The Voynich Ninja

I just noticed now that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. was extensively damaged by insects, and significant parts of the writing were "restored" by someone who may have grossly misinterpreted what remained of it.

The damage is clearly visible on the Beinecke 2014 scans at 2x magnification, as sharply delimited patches where the parchment has a very rough texture.  Most of those patches connect to the wormholes, and many extend along creases of the parchment which would have created a space between You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and the back cover, which the insects could crawl into.  They surely must be areas where the surface of the parchment -- and any writing on it -- was completely scraped away.

1. One patch extends diagonally across the text, along a crease of the parchment, through the 3rd cross on line 2 and the "f" of "gafmich" on line 4.
   
2. Another patch extends over the whole garbled glyph on line 2, below the largest of the wormholes just below the top edge. 
   
3. Another patch includes the first letter of the "portad" on line 2.
   

There may be many more scraped-out areas but they are not as obvious as those above. For instance, patch 3 above may also include the "r" of the "portad", if not the whole word. Maybe they are more visible in the multi-spectral images with oblique illumination (sequence numbers 032-030 and 031-039).

It is also clear that an attempt was made to restore some of the lost text.  The evidence includes the fact that the ink of the garbled glyph in patch 2 is solid brown, whereas glyphs in other worm-scraped areas have the expected appearance -- pitted, or even reduced to scattered dots.  Ditto for the mangled "to" in "multos".

The restoration obviously happened after the worms did their damage, and therefore many years (centuries?) after the original text was written. In fact, as in page f1r, the insects may have been attracted by glue from the cover that offsetted onto the adjacent page, and thus must have been after the book was bound.

In that case, it seems that the Restorer failed to restore some of the damaged glyphs, and made many wrong guesses about others.  Which of course has a huge impact on the "decipherment" of those lines.

In fact, I suspect that the original writing was in Voynichese, and it was the Restorer who turned it into that Latin-maybe-sort-of script.  Note that the word on line 2, just above the end of "maria" on line 3, starts with a bona-fide Voynichese bench Ch. 

Perhaps line 2 was not "michton oladabas" but  qotain CThey okad akad qoaiin kChd qoChCKh Cho ...

All the best, if possible... --jorge

I've just spent a few minutes looking at *multos and I can't say I understand what you are talking about.

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It takes a few seconds to load, but then you can quickly move between the channels. I can't see anything suggestive of retracing over tentative Voynichese.

Perhaps these may be of use.
Manuscript Road Trip  - Multispectral Imaging and the Voynich Manuscript
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(30-08-2025, 04:38 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I've just spent a few minutes looking at *multos and I can't say I understand what you are talking about.

[attachment=11367]

The worm-scraped patch 2 of the previous message, shaped like an ellipse twice as tall as it is wide, is inside the blue circle (A).  Can you see it? The mangled glyph must be mostly a (wrong) restoration.

The worm-scraped patch 1, that runs along the valley crease of the parchment, is inside the red polygon (B).  It visibly damaged glyphs on lines 2-4.  It is not clear to me which parts of those glyphs are original, which are correctly restored, and which are wrongly restored.

There may be a lot more damage in that clip. For instance, just to the right of the blue circle there is another rough patch, shaped like a down-pointing triangle, which may have erased glyphs on lines 2 and 3. 

In your (great!) website, the images with suffix 1 have light shining at an oblique angle from North relative to the page.  Images with sufix 2 have oblique light shining from South. The difference between these two images, each properly equalized, should show the N-S slope of the surface, and thus maybe show rough spots more clearly.

 (Images with suffix 0 have both lights on -- a waste of time, since the result should be the average of 1 and 2.  It would have been more useful to use instead a light from East or West.  Then one could use photometric stereo techniques to get a height map of the surface, with resolution of 1-2 pixels.)

All the best, --jorge

(30-08-2025, 06:46 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The worm-scraped patch 2 of the previous message, shaped like an ellipse twice as tall as it is wide, is inside the blue circle (A).  Can you see it? The mangled glyph must be mostly a (wrong) restoration.

There is a very strange glyph that look like an overlay of two different shapes. Both of them appear to be roughly the same color, so I'd say this mess could have been created in one sitting. I see no obvious signs of past writing, previous faint strokes, etc.

(30-08-2025, 06:46 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The worm-scraped patch 1, that runs along the valley crease of the parchment, is inside the red polygon (B).  It visibly damaged glyphs on lines 2-4.  It is not clear to me which parts of those glyphs are original, which are correctly restored, and which are wrongly restored.

The glyphs are visibly damaged, and to me it looks like even the darkest strokes were disrupted by this damage, which suggest to me that the worms happened after the writing was finished and there was no attempt to write over these glyphs after the damage was done.

