lack of corrections in the Voynich MS. (D'Imperio clearly spent a lot of time going through the correspondence preserved in the Beinecke).
To Theodore Petersen, 19 Feb. 1953.
Quote:I remember I talked too much, but did I really say "the ms. does not include a single erasure or correction"; whatever I said, this is my present opinion: in all my experience of manuscripts I have never come across one in which corrections and erasures are so unobtrusive as they are in this ms. if it contains any. I have looked through it again - of course not every word, and have nothing to add to the one or two probable corrections I recorded c. 1936 when I worked with photostats.
In this connection I must add that we still have a few Voynich estate mss. (requiring additional research which I never found time for, before I attempt to sell them) which include one beautifully written text on fine vellum and some well and some poorly written manuscripts; and in none of them is there any difficulty in detecting corrections, erasures, deletions or transpositions.
Various means were used for erasure. As Rene rightly says, time was short.
A scribe kept by his side a piece of pumice, used for smoothing the parchment, and which might be used to erase; however in those cases and especially with a script as small as the Vms', it is usually obvious where the additional smoothing was done.
Another method was a "breadcrumb" eraser, a small bit of fresh bread rolled into a ball. It works surprising well, though I've only tried it on pencil, myself.
I've seen other recipes for erasing ink in medieval works - sorry I can't remember which offhand.
Depending on the composition of the iron-gall ink, the result might be a very deep (almost black) ink, or a brown as light as most of that in the Vms. As rough guide, you usually find the deeper inks used in the north, and lighter around the south. But that's just a rough guide, not a rule.
The impression I get - one I think is shared by others studying the glyphs - is that corrections were usually done by kind of making the best of it and still trying to form the mistake into the desired glyph. This is something we can only study when we understand the glyphs better though.
When people say there are no corrections, they usually mean that there are few signs of "messy" correction like scratching, obvious overwriting, obvious erasing....
Edit: I somehow missed Rene's quote, which explains everything.
Thanks for all your elaborate answers!
Tell me anybody, whether earlier been used to correct the text (except the listed a) breadcrumb, b) scraping, c) the remover) following method which I used in the school to correct errors in the homework.
1. Boil hard-boiled egg.
2. clean the egg from calcium.
3. While the egg is hot, a few times a ride egg on blot (error). The ink will remain on the protein. So can be deleted the dried ink, and with parchment structure will not change.