The Voynich Ninja

So I want to start out saying I admire your work and the following is stated with complete
Respect- I do feel that this is kind of hard to understand and you’re taking a lot effort to  point out  parts of  the page  and  show evidence, but I’m not really seeing how it all comes together as a collective theory. Maybe i am just  dense but I look at all the many photos you have posted  pointing things out I just don’t see how this conclusively shows evidence to the point where you are asking people
To stop believing the images altogether. 

Do you have a quantified rating system of how likely something is to be retraced? Maybe working definitions of what a non retraced example Or how you measure untouched image or word? And have you tried these definitions on control manuscripts? Looking at the same measures on manuscripts c. The same time frame to see If these indicators  are the same or different?  Are there are manuscripts in history known to be retraced that you can tie parallels to? This is a very long thread - pages and pages and I did read some of it but I may have missed all of what I am asking for. 
… so am  I missing something?

(01-12-2025, 03:33 AM)anyasophira Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.you are asking people to stop believing the images altogether.

Not at all. On the contrary, I am urging people to look carefully at the images and see what is actually there -- not whet they assumed should be there.

Quote:Do you have a quantified rating system of how likely something is to be retraced?

Unfortunately not. Not completely, at least.  On the multi-spectral images one can distinguish a "dark" ink that remains somewhat opaque in the infrared images, and a "light" ink that is mostly transparent there.  (According to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., that would be consistent with the former being iron-gall ink, or containing some of it, and the latter being a paint made from ocher or some related pigment.)  

And on practically every page one can see bits of writing and drawing that are faded almost to invisibility.  That is what I believe all the text and drawings looked like when the owner decided to have the book restored.

But different ink color and density is only one criterion. By itself, it does not distinguish between "late" retracing, pen "recharging" by being dipped into the inkwell, and the original Scribe himself going back and retracing some glyphs that he wrote moments before. Other evidence of retracing includes

• Mis-shaped plumes traced in the wrong direction and/or with broad strokes.
  
• Plumes partly in faint ink, partly in darker ink.
  
• Tails of y,q,l,m,g that are missing or traced in dark ink then continue in faded ink.
  
• Redundant traces on figures.
  

But the best evidence is when a barely visible ordinary glyph got retraced as an invalid glyph ("weirdo").  Or when the Retracer mis-interpreted a figure and retraced or added a nonsensical detail.

Quote:Maybe working definitions of what a non retraced example

The main clue for a trace being original is that it has faded almost to invisibility.  On the images I posted, some original traces are annotated as such (or as "Rt0").  In the more recent ones, I have been using green labels for those.

Quote:Or how you measure untouched image or word?

"Measure", in what sense?

Quote:And have you tried these definitions on control manuscripts?... Are there manuscripts in history known to be retraced that you can tie parallels to?

I saw a manuscript that had some of the writing blurred and faded by a spill of some liquid, and then had the affected parts retraced.  

But generally I have not seen examples that could serve as "controls" or comparisons.  Most manuscripts on vellum are written with iron-gall ink, which is fairly resistant to wear and water, and does not fade even after centuries.  That was obviously not the case of the VMS: on the drawings, especially, we can see traces that are now barely visible, and traces that should have been there but are not visible at all now.

Quote:This is a very long thread - pages and pages and I did read some of it but I may have missed all of what I am asking for. … so am  I missing something?

As explained above, the evidence I have is thousands of small details.  Any one of them can be explained away in other ways.  But for the ensemble, I think that the MRT is the simplest and most reasonable explanation.

All the best, --stolfi

(01-12-2025, 02:32 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(30-11-2025, 11:55 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I don't think these split strokes normally happen when properly using a good quill with normal quality ink.

It has nothing to do with the quality of the quill or the ink.  It happens with any quill or ink when the pen is about to run out of ink.  Again, a careful scribe will dip the quill into the inkwell before it gets to that state.