(30-08-2025, 06:46 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (Images with suffix 0 have both lights on -- a waste of time, since the result should be the average of 1 and 2.  It would have been more useful to use instead a light from East or West.  Then one could use photometric stereo techniques to get a height map of the surface, with resolution of 1-2 pixels.)

Maybe the rationale for having both lights on was to separate dark spots created by pigmentation from dark spots created by shadows on the rough surface. Similar to the effect of a circular light source.

(31-08-2025, 12:43 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There is a very strange glyph that look like an overlay of two different shapes. Both of them appear to be roughly the same color, so I'd say this mess could have been created in one sitting. I see no obvious signs of past writing, previous faint strokes, etc.

And I agree.  That entire word appears to have been retraced over the all but invisible bits of the original text.

Quote:The glyphs [in worm-scrapped patch 1] are visibly damaged, and to me it looks like even the darkest strokes were disrupted by this damage, which suggest to me that the worms happened after the writing was finished and there was no attempt to write over these glyphs after the damage was done.

The sequence of damage and retracing is debatable, but I cannot make sense of the ink patterns on that page without assuming at least one round of retracing. 

Consider the leg of the initial "six" on line 3, for example.  Could that be the worst level of fading that happened?  Statistically, we must assume that the worst was worse than that.  Many original glyphs must have faded even more than that leg -- that is, they are totally invisible now.

In fact, it is the claim "there was no retracing" that needs to be proved.  Hundreds of years ago large parts of the text would have already faded away to the point of almost being lost forever.  Why wouldn't the owner try to salvage the document by having a skilled scribe carefully retrace what could still be seen?

And bad retracing would explain why the handwriting is so stilted, and why not even expert paleographers can make sense of that text...

Quote:Maybe the rationale for having both lights on was to separate dark spots created by pigmentation from dark spots created by shadows on the rough surface. Similar to the effect of a circular light source.

Since the two lights are quite oblique (can't tell for sure, but roughly 45° elevation), that does not eliminate the shadow effects on the rough surface.  "Hill tops" that get ~45° light from both lamps will be ~40% brighter than "hill slopes" that get 90° light from only one lamp; and the bottom of sufficiently deep valleys will get no light at all,

But my point, again, was that the image with both lights on should be the simple average of the images with each light separately.  Thus they did not have to actually take the '0' images.  They could have obtained the same result from post-processing the 1 and 2 ones.

Instead, it would have been more useful to take a set of images either with light coming from East or West (to enable full 3D reconstruction) or with an all-around illumination (to better reduce the effects of roughness).

All the best, --jorge

(31-08-2025, 03:45 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Consider the leg of the initial "six" on line 3, for example.  Could that be the worst level of fading that happened?  Statistically, we must assume that the worst was worse than that.  Many original glyphs must have faded even more than that leg -- that is, they are totally invisible now.

I'm not sure I understand your statistical argument. On this page there should be some stroke that is the faintest of them all. Why can't this be this leg of "s"? 
While being faint, it's very clearly visible in normal light scans, and it's even more distinct in far UV, with a very clear border. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

If we assume there are strokes that are more faint than this one, I'd say that statistically I'd expect distinct traces of at least some parts of these strokes either in the visible light scans or in UV.

Also, this particular "s" has a very dark cap and a very faint leg. If we attribute this to retracing, then the question arises why didn't the retracer touch up the leg as well?

(31-08-2025, 03:45 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In fact, it is the claim "there was no retracing" that needs to be proved. Hundreds of years ago large parts of the text would have already faded away to the point of almost being lost forever.

I'm not saying that there is absolutely no retouching in the MS. Certainly some details on some drawings were added using a different batch of ink and/or a different writing implement and there are a few clear examples of retracing in the text, but there are maybe a handful of them.

As for the irregularity of the ink density, which happens over almost all folios of MS, the absence of double strokes on visible or MSI scans is a sufficient proof for me that these are not a result of retracing.

"Hundreds of years ago large parts of the text would have already faded away..." - I'm not sure I agree. As far as I understand, the type of pigmentation that this iron-based ink produces is quite durable. I'm not an expert, but I've heard that there is an actual chemical reaction that alters ("burns") the very vellum, so it's not just some coloring on top of the page.

As to why the ink is so patchy, there are many possible explanations, here's another one, just as an example.

A while ago I conjured up You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. just to make some point about the assumptions one cannot make about the MS. Since then I've noticed that a lot of things can be explained in it.

