(01-08-2025, 01:07 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Two important things that people should keep in mind when doing this sort of analysis, on this page or anywhere else:
(1) The Author of the manuscript (who invented the script, chose the book contents, composed the text, etc) is not the same person as the Scribe(s) who actually wrote the manuscript on the vellum.
...
(2) Over the 600 years after the VMS was created, a lot of the original writing and drawing, on many pages, faded almost to the point of invisibility, or beyond. Seeing that, at least one of the later owners undertook to restore the book by retracing the faded parts. And there may have been another owner, even later, who extended this restoration a bit further.
So far I've seen no good evidence that for me personally would confirm either of these two points.
(01-08-2025, 07:31 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Look closer Real close. Dowload the full resolution jpeg form Beinecke and
look at it with 200% magnification and play with the color curves:
You should see a very very very faint h (only a lttle fainter than the y of pchhy at 05:30 on the outer ring). Making that weirdo at 07:00 into a perfeclty normal ch.
I just took your enhancement. With the right amount of squinting, yes, one can see a stroke that would normally start the downward part of
h (image A). However, with the same amount of squinting one can also see many other lines (image B). So, I don't think this proves that there is an intentional faded stroke there, it seems equally likely it's just the brain trying to fill in the blanks.
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attachment=11095]
(01-08-2025, 08:46 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (01-08-2025, 07:31 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Look closer Real close. Dowload the full resolution jpeg form Beinecke and
look at it with 200% magnification and play with the color curves:
You should see a very very very faint h (only a lttle fainter than the y of pchhy at 05:30 on the outer ring). Making that weirdo at 07:00 into a perfeclty normal ch.
I just took your enhancement. With the right amount of squinting, yes, one can see a stroke that would normally start the downward part of h (image A). However, with the same amount of squinting one can also see many other lines (image B). So, I don't think this proves that there is an intentional faded stroke there, it seems equally likely it's just the brain trying to fill in the blanks.
I don't see any stroke on either of the images posted. It's pareidolia, if you concentrate hard enough, you can see anything I guess
Admitted, my "must" in that post is like in "the Egyptians must have drawn detailed plans of the Pyramids on paper before they started building them". It does not mean "it is a fact that", but rather "it is highly likely based on logic and common sense".
And "surely" in English, bizarrely, means the same thing, or even worse. "The package surely has been shipped" is a somewhat less reassuring message than "the package must have been shipped", which is a lot less reassuring than "the package was shipped".
Whether you believe that Voynichese is an exotic or invented language, a complicated cipher, or an elaborate hoax, it is very unlikely that five European scribes would understand the text; much less the illustrations. So at least N-1 of the N scribes "must" have been just copying what they saw as a mere string of symbols and weird diagrams. Like I would do if I had to copy a Greek manuscript: I know the alphabet, but would not understand anything of the text, not even the most basic words. And thus I would not even notice if I write a nu instead of an upsilon, or a xi instead of a zeta; or if I skip a iota, or join two words that were meant to be separate, or split what was meant to be a single word...
Apart from that, there are several clues in the VMS that the Scribe did not understand what he or she was writing, whether in text or diagrams. Like the mis-aligned text in two columns on f34r, or the missing nymphs and stars in some Zodiac pages. For instance, here is a description of page f72r2 (Gemini) that I wrote years ago:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
[...]
DESCRIPTION
[...]
Every nymph is holding or touching a standard star with the left
hand; except the outer one at 04:00 and the inner one at 01:30, who
are also missing their left arms entirely. The star of outer one at
04:00 is missing entirely. The stars of the the outer nymph at 09:30
and the inner one at 01:30 are missing the penned outline and
instead are fully painted with the yel. Most other stars have a yel
splot (which varies in intensity, sometimes being almost invisible),
and several have a dot core.
CW from each nymph, except the outer one at 08:30, there is a short
label.
The following table summarizes the nymph and star attributes. The
"brst" column says whether the figure has visible female breasts.
The "rays" column is the number of rays in each star; a "t" means
the star has a tail. The "hand" column gives the position of the
right hand; a hour value means that the arm is stretched out in
that direction relative to the nymph.
band place brst hand rays notes
------- ----- ---- ----- ---- ------------------------------
inner 10:45 yes belly 6 left knee raised
inner 11:45 yes hip 7
inner 00:45 yes belly 7
inner 01:45 yes butt 6 t no left arm, star only painted
inner 03:30 yes hip 8 left knee raised
inner 05:30 yes hip 7
inner 06:30 yes belly 7
inner 07:15 yes butt 8
inner 08:45 yes butt 7
outer 10:30 yes 08:30 7 right arm stretched, feet
outer 11:00 yes belly 8
outer 00:00 yes hip 7 t
outer 00:45 yes ribs 8
outer 01:15 no thigh 8 flat hips; shower cap; male?