This effect can happen when writing with an almost empty quill, but I'm not sure this would happen then all over the page. This effect certainly can also happen if the ink is not of the right viscosity or if there is something wrong with the tip of the quill. I've made a few quills myself from raw feathers, it's not hard to make a botched quill that will produce these split strokes most of the time. Just cut it wrong and that's it.

However, this is not really the question, it not important here what process led to these visibly prominent split strokes on f44r. The question is why these unusually visible frequent split strokes persist across all shades of ink, both very dark and quite light. Are the double strokes in the image below the work of one actor in a single session or several different actors spread in time?

[attachment=12757]

(01-12-2025, 04:17 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Other evidence of retracing includes

• Mis-shaped plumes traced in the wrong direction and/or with broad strokes.
  
• Plumes partly in faint ink, partly in darker ink.
  
• Tails of y,q,l,m,g that are missing or traced in dark ink then continue in faded ink.
  
• Redundant traces on figures.
  

But the best evidence is when a barely visible ordinary glyph got retraced as an invalid glyph ("weirdo").  Or when the Retracer mis-interpreted a figure and retraced or added a nonsensical detail.

All arguments to "mis-shaped", "redundant", "invalid", "nonsensical" presuppose that we somehow know the right correct shapes and designs. I don't think we do, and all these arguments are subjective based on one's own ideas about what the script should look like.

I think I spent quite a while looking at the manuscript, I'm quite familiar with the script. For example, when there was a claim that \) character doesn't exist in the MS, I easily You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. just because I remembered seeing it. Or when you showed one of the few obvious examples of retracing, I immediately knew the folio. So, I see no reason to trust your subjective assessment of what is valid or invalid over mine, and my subjective assessment is that there is a great variety of rare and unusual glyphs what can be executed in all shades of ink and are likely original.

As for the arguments to variation in ink shade, these can be just due to patchy/lumpy ink which may have also exaggerated over time due to different fading rate of different component of the original ink. I think I already posted an example of extremely spotty strokes from MSIs, here's another belowYou are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. There are irregular dark spots, which to me obviously show that the ink was not some homogenous properly mixed substance. There were some darker blobs in it, and larges ones would be spread by the quill and lead to distinct patchy strokes. No huge mystery here, I think.

[attachment=12758]

[attachment=12759]

The splitting of the writing has something to do with the surface of the parchment.
Has the surface been treated or not?
The Oxford University page is open again.
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(01-12-2025, 10:27 AM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The splitting of the writing has something to do with the surface of the parchment.
Has the surface been treated or not?
The Oxford University page is open again.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

This could explain persistent splitting for different scribes on a single page. So maybe this argument for MIO/MTO doesn't really work.

(01-12-2025, 08:32 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm not sure this would happen then all over the page... The question is why these unusually visible frequent split strokes persist across all shades of ink, both very dark and quite light.

Well, I find it unlikely that the Scribe would write a whole page with a bad quill or ink, without trying to fix the problem. 

My answer to the question is that I think that there is something wrong with the vellum on that page.  Possibly it is rougher than normal, so that either the ink between the tines could not catch on it, or the Scribe had to apply more pressure to the pen, causing the tines to spread too far apart and breaking the ink bridge between them.  Possibly it was more hydrophobic than normal, so that the ink in the gap between the tines would not stick to the vellum as it should.
[attachment=12762]
On this clip of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (lines 1-7, east end)  I still see at least two rounds of retracing, Rt1 and Rt2, roughly corresponding to the two ink colors.  But, as you say, both have terrible trace quality.  

The original (Rt0) traces survive only in the tails of some y and q glyphs (A) and some Ch ligatures (C ), and a bit of the flower outline (B).  I think I see a bit of original strokes alongside retraced strokes in a couple of places, like (J), but I am not very confident in that.  

The best evidence for retracing, I think, are the glyphs that were turned into once-only weirdos, like (M); or possibly turned into other glyphs, like the y in (L) that I suspect was originally an o but the Retracer thought he saw a tail, and "restored" it. 

