The Voynich Ninja

In the first few pages of the VMs Zodiac, some interesting heraldic interpretations show up. My investigations of medieval heraldry reveal a group of images interconnected by historical events and the origins of an ecclesiastical tradition. The VMs illustration of White Aries is a discretely subtle representation of a unique event in church history that can be dated to 1251 CE. Since VMs Carbon-14 dates average 1404-1438, the author was clearly a historian.

Heraldry is an unexpected language. It imparts a great deal of information to anyone who can read it. And the pairing and positioning of the papelonny patterns in the VMs Zodiac is a clear indication that the artist was freely capable to create his/her own unique canting (pun) in the heraldic tradition as would have been current at the time of VMs composition. The presence of the pun, unrecognized in the zodiac illustrations, reveals in part that the author's range of knowledge in heraldry has not been understood by modern investigations.

Re: the Ikea image
Definitely an example of a well-balanced nebuly line, but with a modern twist.
With sheets like that - - it's like sleeping on a cloud.
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(17-04-2016, 04:13 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Dear colleagues, please keep it a bit cooler, no need to raise the pitch.

Thank you, Anton. I will do my best to respond in a civil manner to mr Ponzi's less than tactful replies.

Marco:
I did look around if anyone had written about this vessel resembling the Pharos. The paper you link is talking about an element on the rosettes foldout, where the authors use the same reference material I used to identify another VM item as the Pharos. I find this extremely interesting and thank you for referring me to it. Of course, since we are all "hobbyists", the fact that we independently saw the same building depicted in different sections of the VM means absolutely nothing.

I agree that the square section base is a point of difference, which I also clearly mention in my post. However, I tentatively explain this as a result of the shape dictated by the vessel which was given the Pharos' structure. Most of these vessels are cylindrical, so even if one is adorned with the likeness of the Pharos, its base should still be cylindrical. I'm not saying it's an exact architectural model.

VViews:
For the snake I used Tut's mask because we have extremely clear images of it, and it's totally undamaged. However, this snake-and-vulture crown, or similar headgear (for example a version with just the snake) was a general symbol in Egypt, just like we all recognize a medieval crown, even if it's drawn in a very crude way. I'll just show this image because it shows some examples:



Although I agree that it would have been better already if I showed the symbol's transmission into Greco-Roman times. Her's a first century CE Isis with an Uraeus crown and an Uraeus in her hand. Not how she also wears the typîcal headdress that I use in my interpretation of the plant:


(Isis holding a Crowned Uraeus Egypt, 1st century AD The Brooklyn Museum)

Where I think I may not have communicated clearly, and which ties into the original question of this thread, is that I don't think I need to show continuity to 15th century Europe. I will show very simplified and schematically what I think happened specifically to this image. This will be full of assumptions. It is just the possible scenario I favor at the moment, based on my own observations and those of others:

- Greco-Roman Egypt: the person who compiled the source material (using information from the Library, perhaps) embellished a vessel with the likeness of the Pharos, which he saw on a regular basis.
- Greco-Roman Egypt: the person who commissioned the documents starts using them for his trade-related profession.
- In between time: the documents are taken East, which is not unlikely because they contain a fair amount of information useful for the trade there.
- In between time: the documents are copied by local scribes, for example to multiply or preserve them. Perhaps some details are lost - impossible to tell. Local habits concerning the depiction of plants find their way into the material (cfr. Diane's work - I believe her assessment on this part, though we don't agree about where and when the root section was first made).
- Some time before MS Beinecke 408's manufacture: the material finds it way to Southern Europe, perhaps on the ship of a merchant who obtained them or a copy.
- 15th century Europe: a relatively faithful copy is made. It is unclear to what extent the copyists understand what they are working with, but they do what they do best: copy. However, during this copying and/or shortly after, a number of Medieval European alterations, which I compare to an uneven layer of veneer, are added.

This is why I think it is unnecessary, indeed impossible, to show a line of transmission in the iconography. You are absolutely right if you say that I must show this line of transmission to Greco-Roman times (when this applies), which I hope I have done now.