Consider someone who had to covertly write this book while being a prisoner, using some materials that were smuggled in by an accomplice. So, the author/scribe had no control over the quality of the vellum, the ink or the quill. Suppose the author was writing by night using some dim point light source, like a candle or oil lamp. I vaguely remember I tried writing with ink using candle light when I was a kid as a part of some make believe play, and as far as I can remember, you can't really see how dense the ink is, what you see is the shiny surface of the wetted page. You could write with clear water and still the see the text. Maybe the author/scribe just couldn't tell if the ink was doing a good job or not.

Interestingly, this scenario can explain the stark contract between obvious proficiency of the scribe with the quill (no ink blobs, very clear execution of many complex strokes) and overall bad quality of the writing and drawing (jumping baselines, irregular shapes, lines curling up/down). And the "hands" could be just the difference between writing with a perfectly made fresh quill and an old quill that the author had to mend with their teeth (no knives or tools in prison). Consider the difference between writing with a quality ballpoint pen and a wide sharpie. These would look like two quite different hands, I suppose.

While there is no direct evidence that points towards this scenario, to me it servers as a good reminder, that the common idea of the circumstances under which this manuscript was created (which I think defaults to a well lit room full of scribes working at special desks using state of the art tools and materials) can be quite different from the reality, we just don't know.

Edit: I'm a bit sorry for rubbing it in, I think I have repeated this many times already in various threads, but the above scenario also explains very well two peculiarities: 1) a completely invented script; 2) total lack of regular Latin inscriptions in the main text, if this is a cipher, the whole book is encoded. These two features allow for total deniability of involvement by the author-prisoner should the book be discovered, because you cannot match the handwriting to known documents when the book uses an invented script. "This is just a foreign herbal book from the prison library/my reading collection, I enjoy looking at the pictures, but I have no idea what is written there and I have nothing to do with it. I know that the King prohibited me from writing any more under the threat of capital punishment, and I will never disobey the King. BTW, could you kindly send this herbal to my children, I think they'll enjoy it, look at this cute dragon chewing on a root!"

(31-08-2025, 05:33 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm not sure I understand your statistical argument.

OK, I need to gather more evidence.  Will come back later.

Quote:"Hundreds of years ago large parts of the text would have already faded away..." - I'm not sure I agree. As far as I understand, the type of pigmentation that this iron-based ink produces is quite durable. I'm not an expert, but I've heard that there is an actual chemical reaction that alters ("burns") the very vellum, so it's not just some coloring on top of the page.

Yes, I know the chemistry of iron-gall ink.  But the reasoning should go the other way: given the amount and kind of fading that we see on the VMS, it cannot be iron-gall ink. 

Before someone mentions it: yes, I read the McCrone report, and, well, let's say I was not impressed. But please let me leave this discussion for later, too.

All the best, --jorge

(31-08-2025, 06:28 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Yes, I know the chemistry of iron-gall ink.  But the reasoning should go the other way: given the amount and kind of fading that we see on the VMS, it cannot be iron-gall ink.

Unless it was already this way in the beginning. I invented some tentative explanation above, here's a completely different one: this is a cipher that actually uses two kinds of ink, darker ink for nulls and fainter ink for strokes that should actually be interpreted as part of the cipher. This would even explain why deciphering attempts fail: the moment you transcribe the text into any form, the crucial information about which parts were ink A and which ink B is lost.

This could also explaine possible irregularities in the McCrone report, if the ink was custom made to accommodate the cipher.

Again, I'm not proposing this as "the solution", I'm just saying there are endless possibilities that would explain the irregular ink density and the absence of double lines in MSI scans, those that otherwise would be expected for retracing.

For me personally it doesn't matter much if the text was retraced or not, as long as the retracing was faithful to the original. For bulk of the text available in MSI scans there are no signs of "bad" retracing, so it's good either way for me. Even if there was a retracer and some mistakes were made, so far it looks like there is not a single clear instance of original character X and a different retraced character Y on any of the MSI scans.

(31-08-2025, 06:58 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.For me personally it doesn't matter much if the text was retraced or not, as long as the retracing was faithful to the original. For bulk of the text available in MSI scans there are no signs of "bad" retracing, so it's good either way for me.

I agree, both with the observation and with the conclusion -- but only with regard to the Voynichese text.  The Retracer (the main one at least) was generally careful to trace the characters faithfully, and he clearly knew the alphabet (even if just from observation).  So the question of whether and how much of the Voynichese text was retraced has little impact on studies of it.

But I believe that retracing of the illustrations was much less careful, and the Retracer (at least one of them) deliberately altered or added many details.  Like the "showercaps" on many nymphs and many plant details.

And I now believe that the "restoration" of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. was a disaster, because whoever did it assumed that the faded text of lines 2-4 was Latin script when it quite probably was Voynichese.  Therefore this possibility must be investigated and settled as well as we can before spending more time trying to decipher that "Latin" text.

All the best, --jorge