(14-03-2026, 05:26 PM)proto57 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.5) We also know there have been very good inks, by very good forgers, created in the span of literary history. Some of the best probably remain undetected, to this day... we wouldn't know.
This is an incredibly important point. You can say that forgeries include clear markers that make them stand out, but this is textbook survivorship bias. The forgeries in this sample are forgeries that were found (partly of fully)
because of the markers. On the reverse, there are few or no examples of forgeries with none of these markers, because people don't know they are fake, and so are not categorised as forgeries.
(14-03-2026, 02:31 PM)LisaFaginDavis Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The McCrone report found nothing that directly pointed to a modern origin for the VMS. There are some "unexplained" results, but nothing truly problematic.
I agree to this. It doesn't explicitly point at a modern origin, unless these unexplained results cannot be explained at some point in any way other than a modern context. The due diligence and theorising for the sources of these elements is probably worth doing. It very well could be that there is a pre-modern explanation for each, which I would equally welcome.
I will note that a very interesting set of spectra was
not explained during the talk which looked quite different to the others. It was only shown on screen for 13 seconds at 2:17:11, and was not addressed at any point other than for one of the elements during the black ink summary at 2:24:06, which I quote:
"The silver in the text is very unusual. I have no idea where that came from"
I don't know if this is problematic or not. His statement of having no idea about its source doesn't provide an opinion one way or the other. You can see in the graph that the Ag spike is not a trace reading, though.
Volkhard Huth's concerns about posting video of his talk unfortunately means that those of us who missed the live feed missed what sounded like an interesting talk. Can anyone provide a good summary of what he said?
(15-03-2026, 08:34 PM)kckluge Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Volkhard Huth's concerns about posting video of his talk unfortunately means that those of us who missed the live feed missed what sounded like an interesting talk. Can anyone provide a good summary of what he said?
His talk was titled 'Potential Origin of the Voynich Manuscript in Vienna.' Huth also proposed readings of marginalia on You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. and f116v. As far as I know, Huth has not yet published his findings in detail.
I would have also been interested to hear it.
Now the dialect in Vienna during the late Middle Ages would be Middle Bavarian, not what was discussed in the marginalia discussion (gâs).
There was also mention of an illustration with two scorpions. Did anyone remember from which MS this came, and can this be found online? I have seen such an illustration ages ago and remember mentioning it in the Ninja but would be hard pressed to find this again. (It was in the wayback machine).
I am curious if it is the same one or not.
It was from the Lilienfeld Concordantiae caritatis. HS 151; Stift Lilienfeld Archiv; (Austria)
This MS is concerned with Typology (linking OT to NT). It also adds animals from the Bestiary tradition to the scenes, as an extra link. The page he seems to have discussed if f152, though I don't know what he said about it.
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The animal is the You are not allowed to view links.
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[
attachment=14645]
Again, I don't know what he actually said about this, but this is the page that he showed.
(16-03-2026, 12:36 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It was from the Lilienfeld Concordantiae caritatis. HS 151; Stift Lilienfeld Archiv; (Austria)
This MS is concerned with Typology (linking OT to NT). It also adds animals from the Bestiary tradition to the scenes, as an extra link. The page he seems to have discussed if f152, though I don't know what he said about it.
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The animal is the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., which can walk on land as well as on water (hence the big feet).
Again, I don't know what he actually said about this, but this is the page that he showed.
I didn't catch the full details of how directly it was originally used as a "scopion". But it was a compelling case for what the VMS artist drew for Scorpio.
(15-03-2026, 03:15 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (14-03-2026, 05:26 PM)proto57 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.5) We also know there have been very good inks, by very good forgers, created in the span of literary history. Some of the best probably remain undetected, to this day... we wouldn't know.
This is an incredibly important point. You can say that forgeries include clear markers that make them stand out, but this is textbook survivorship bias. The forgeries in this sample are forgeries that were found (partly of fully) because of the markers. On the reverse, there are few or no examples of forgeries with none of these markers, because people don't know they are fake, and so are not categorised as forgeries.
(14-03-2026, 02:31 PM)LisaFaginDavis Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The McCrone report found nothing that directly pointed to a modern origin for the VMS. There are some "unexplained" results, but nothing truly problematic.
I agree to this. It doesn't explicitly point at a modern origin, unless these unexplained results cannot be explained at some point in any way other than a modern context. The due diligence and theorising for the sources of these elements is probably worth doing. It very well could be that there is a pre-modern explanation for each, which I would equally welcome.
I will note that a very interesting set of spectra was not explained during the talk which looked quite different to the others. It was only shown on screen for 13 seconds at 2:17:11, and was not addressed at any point other than for one of the elements during the black ink summary at 2:24:06, which I quote:
"The silver in the text is very unusual. I have no idea where that came from"
I don't know if this is problematic or not. His statement of having no idea about its source doesn't provide an opinion one way or the other. You can see in the graph that the Ag spike is not a trace reading, though.
Forgive me for butting in, but just out of curiosity about silver: when I spoke with the professors who analyzed my parchment (the copy of folio 14v of the Voynich manuscript), they hypothesized that the lines on the back, drawn to follow the linearity of a previous text, might have been drawn with a silver point, a practice used since the Middle Ages to allow "rubricators" to write letters in a straight line. Pure silver oxidizes over time, and so its age can be determined by the oxidation of the particles, which in this case should be pure silver (in the case of my parchment, calcium, potassium, and iron appear in the lines of the fillet, but there is no trace of silver).
Thanks for this. The Voynich has no ruling, so silverpoint is unlikely.
Perhaps some kind of silver-mercury mix then?
Depending on how corroded the silver is, we could potentially get some broad estimates for dating based on which compounds are present and their ratios.
We may also be able to tell whether it corroded naturally over time, or if its been done artificially (in principle?)
After conducting Carbon-14, collagen, MSI, and XRF testing, it is EXTREMELY unlikely that the Beinecke Library will do any additional tests. They have millions of other objects that need attention, testing, and conservation, and they are unlikely to expend more resources on the VMS anytime soon, not to mention putting it at risk by additional handling. The manuscript is very, very fragile.