The Voynich Ninja

One plant I find particularly fascinating is the one I aptly name the elephant plant. It strikes me as interesting because the elephant drawn here, blended to be hidden in a plant leaf, appears much more biologically accurate than elephants in comparable European manuscripts. In the picture below, I pit the Voynich elephant against the elephant from the Lombardy Herbal (Sloane 4016).



Other funny examples can be found here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.



Another funny one (no date provided): 


Compared to these beings, the "no-skill-draughtsman" Voynich elephant is surprisingly "real".

There are exceptions, but as far as I can see those are made by people who for some reason got an actual elephant as a model:
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This site offers a number of examples as well, and also argues that realistic depictions of elephants can be linked to historical accounts of a live elephant being paraded through that particular European place at that particular time.
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Now my findings about the root-and-leaf section point strongly towards India, so I'd have no problem explaining this. 
(Furthermore I agree with Diane's views about the manuscript being a copy of various earlier sources related to naval trade routes, which explains even more).

So what do you guys think? Why does the Lombardy herbal, which was written not long after the VM in Italy, depict an elephant as a sabre-tusked, lion-clawed furry monster while the plant hybrid in the Voynich does a much better job?

About this motif, it might be helpful to know what others have thought.

This is taken from a post I wrote on the research blog back in November 2011. I hope the details are correct.
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Dana Scot mentioned that the plant shown lower right on fol. 99v has a leaf resembling the form of an elephant. .

Independently, and very recently (in 2011), 'Don' [Hoffmann] suggested the same.

At first I too thought leaf-margins of this sort were only on Alocasia gageana but that isn't so.

A. esclulenta does, and the same plant is in some sources called  Colocasia esculenta, said to be the 14th most widely consumed vegetable in the world.

A. macrohrizzos is a medicinal plant.
Alocasia gageana is also known as the 'dwarf elephant ear'. 

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But in the end, I concluded that it wasn't meant for an elephant, but for the sort of elephant 'dress' seen especially at the Holi festival, and even more especially in Rajasthan at that time.  It's still celebrated, and is an occasion on which enormous amounts of money might be made by people selling fabrics and vegetable dyes. A real "red letter" day in more senses than one.

Other festivals are noted in the botanical section, it seems to me, including the Jewish Sukkoth, though evidently another plant had to be substituted for the medical citron - perhaps an indication of where these botanical folios were used.

Cheers.

The word for an elephant's saddle-cloth is romanised as "Jhools".

I also don't think this is meant for taro - the leaf is too different and there's no sign of the large, round, edible root. The varieties with larger leaves come closer. Even though these plants would fit well into the way I see things, they're not convincing.

The elephant dress is interesting though. Do you mean things they would put over the elephant's head and trunk, kind of like this? (Animals must think we are such silly creatures sometimes). 



That is something to keep in mind. I wouldn't rule out it representing the elephant itself yet though.

Diane, what do you make of the blue roots? A reference to a watery environment where the plant grows? Or a source of blue dye?

I think probably a source of the blue dye.  I actually wrote a post about this but can't find it for the life of me at the moment - too many posts on the old research blogs and the search function on Blogger isn't always the best.

I found a few examples where the 'saddle cloth' covered the head and trunk, though more modern ones hardly ever do. I guess the material is just too expensive.

There was also a full list of the old vegetable dyes and their source.  Particular ones have to be used because the paint is used on human faces and made into a liquid that is thrown about, so it has to be harmless in contact with the eyes etc.

I may just have to dig up my hard-copy research material.

I'll be damned if it's not an African elephant though. Observe how in the Voynich as wel as in the African species: 

• the top of the head goes in a straight line over into the ears.
  
• the ears are much bigger compared to the Indian and European variety
  
• the bottom of the trunk shows a very similar "rugged" appearance
  

The African elephant's native range includes areas close to south of the Red sea.

Central and northern European depictions of elephants were pretty bad until the middle of the 15th century, which I assume is because illustrators had never seen one and relied on other (inaccurate) drawings or oral accounts.

I have quite a few elephant picture links in my files. Here are some of the more realistic ones:


There's a 9th century mosaic in Tunisia that is quite naturalistic.

I think there were several versions of this medal/coin but I don't have time to look them all up right now, but this was designed in the mid-1400s:

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A very accurate depiction from 5th century Turkey, but the elephant's trunk is not visible:

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Mediterranean Byzantine mosaic (not as naturalistic, but moreso than the northern examples):

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Very worn but originally very accurate, a 49 BCE Roman coin with elephant:

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Similar to the above but a much more stylized depiction:

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Naturalistic mosaic, Morocco:

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(08-03-2016, 10:27 AM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.One plant I find particularly fascinating is the one I aptly name the elephant plant. It strikes me as interesting because the elephant drawn here, blended to be hidden in a plant leaf, appears much more biologically accurate than elephants in comparable European manuscripts.

I agree. The Harley 1585 example is interesting in relation to this image, because it contains suggestion for using elephant blood for medicine. I think the root may represent elephant blood, which the artist may have imagined as gray.

The right part of the root on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. also looks a bit like an elephant (I'm not the first to see this), but much less accurate than that leaf. It looks more like the European medieval drawings than a real elephant. I can think of the following explanations for that discrepancy:
- The drawings were made by different artists
- They were copied from different sources
- The artist based them on different pictures of elephants, maybe not recognizing that they were supposed to depict the same animal
- The animal in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is not an elephant (but what else could it be?)

(08-03-2016, 10:42 PM)Oocephalus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The right part of the root on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. also looks a bit like an elephant (I'm not the first to see this), but much less accurate than that leaf. It looks more like the European medieval drawings than a real elephant. I can think of the following explanations for that discrepancy:
- The drawings were made by different artists
- They were copied from different sources
- The artist based them on different pictures of elephants, maybe not recognizing that they were supposed to depict the same animal
- The animal in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is not an elephant (but what else could it be?)

The root does look more like an elephant than anything else, but since it's only a suggested animal rather than a literal one, it could be other things. Wild boars were sometimes represented in roots, sometimes because it was a root that boars liked to eat, sometimes because they could help you hunt a boar, sometimes because they could help heal boar injuries (boars are intelligent aggressive animals).

JKP - Very interesting examples. What they reveal, I think, is a common theme: people could only draw elephants accurately if they had seen one in the flesh. For example, the Romans helped the northern African species on their way to extinction by making them fight. Later, in the Middle ages, elephants became bizarre beasts of myth. Unless in the rare examples when the artist had been able to observe an elephant being brought to Europe.

Oocephalus: that root could be an elephant, but it's been blended into the plant root to such an extent that it's become hard to tell what it's supposed to represent...