outer 02:00 yes 08:00 8
outer 03:00 yes hip 9
outer 04:00 yes waist - no star, no left arm
outer 05:15 yes butt 7
outer 06:15 yes waist 7 standing on basin/carpet
outer 06:45 no 07:00 6 barrel; dress; male?
outer 07:15 no 06:30 6 barrel; dress; male?
outer 08:00 no 06:30 6 long dress
outer 08:30 no 06:15 7 no label; dress; belt; male?
outer 09:00 yes 06:15 7 feet visible
outer 09:30 no hip 6 star only painted
top 10:45 yes 07:00 7? left foot raised; grass
top 11:00 yes waist 7
top 11:45 yes belly 8 skinny legs
top 00:15 yes hip 7 left foot raised back
top 01:00 yes hip 8 left foot visible
INTERPRETATIONS
[...]
The two stars without penned outlines (inner at 02:00 and outer at
08:30) were presumably omitted by accident when drawing the diagram,
and corrected by the Yellow Painter. There seems to be a very faint
tail connecting the inner nymph at 02:00 with the star, perhaps to
make up for her missing left arm; but it may be just a defect of the
vellum. But even the Yellow Painter he missed the missing star and
arm of the outer nymph at 04:30.
This panel is only ~15 cm wide, hence narrower than the previous
ones in the Zodiac section (such as f72r1, ~17 cm wide); and, on the
other hand, it is the first where the Scribe tried to fit 30 nymphs
in a single diagram (instead of 15 each in two diagrams). This may
be the reason for the unusual layout with five nymphs at the top of
the diagram. However, the Virgo page, on the verso of this same
panel, manages to fit the 30 stars in the two bands of a single
diagram.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
("yel" is my shorthand for the transparent light yellow paint used on the hairs of most nymphs and in many other places. A "splot" is the largish and roundish spot of paint seen in the central part of most stars.)
(01-08-2025, 09:32 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Admitted, my "must" in that post is like in "the Egyptians must have drawn detailed plans of the Pyramids on paper before they started building them". It does not mean "it is a fact that", but rather "it is highly likely based on logic and common sense".
And "surely" in English, bizarrely, means the same thing, or even worse. "The package surely has been shipped" is a somewhat less reassuring message than "the package must have been shipped", which is a lot less reassuring than "the package was shipped".
Whether you believe that Voynichese is an exotic or invented language, a complicated cipher, or an elaborate hoax, it is very unlikely that five European scribes would understand the text; much less the illustrations. So at least N-1 of the N scribes "must" have been just copying what they saw as a mere string of symbols and weird diagrams. Like I would do if I had to copy a Greek manuscript: I know the alphabet, but would not understand anything of the text, not even the most basic words. And thus I would not even notice if I write a nu instead of an upsilon, or a xi instead of a zeta; or if I skip a iota, or join two words that were meant to be separate, or split what was meant to be a single word...
Apart from that, there are several clues in the VMS that the Scribe did not understand what he or she was writing, whether in text or diagrams. Like the mis-aligned text in two columns on f34r, or the missing nymphs and stars in some Zodiac pages. For instance, here is a description of page f72r2 (Gemini) that I wrote years ago:
People would routinely misalign and misplace details when drawing charts and tables of their own design. When creating the images in my previous post I misplaced the strokes overlay and it ended up on the wrong layer and I had to redo the whole thing. If it was on vellum and 3/4 of the bifolio already done, maybe I would just add a comment to the effect of "the above should be in the right column" and leave it as it was.
There are a lot of weird glyphs in the manuscript, but to me they look more like attempts of adapting an existing glyph to a new situation, which implies not only knowledge, but design/ownership relationship to the script.
I agree that before putting the whole thing on vellum there likely had been initial drafts and sketches. But, given I treat the MS as a cipher and hence the circumstances of its creation dictated some secrecy, I don't think involving external scribes would be reasonable for the authors. I still think it's likely the author(s) and the scribe(s) are the same.
Much of this discussion is about opinions, and I have my own, in some cases.
I think that a good argument can be made that there is a single 'brain' behind this MS, which one can consider a single creator or author.
The 2022 conference paper of Elona Dunkin and Klaus Schmeh even put this in a historical perspective.
I trust the expert opinion that there are multiple scribes. This suggests that at most one of the scribes was also the 'author'.
Both the writing and the drawings have (at least in some places) been emended in a second pass. Whether that was within days or much later seems impossible to say. Of course, there are also ink variations simply from pen pressure and/or parchment quality, but I think these cases can be distinguished.
I am aware of one point in the MS that convinces me that it was partly written (i.e. copied) by someone who did not understand the purpose. This requires a visual demonstration, and I will do it after Sunday - still a bit busy with my talk ;-)
(01-08-2025, 10:30 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I think that a good argument can be made that there is a single 'brain' behind this MS, which one can consider a single creator or author.