So in conclusion, I see the creation of MS Beinecke 408 as a mostly faithful copying of something most Europeans at the time wouldn't understand. I think many people would disagree with this, so the original intent of this thread was for me to learn why this is the case.

I hope that's a bit clear. I am not a trained historian, and don't always have the English vocabulary to express what I really mean. That doesn't mean I can't try to outgrow hobbyist level though

I understand I have been untactful. I apologize. 
I will not bother you in the future.

(17-04-2016, 08:10 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I understand I have been untactful. I apologize. 
I will not bother you in the future.

If you keep bullying me into writing and researching more professionally, we will solve the Voynich together 

If you are looking into the transmission of images, rather than text, then it is well-known that the ancient Romans brought a number of Egyptian obelisks and much else to Rome.

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

So all a medieval cleric in Rome would need in order to see these carvings would be a ladder or a shovel - depending.

[quote pid='3332' dateline='1460843558']
Why is the MS not a copy of older, non European sources?
[/quote]
Just look at the VMs list archives - there must be countless similar discussions initiated by your soulmate Diane through the years.

I personally am trying to consider all kinds of sources. For example - fol. 29v - possible black cumin - according to Dioscorides was used to heal crocodile bites - so the VMs root looks like crocodile skull made of pharaoh crook and flail.  It is just speculation that is not even close to a fact or evidence. It would be very annoying of me to demand that people agree with it. I am perfectly fine with folks ignoring it.
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If you are looking for the oldest known "Egyptian" VMs theory - it belongs to Georg Baresch (1639 letter).

"In fact it is easily conceivable that some man of quality went to oriental parts in quest of true medicine (he would have grasped that popular medicine here in Europe is of little value). He would have acquired the treasures of Egyptian medicine partly from the written literature and also from associating with experts in the art, brought them back with him and buried them in this book in the same script."You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
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Hi all,

Since I think that I was probably, apart from Stolfi, the first person to refer to the manuscript's origins as non-European, and that there has been a generally negative, sometimes very positively negative response to my conclusions, let me give people who have come to the study within the past eight years, a little background.

First, provenancing awkward artefacts is what I do. It's my profession. Chiefly I work with archaeologists who have a small misplaced bit of an artefact, and am assisted by being able to have an independent professional evaluation of the basic materials - with a sherd this would include a raman test for the constituents of the glaze for example.

Lacking a formal codicological evaluation of this manuscript is a major lack. So is the absence of any comprehensive evaluation of the pigments.   In my opinion, if we had these, some of the most prominent and longest held ideas about the manuscript would dissolve overnight - if anyone listened, of course.

My area is iconographic analysis, and I specialize in unprovenanced and problematic items. One of the tasks which I'd undertaken, at the request of the late Professor Dummett, was an evaluation of a group of paintings on card now in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris.  Cards of that type are generally described as playing cards, or as 'tarot' cards, but their antecedents were unknown, as was the intended meaning of that particular set.  Unusually, because most of the work I do is by commission, and the results are copyright to the patron, not to me, I was able to publish a little of that work.

It was seen by someone interested in the Voynich manuscript, who then wrote and asked my opinion of two images from the calendar section (what is commonly called the 'zodiac').

At first, I had fully expected, from what that person told me, to find that the manuscript was a Latin Christian work from medieval Europe, and I began from that basis.

Within a day or two, it became clear that this could not be the case.  I spent about a year's free time, researching it further before having anything to do with the Voynich online 'community'.  I like this manuscript, and think it very valuable for all sorts of reasons, so have continued to share something of my research and conclusions online, despite the reactions which have ranged from the indifferent to the fairly determinedly hostile, over the years. 

"Just ignore her" is one common meme... but I'm sure this isn't something I need explain to anyone.

Unlike Sam G., of whose lucid and independent way of thought I much appreciate, I think the text could be fairly late and am almost certain that it cannot be as old as the early strand of imagery in this manuscript.

