Is there a possibility that the open-bottom "a's" are actually "v's"?
Here's a comparison of some of the a, v, and x shapes from the Voynich Manuscript.
I think it's possible that
v is some kind of an alternative form of
a, but given that
v is an extremely rare character, which I think appears only once in the main text, it's very hard to make any argument for this. I don't think the way it appears in the main text on f3r is compatible with
a, I wouldn't expect
aor there, maybe
lor,
chor or
dor.
There is only one other instance I can find in the transliteration where a word starts with
aor, and it's
aora? from f99r, but if you look it up in the MS, this doesn't really look like
aor either, more like
oarar or
oaran.
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