The t gallows (K) is intriguing.  Even if we assume word spaces after oto an/or around the y, we get a very atypical word with that t.  But note the exceptionally large feet of that glyph.  I suspect that the original was an ee, but the tops of the es were lost and the Retracer thought he saw something above them.  So he "restored" the ee into a t...

But indeed, the pervasive split strokes and faltering traces are indeed not the result of writing with an almost-dry pen.  If that were the case, the traces would quickly become lighter as writing continued, and after a few glyphs the scribe would have to recharge the pen from the inkwell.  Instead the traces remain uniformly bad for a whole line or more.

But notice that the traces look much better, almost normal, inside the region roughly bounded by the red line, even as writing goes on without noticeable break across that line.  I take that as evidence that the bad traces outside that area are due to bad vellum.

All the best, --stolfi.

A hypothetical before I attempt looking for something like this. If there is a passage in the manuscript with some obvious defect of the quill, say, a stray hair that leaves an occasional thin  line offset from the main stroke, would you consider this evidence for MIO and against MRT if this defect follows the same distribution of ink shade variation as the main text?

I'm trying to think of anything that could in principle falsify MRT, otherwise for me it is kind of stuck in "not even wrong" territory.

(01-12-2025, 04:21 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.would you consider this evidence for MIO and against MRT if this defect follows the same distribution of ink shade variation as the main text?

I would have to look at that case and see whether it is indeed incompatible with MRT and/or supportive of MIO.

But, again, the evidence for MRT is not a single case of apparent retracing, or the mere existence of two or more shades of ink on a page.  Any such instance can be explained in several ways that do not require retracing.  It is the sheer number of such instances -- typically dozens on practically every page -- that makes MRT the simplest and most likely explanation.  

And then there is also the fact that, on almost every page, one can find text and parts of figure outlines that have faded to near invisibility.  How do you explain that other text or outlines on the same page, right next to those cases, is still dark and sharp?   A batch of defective ink could be the explanation if it happened on only a few pages.  But not on practically every one...

All the best, --stolfi

(01-12-2025, 05:14 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.And then there is also the fact that, on almost every page, one can find text and parts of figure outlines that have faded to near invisibility.  How do you explain that other text or outlines on the same page, right next to those cases, is still dark and sharp?   A batch of defective ink could be the explanation if it happened on only a few pages.  But not on practically every one...

It's not hard to invent a possible explanation for the ink that would for me personally require much less suspension of disbelief than a team of what appears like simultaneously superhumanly precise and superhumanly sloppy retracers.

For example, it's clear that the original designers of the manuscript were ok with experimenting. The foldouts, the custom script, strange imagery, no matter what the motivation was for all this, clearly they were acting outside of the norms of the mainstream herbal manuscripts. Why couldn't they consider experimenting with the inks too? Suppose for some artistic or practical effect they decided to try mixing iron gall and ochre inks. They matched the shade nearly perfectly, but what they didn't realize was that these two inks won't mix and the iron gall part was left as a suspension of tiny blobs within the ochre ink. When they initially penned the manuscript, two shades being close enough, this looked good and maybe even cool and mother-of-pearly and magical due to slight variations of the hues. They loved the aesthetic and they kept this ink for the whole of the manuscript. However, in a few hundred years the ochre part faded away while the iron gall part got even darker, leaving the mess we see today.

I see no particular problems with this explanation, at least it looks internally consistent. I'm not sure if it's physically possible with the specific inks I mentioned, but I think there certainly should be some combination of pigments and binders that would create the situation above. On the other hand, the retracers so professional that their work appears to be undetectable to practically anyone but you, but at the same time very sloppy and making a lot of stupid mistakes is harder to believe for me.

BTW, one other possible test: if there exists in the manuscript a clear offset of the text. I would say that if the variation of the darkness of the offset appears to match that of the text, this is a strong argument that all variations of the shades were put to the vellum at the same time. Otherwise we should presuppose several perfectly aligned offsets of the same folio somehow produced in different decades or centuries.