The signs of non-Latin and non-Christian character for the imagery are found on every folio, not only in what is there, but what is absent.  Open any Latin medieval manuscript and you will find that it expresses a world-view structured around social hierarchies, and a fixed belief that man is the pinnacle and purpose of all earthly creation.  You will see kings and thrones, and above all men (I mean males) riding horses, tilling fields, making war and so forth.  Part of the hierarchy involves woman, who are invariably made as beautiful as the artist can manage.  Saints and monks, beggars and thieves, monsters and ... you name it.  That's the world-view of the European.

Now - turn to the Voynich imagery.  Apart from the centres of those month-roundels, which I have always said looked to me as though they'd never been outside the region contained by the Mediterranean and Black Sea, and which include one element (the red splash on the lion) which points to the tenth century, the rest of the manuscript contains absolutely nothing of the Latin, or even more generally, of the Christian world view save a couple of crowns added to some of the nymphs.

In addition, there are specific items which the "all European" theory never addresses.  One is the use in the map of an emblem to mark 'west' which alludes to an idea of the sun's setting in the west to be later reborn from a flower.  I myself have found no such idea in any Latin imagery, or any of the considerable body of Latin medieval texts which I've consulted during my professional life. 

Another plainly non-Latin image, and one alien to the whole corpus of Latin thought, is the style of leonine sun, where the sun appears either clean-shaven or female (I think the latter was intended by the original), and its character as 'king' expressed by the addition of a beard attached by a cord about the chin.

One might go on, and explain where these things did come from, as originally I used to do, thinking it would shift researchers' focus to an appropriate time and place in their hunt for the key to the written part of the text.

I found that to rightly understand the manuscript was not always the first priority for members of the pre-Ninja Voynich world, as it was from 2008-2015, and have come to accept that.

But the information - or some of it - has been published online, and anyone who cares to investigate can find my blog.

I would very much encourage all at Voynich ninja not to accept anything that "everyone knows" without going pretty deeply into the question of where an idea arose, and whether it was just someone acting from prevalent expectations or whether they had really looked at the imagery, described it accurately, and gained their opinion after having done their research, rather than having the idea, and then researching the idea to try and find circumstantial support for it.

About the crossbow, for example.  The key here is not found in manuscripts of the fifteenth century, but in the language, common culture, everyday allusion and other imagery, some of it in media other than manuscript art.  Indeed, as I've shown recently the fad we see in German calendar art may well have had its genesis in Prague.

But that's quite enough from me.  I wish all members well, and am happy to communicate by email with anyone who wants bibliographic information, or just to exchange points of view.

Diane,
About your first point, I'd agree with what Ellie just wrote above:
"If you are looking for the oldest known "Egyptian" VMs theory - it belongs to Georg Baresch (1639 letter).

"In fact it is easily conceivable that some man of quality went to oriental parts in quest of true medicine (he would have grasped that popular medicine here in Europe is of little value). He would have acquired the treasures of Egyptian medicine partly from the written literature and also from associating with experts in the art, brought them back with him and buried them in this book in the same script.You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

It's of interest to compare Barschius' thoughts with one of the first German printed herbals, the
"Herbarius zu Teutsch", of whichYou are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Quote:If the statements in the preface can be trusted, the originator of the treatise was a rich man, who had travelled in the east, and the medical portion was compiled under his direction by a physician.

Since Barschius also writes in his letter:

Quote:This is all the more plausible because the volume contains pictures of exotic plants which have escaped observation here in Germany

it is easy to imagine that Barschius actually had access to a copy of this German herbal.

While I would love to read more into Baresch' Egyptian theory and his idea to sebd it to the expert on the subject, we have to be careful with it. We don't even know what exactly he meant with Egyptian. The term may have been used differently than we do today. 

What I do deduce from this, is that this man, who lived two centuries after MS Beinecke 408 was manufactured, saw it as foreign and was struggling to make sense of it.