The 2022 conference paper of Elona Dunkin and Klaus Schmeh even put this in a historical perspective.
And what is this argument? I assume the paper is this one: You are not allowed to view links.
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In there I have only found the following relevant passage:
"75 books on our list were created by single authors, eight of whom were female. All encrypted books that were provably written by women turn out to be diaries. For 44 works in our collection, the number of authors is not known to us. We are not aware of any encrypted book that was provably created by more than one person. As far as we can tell, even the illustrated books in our collection were not made by a writer cooperating with an artist, but by one individual acting as both. All this clearly suggests that the Voynich Manuscript was created by a single mind, too. We know, however, that other research has come to a different result..."
First of all, the number of authors is not known for
59% (edit: I misread the statistics, the actual percentage is lower) of the sample set, so even as an extrapolation the argument is not very good.
But generally, this is a variation of "other <...> were made in a certain way, hence the Voynich MS probably was made in the same way", which can be a good argument, for example, for some physical properties of the book, because there are quite a few other manuscripts that are physically similar. But as far as the text and images go, for what I know, the Voynich MS has a very strange combination of features, so it's not clear if there is any use comparing it with [edit: the averaged features of] other contemporary manuscripts.
(01-08-2025, 12:16 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But as far as the text and images go, for what I know, the Voynich MS has a very strange combination of features, so it's not clear if there is any use comparing it with other contemporary manuscripts.
I agree on this point. What I mostly remembered from that talk is that there is nothing like the VM within its timeframe.
I do not oppose the general idea that it's so unusual yet coherent, that we'd expect a single "mind" behind it. But in that regard, we may as well compare it to the postmodern Codex Serafinianus.
Or to Hildegard. Her secret words and signs functioned in an interpersonal context. Others knew of them and presumably used them to some extent. Still one mind, but the activity was socially embedded. The idea of a cooperative project is not too far off, then.
(01-08-2025, 12:16 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But generally, this is a variation of "other <...> were made in a certain way, hence the Voynich MS probably was made in the same way", which can be a good argument, for example, for some physical properties of the book, because there are quite a few other manuscripts that are physically similar.
That is also a good point. Statistics of feature XYZ among other manuscripts would be significant if the VMS had been chosen by some criterion that does not involve that feature, directly or indirectly. Like, if we went to a random medieval library and picked a random volume from the shelves, then, to guess whether it is vellum or parchment, it would be appropriate to consider the statistics of material among manuscript books from that epoch and region. Or if we picked a random item from a pile of encrypted manuscript books and wanted to guess the topic, it would make sense to check the statistics of topics among encrypted manuscript books of that epoch etc.
But the VMS was chosen to be the topic of our studies because it is extraordinary in several aspects, such as the use of an invented script, incomprehensible illustrations, bizarre plants, etc. It is in a category of its own, not a random sample from some category with many members. "Bizarre manuscript books with invented script, incomprehensible diagrams, and bizarre plants written the 1400s that were in Central Europe in the 1600s" is not a well-defined category that can provide meaningful statistics...
All the best, --jorge
(01-08-2025, 12:16 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I assume the paper is this one: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
[...] First of all, the number of authors is not known for 59% of the sample set, so even as an extrapolation the argument is not very good.
Actually it would be a good argument,
IF the VMS has been chosen at random among the category of "encrypted books".
Say there is a box with 118 tokens, some marked "M" (multiple authors) and some marked "S" (single author). You pick one token at random from the box, but it drops into a hole before you can read it. You must guess whether it was an "M" or an "S". So you spill the contents of the box on the floor, and count what you see among the remaining 117 tokens. 73 of the tokens fall face down; 44 fall face up, and they are all "S". That is very strong statistical evidence that the one you picked was an "S" too.
BUT this does not apply here, because the VMS is not a randomly chosen encrypted book...
About that paper, the authors themselves note that the VMS clearly does not fit into several of their sub-categories, so it is wrong to include them in the statistics. It either belongs to the "knowledge", "hoax", or "unknown" classes.
And some of those which they count as "hoaxes" I would count as "puzzles" or "weird 'knowledge' by a crank author". I would think that the Steganographia, in particular, was meant as a puzzle, but with the intent "lI am an expert cryptographer, and the proof is this encrypted book, I bet you can't decipher it". (Didn't Rafael Mnishovsky write such a book too?) So the claim that "puzzle" books are all modern seems to be incorrect.
And the Tables of Soyga too I would classify as "knowledge" book. By someone who believed (or enjoyed) kabala stuff, and found a method that would turn a single six-letter word into a page full of strange letter patterns which "surely" must have had some deep cosmic significance...
All the best, --jorge