The Voynich Ninja

To me it looks as if the individual segments have a indentation (especially in the illustration in the upper right corner of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ). During the research on another topic, I have found several monasteries south of the Caucasus region which have a unique architectural style. In the so - called "Mastara style" or "Gandzasar style" the roofs look like umbrellas


Further examples can be seen You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. .

Beautiful roofs and those extra layers under the eaves might be an analogy for the "bumps" under the umbrella-shapes.


I'm inclined to think those shapes in the VMS are tent umbrellas, which were very common in natural bathing regions, and that the textures under them might be the grotto formations that were also common in these areas (especially the thermally active baths near or in caves), and the pipes might be aqueducts, which the Romans added to many natural spa areas.

But... I'm willing to consider that they might be architectural, if a relationship between the roof-shapes, the pipes, and the streaming water. can be found.

In 1150 the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. had already installed a complete water pipe system ( this would still be the "WYSIWII" approach).  I would rather assume that the pipes and basins in the VMS are predominantly allegorical representations. But this roof as a striking element could have been "borrowed". Think of the swallowtail merlons on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ( and how the roof would look in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.  ).

The water pipe system:  Cambridge, Trinity College MS R.17.1, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. - 285r

Many of the features on the previous folio (284v) in the Cambridge manuscript remind me of the rosettes foldout.

I've always thought Rosette 9 (bottom right) looked like an aerial view of a garden, with rows of plants, archways that commonly surround gardens, and the water ponds and irrigation systems associated with them. I notice there's a pipe going through the Cambridge herb garden.

And the flower-shaped fountain in the Cambridge ms (the upside-down one, bottom right) reminds me of the possible fountain between Rosettes 4 and 7 and in Rosette 7 (center).

I have searched for medieval manuscripts which could show an "umbrella-shaped roof". On a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. in MS 6288 (1) one can see a corresponding illustration. It most likely shows the belltower of the Horomos / Ghoshavank monastery ( Armenian-Turkish border, about 75 km south of the Harichavank monastery ). A photo from around 1900 shows the state before the decay since 1920. Obviously the dome of the church had no such roof (collapsed in the 1970s).

In the manuscript it appears as if the typical roof of a "Gandzasar-style church" was placed on the belltower to show this unique feature. For a "compressed composition" which is intended to show the entrance to Jerusalem, this is quite understandable.


(1) Erevan, Matenadaran, MS 6288, Haghbat Gospel, Monastery of Horomos, 1211, artist Markaré, Entry into Jerusalem


Unfortunately, the search for other comparable manuscripts was not successful. The only illustration with the same theme dates from the 17th century and probably originates from Constantinople.

Walters Ms. W.546, Gospels of Georg Alexief, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Still, looking at the whole composition, the "pine cone things" mostly remind me of drawings like this:

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From a 'map of the world' MS Ludwig XV 4. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Thank you, Koen! I was rather surprised to see that the gray "blob" in Ludwig ms XV 4 is labeled "Riphei Montes": it represents mountains!
Rene recently mentioned a page by Adam Mc Lean in which the "pinecones" are compared with mountains in the Angelica De Balneis ms. A difficulty is that the cones are inverted: in the VMS their point is downward. Possibly a greater difficulty is that the "umbrellas" are missing.
But it is true that the Angelica illustration is a perfectly conventional representation of mountains and (orientation aside) it comes very close to some VMS details. So I agree that the pinecones might represent mountains or some closely related concept.

Right. The upside down thing needn't be too problematic. In a blog post I wrote in July I compared the pine cones to some images including this one from the Liber Floridus:



As you see, the orientation of the "stack" of scallops doesn't really matter. The same is true on some other maps, where objects are turned as required (that's where you sometimes get a "flat city" look). I added this example from the "Book of Curiosities", but as you likely know, there are many more like this.



Additionally, it just makes sense that mountainous areas are a source of water flows, that's generally how it happens. 

Now I have no idea what the umbrellas are. If we go with the "mountains and rivers" approach, then I see two main options:
1) They are symbolic. They tell us something about the "pine cone" but aren't really present in reality.
2) They represent actual features.

The second point seems impossible since we're basically looking at upside down mountains with an umbrella on top. But that may just be because we picture that the object is drawn in side view. But what if it's drawn from an imagined aerial view, as if you're looking at a top-down map? In that case, the "scallops" represents a mountainous area, with each scallop being one mountain or hill... or something like that. The water flows down towards where our nymphs are, clearly the area of focus for the viewer. In that case, the "umbrellas" would be what lies beyond the mountains, from our point of view. Maybe some imagined place. This was not unheard of in authors like Ptolemy.

Or it could be as simple as this: the "umbrella" represents a high mountain, while the scallops are foothills, from where the water appears to come. This would explain the blue paint in these scallops, since certain areas would accumulate water, especially when rainy seasons are involved.

Hildegard von Bingen made fairly frequent use of overlapping-scale motifs in her cosmological drawings, and also combined these with busts of people poking up from textures within wheels. Von Bingen's were religious in content, but the same textural choices could be applied in other ways (as in VMS bathing pictures, people-poking-up pictures, rosettes, etc.)...

Here are a couple of quick examples...


   


In the VMS , the overlapping bumps often appear in the context of terrain textures.. hillsides, grottoes,  maybe cloud-bumps, etc.

The "scales" are one of the VMS's recurring themes (as are the pipes).

Hildegard is influenced by the Beatus tradition, both in style and theme. Here's am example of scaled mountains below: