The Voynich Ninja

(05-06-2025, 07:04 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(04-06-2025, 02:49 PM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It would certainly be an argument for the colour of the ink.
I'll stick to the simple one first.
1. closed inkwell. Over time, light-coloured ink and watery. Sinking of the particles.
2. open inkwell. Ink becomes thick and sticky. Evaporation and thickening. Seen in this light, the ink does not flow cleanly.

One problem with this explanation is that the darker ink is seen only in some pages, and then only some details.  On the Zodiac pages, for instance, there are of course many "original" variations in stroke darkness and width that are apparently done in the standard yellowish-brown ink, and therefore can be attributed to ink-flow variations and immediate self-corrections by the Scribe.  But there are scattered "new" strokes in a distinctive dark brown-black ink that was used only in the labels of two pages and applied to a bizarre selection of figure details.

What is certain is that the font was not finished with the old ink. This only came later with the new, darker ink. Whether the ink was new, or just stirred or thickened, I leave open.
What is certain is that the words were finished afterwards. I assume that the other corrections were also made at the same time.
The same ink can also be found on other pages in the text.
[attachment=10769]

[attachment=10770]

If you look closely, you can see a difference in the display. The overall picture also changes.
And if you visualise it, you can even see that there are several minds behind it all.
Something like this doesn't just happen on its own.

(05-06-2025, 07:04 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[..]
What is certain is that the font was not finished with the old ink. This only came later with the new, darker ink. Whether the ink was new, or just stirred or thickened, I leave open.
What is certain is that the words were finished afterwards. I assume that the other corrections were also made at the same time.
The same ink can also be found on other pages in the text.

The whole "retracing" theory has a bit of a problem: under the best-possible enlargements/zooms is nothing of the original words visible anymore.
I doubt that, especially in comparison to neighboring, faded, but still readable words those under retracing disappeared so completly / faded to zero, that not the smallest line can be seen anymore.
The retrace lining is very thin (and black), so I am sure it would not cover completely the original writing.

Apart from that, under some of the Nymphs' "tunings" there are the older lines still visible, which wasn't not exciting enough for the retracer.
But this all cannot give secure proof whether those reworks were done 20 minutes, 2 days or 200 years after the first writing of affected pages.

Whenever it happened I'll leave to others, but the fact it did happen seems pretty obvious to me. As pointed out previously, presumably the text was deemed "too faded" which would happen over time.

(05-06-2025, 11:58 PM)Bluetoes101 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.which would happen over time.

This both happens 'immediately after writing' and then possibly very gradually as time passes.
My question is: who would have bothered except the original scribe (or the team), seeing that his/their work was not as clear as hoped?

(05-06-2025, 11:58 PM)Bluetoes101 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Whenever it happened I'll leave to others, but the fact it did happen seems pretty obvious to me. As pointed out previously, presumably the text was deemed "too faded" which would happen over time.

I'm not sure what happened in your example. There are two layers of ink there, but to me this doesn't look like a retrace due to fading. Given that this is the first word of the paragraph and no other words appear to show any underlying faded ink, I'd rather believe that the scribe wrote the first word with a dry pen or badly watered down ink and then after realizing the mistake immediately retraced the letters with fresh ink. This is not at all like the proposed retracing on other pages. If anything, this shows what a true retracing would look like and I think it's quite different from dark ink/light ink parts on other pages.

If you look at page 34r you will already notice a difference in the ink from the upper to the lower text.
When looking at the upper text, the ink seems to flow just as badly as in the zodiac. Even the colour is correct.
This also disproves a longer period of time.

(05-06-2025, 11:58 PM)Bluetoes101 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(06-06-2025, 12:14 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm not sure what happened in your example. There are two layers of ink there, but to me this doesn't look like a retrace due to fading. Given that this is the first word of the paragraph and no other words appear to show any underlying faded ink, I'd rather believe that the scribe wrote the first word with a dry pen or badly watered down ink and then after realizing the mistake immediately retraced the letters with fresh ink. This is not at all like the proposed retracing on other pages. If anything, this shows what a true retracing would look like and I think it's quite different from dark ink/light ink parts on other pages.

Apparently, errors were made in encryption by the author. The curator made corrections in darker ink when checking

(06-06-2025, 08:01 AM)Hider Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Apparently, errors were made in encryption by the author. The curator made corrections in darker ink when checking

Let's zoom out a bit:

[attachment=10772]

This word that shows clear obvious retracing/correction is the first word of this block of text. And it is very obviously retraced/touched up. Nowhere else in this block I can see anything similar. 

If this was retracing due to fading, either the rest of the text didn't fade at all, or it was retraced too perfectly leaving no sign of the faded writing. I don't think either is realistic.

If this is a correction, it's strange that the wrong text was written in faint ink, and it's also not clear what exactly was corrected. To me this looks like the characters were just retraced as they were, the only one that could be a proper correction is the plume of s in sdy. Could have been just edy in the faint ink.

So, I still think the most likely explanation here is some problem with the writing utensil or ink that made the first word very faint and the scribe decided to fix this immediately.

This example for me is the strongest argument against proposed retracing of the text in most other places in the MS, because it shows that a retracing would be very obvious. I agree with Stefan here.

(05-06-2025, 11:13 PM)Stefan Wirtz_2 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The whole "retracing" theory has a bit of a problem: under the best-possible enlargements/zooms is nothing of the original words visible anymore.

But in fact there are examples where the "original" strokes are visible under the "new" darker strokes. Here are some examples (all from the Sagittarius page, with coordinates relative to the Beinecke "full jpeg" scan):

  

•   You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Sagittarius 1600,1290 inner band nymph at 11:00
  
•   f73v Sagittarius 1280,1870 inner band nymph at 08:00
  
  In both cases, note that the original drawing had the left breast outline, and only half of it was retraced or completed in dark ink. 
  

•   You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Sagittarius 1240,2300 outer band label at 07:30
  
  (This label is almost upside-down.) Note how the retracing converted two common glyphs, still visible in "normal" ink, into two invalid ones: an "e" into a reverse "i" with serif, and a "ch" into an incomplete infinity symbol.
  

•   f73v Sagittarius 2000,1520 inner band label at 01:30
  
  Note how only the stem of the "r" was retraced in dark ink, while its very faint plume, still in "normal" ink, was apparently missed.
  

•   You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Sagittarius 1820,980   inner band label at 12:30
  
  Here we have the opposite: a plume was retraced but not the glyph where it was originally attached to, leaving it floating in mid-air.  (It is hard to tell what the original label was; perhaps "or y"?)
  

I would say that the Retracer was very careful when retracing the labels, although he/she apparently did not know the alphabet. He was less careful when retouching the figures, and had fun adding details like the "showercaps", crowns, and right breasts.  Perhaps because he guessed that (as in European astrological diagrams of the time) the drawings were only ornamentation, and the only important parts were the labels?

All the best, --jorge