The Voynich Ninja

At the same time as the Voynich MS analyses, Joe Barabe analysed the so-called "Archaic Mark", where the conclusion was perfectly clear: it contained materials that were only invented long after the supposed date of the MS, so this points strongly to a fake.
No such message comes out of the Voynich MS report. It would have come, if there was any reason to.
(I now regret not having contacted anyone in order to ask him about the Archaic Mark.)

Also, people should remember that he is not a theorist, but a scientist/scholar. He will always be careful with his statement. Especially when talking with specialists in the humanities, one will always find hesitation to make specific claims. Material science is more an exact science, but here it is being applied to the humanities.

I personally find the 'some kind of artificial green of which we don't have an exact example' (I forget the precise wording) rather fitting with the amateurish character of the entire MS. But that is just my guesswork.

For those who missed it: There is a recording that covers almost all of the presentations: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Argh. Torsten already posted this a while ago—sorry! #noob

(13-03-2026, 10:41 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If this is true and can be expanded to the whole manuscript, it would certainly be problematic for some theories...
[...]
He has restated that he sees no indications of modern pigments. Why isn't that the end of it then?

Well, in this particular case (with the caveat that the artifact we have could be a copy, G*d help us) that being true would say something non-trivial about the process of creation. If the mss. was written over a fairly short period of time, then unless it's a copy the language "dialects" don't reflect an evolution of whatever-the-underlying-system-is over a longer timeframe. After hearing him say that I was hoping, with fingers achingly crossed, that none of the pages sampled was attributed to Scribe 1, but -- oops -- there's f47r. The overall bifolio looks like Rene's early Herbal A dialect (although the page itself is light on words beginning with EVA 'q'), Lisa Fagin Davis attributes it to Scribe 1, and (son-of-a-gun) the IR spectrum of Sample 6 looks a lot like the same some-type-of-gum-but-not-gum-arabic spectrum as the other text black ink samples, sloping up diagonally from a valley around 3311 cm^-1 to a peak that drops off almost vertically to a valley around 1229 cm^-1 and another deep trough around 1096 cm^-1 (compare Figures 6D and 9D in the McCrone report annex). I would tend to assume that the library of spectra it was compared against included common substitutes for actual gum arabic in historic iron gall inks -- according to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., "Daniel V. Thompson, in his /Techniques of Medieval Painting/, notes that many kinds of gum were used under the name 'gum arabic'  in the Middle Ages; and Theophilus’s treatise /On Divers Arts/ specifically recommends gum from the cherry or plum tree." -- so presumably it isn't one of the commonly used varieties of ersatz "gum arabic."

That's not to say that I don't have some questions about some of his statements:

* The notion that finding copper or zinc in historic iron gall inks is surprising seems to be a bit of an outlying opinion. Heck, Yale's page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. says, "Iron sulfate or ferrous sulfate (FeSO4•7H2O) is a metal salt...In literature and historical ink recipes it is often referred to as vitriol, green vitriol, copperas, green copperas, and Roman vitriol....Mined iron sulfate could contain a certain amount of impurities such as copper sulfate and zinc...Iron-catalyzed oxidation can be caused by excess iron in the ink formulation as well as by the presence of other transition metals such as copper or zinc (impurities in the iron sulfate) or, in the case of copper, the deliberate addition of copper sulfate." I have a longer list of references that either mention zinc or copper as an unexceptional component in historic iron gall inks or explicitly mention them as likely contaminants from natural sources used to make them.

* He says:

Quote:2:14:10
uh here. Okay. And but you've get you get a lot of other
2:14:17
stuff that that it's and its presence raises some big questions. We have
co uh
2:14:24
copper and zinc. We also have a little bit of uh
2:14:30
phosphorus. lots of potassium. The K here, I should have mentioned that
in my
2:14:35
listing here. And we'll we'll this is this is
2:14:41
pretty odd.

But You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. says, "XRF analysis of historical inks show iron as the most important metal with most common concentrations between 0,25 - 0,27mmol/g. In the majority (85%) of the inks, copper content was below the detection limit of the method 0,008mmol/g (KCK: OK, so point to Barabe there, at least 85% of the time)....In order to detect the source for the high potassium contents of the inks, gall-nuts and gum arabic of several provenances were analysed as well. Potassium was indeed always present..."

I'm just a lay person and he's been analyzing inks for years so I'm happy to give his opinions an appropriate level of deference, but I'd still like to understand why some of his statements about what is odd in the ink seem to be at variance with what I'm finding elsewhere including in the published literature.

(13-03-2026, 12:19 PM)kckluge Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm just a lay person and he's been analyzing inks for years so I'm happy to give his opinions an appropriate level of deference, but I'd still like to understand why some of his statements about what is odd in the ink seem to be at variance with what I'm finding elsewhere including in the published literature.

True, and I don't find this too surprising since Barabe told us how he works. They basically have a catalog of reference pictures and graphs, and then try to match those to what they see. An exact match should be impossible, since every mixture is unique. So you often get these "clearly some gum, but...". 

When he says "this or that was surprising to me", he means that it was one of the billion possibilities he had not encountered before. It's kind of like when I see a manuscript with a unique art style, I might call it peculiar - but I might be unaware that there are many more artworks in this style and that it is, in fact, perfectly normal.

(13-03-2026, 12:19 PM)kckluge Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm just a lay person and he's been analyzing inks for years so I'm happy to give his opinions an appropriate level of deference, but I'd still like to understand why some of his statements about what is odd in the ink seem to be at variance with what I'm finding elsewhere including in the published literature.

Following up with an example from the scientific literature (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.): 

Quote:XRF analyses of iron gall ink

Multiple studies of iron gall inks have demonstrated that XRF analyses can be used to distinguish different hands or manuscripts according to the ink compositions [You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.–You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.]. This is mostly based on variations in the copper and zinc contents relative to iron, but other elements, such as manganese, potassium, aluminium, sulphur, silicon and lead may also be distinctive markers of separate inks. An ambition to not only identify components in iron gall ink, but to also quantify them with the help of XRF analysis, has played a part in several studies. In an investigation of a 14th century breviary, Aceto et al. used standardless quantification through a freeware software provided by the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA [You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.]. Many inks in this study were rich in copper and zinc, with some copper and zinc weight percentage levels even exceeding those of iron.

(13-03-2026, 10:41 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.He has restated that he sees no indications of modern pigments. Why isn't that the end of it then?

Because the few pigments that McCrone *did* identify (like the azurite of the blue paint), while consistent with the 1400 date, have been available all the time after that as well.

The instruments that McCrone used on the VMS can tell only the element composition and crystal structure of the pigments.  They did not give any actual date of manufacture or application. The only test that did so was the C14 test on the vellum, by someone else.

And also because there were several pigments that they could not identify (like he green paint), or which they provided absurd identifications for (like the "low-iron iron-gall ink" and palmierite).

All the best, --stolfi

Like Rene says though, when you have pigments available (so more than just black ink), any modern meddling becomes clear upon analysis. Here, there was no such thing. And when something was unclear, the question was "I don't know how exactly this period-appropriate pigment was produced" rather than "this looks modern".

(13-03-2026, 03:23 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Like Rene says though, when you have pigments available (so more than just black ink), any modern meddling becomes clear upon analysis. Here, there was no such thing. And when something was unclear, the question was "I don't know how exactly this period-appropriate pigment was produced" rather than "this looks modern".

It is not quite like that.

A very incompetent forger would have used paints from an art store, with many pigments that were unavailable in the 1400s.  The blue pigment, in particular, would not be azurite.  The McCrone report would have pointed that out.

A more competent forger would have used only pigments that would have been used in the 1400.  He would have used azurite for blue, and McCrone would have said "check" to that.  But he would have used malachite or some other green mineral for green.  Yet McCrone said "the green pigment has copper, but it is not crystalline, so we could not identify it; we can only say that it is not malachite or any other green mineral."  

And, from the report and from Berabe's talk, it seems that they had never seen a manuscript with a green pigment like that.

So McCrone's test results:
(1) did not determine any date for any paint or ink;  
(2) ruled out an incompetent modern forger,
(3) made a competent modern forger unlikely
(4) made a professional pre-modern (1700s or earlier) artist unlikely.  
What possibilities remain likely?

I suppose that the painter could have been a "semi-competent" modern forger, who got the blue pigment right but goofed on the green one.

But my preferred interpretation is that the painter was pre-modern but a very amateur one, who prepared his paints with original recipes.  He bought some azurite for blue (rater coarsely ground,  would say from looking at the microscope images), because he could not make a blue pigment.  But for green he used some unidentified organic compound of copper (a "resinate", as McCrone called it) which he "invented" himself. Like the insoluble "copper soap" that results from mixing soap and blue vitriol.

All the best, --stolfi

(13-03-2026, 03:23 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Like Rene says though, when you have pigments available (so more than just black ink), any modern meddling becomes clear upon analysis. Here, there was no such thing. And when something was unclear, the question was "I don't know how exactly this period-appropriate pigment was produced" rather than "this looks modern".

Is this the case? If a modern forger were to mix the inks in the correct way, there would be no way of telling surely. 

"period-appropriate" just seems to be "not explicitly, undeniably modern". If the carbon dating for the VMS had indicated the 16th or 17th century instead of the 15th, we would be still be talking about how these inks are period-appropriate.

It's think it's important that the findings are not interpreted as proof of the 15th century creation. They are evidence that the inks are not blatantly 19th-20th century modern inks, nothing more.

(13-03-2026, 09:53 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If a modern forger were to mix the inks in the correct way, there would be no way of telling surely. 

Indeed, though it is more often a problem with the pigments than with the inks. Forgers from that time frame made those mistakes because they did not know then, what forensic experts know nowadays.
As time went on, the forgeries became better and better. Book forgeries have always been extremely rare, and paintings were a much more popular target.

(13-03-2026, 09:53 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It's think it's important that the findings are not interpreted as proof of the 15th century creation.

This has always been understood.

The problem is even bigger, because in some cases, modern pigments in genuine old books can be the result of ill-advised restorations (not to mention retracing....).