Hello all! This is my first post on the forum (shockingly, I have not come in to say I have cracked the code and it's actually all in pre-Christian Pictish), and I am well-aware I am not an expert, so please, feel free to correct me if I'm incorrect at all in my question.
I was looking at f14v/r and I noticed the unusual page shape. I do understand that the vellum is extremely precious material and even the highest quality manuscripts would not necessarily dispose of a damaged/misshapen piece.
However, it got me interested in contemporary versus non-contemporary damage in the manuscript. In this case, it looks to me like the scribe on You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. left the exact space needed in the margin to avoid the cut-out, but then again, the hole is ragged and there's damage overlaying a leaf in f14v.
Is this an example of contemporary (ie, to the time of the creation of quire 2) damage/natural page shape, which has degraded faster than the other edges because of relative thinness? Or is the damage that was inflicted sometime in-between? Is there an existing consensus?
Also, I tried looking this up but it's almost a certainty with this manuscript that my question has already been exhausted answered, so if there is an existing google doc with a full list of damage to the manuscript etc., please point me to it!
Welcome to the forum! It's nice to see a good old non-AI, non-delusional opening post again
I've been looking at this manuscript on and off for the last ten years, and I don't think I've ever actively noticed that side hole before.
Regarding the parchment: in recent months, Lisa Fagin Davis has made the point that the VM was not written on choice vellum, but rather on lower-quality parchment. Voynich researchers have long been calling it vellum though, and there is a bit of confusion around the terms. The jury is out on just how poor the parchment is, and how it compares to other manuscripts of the lower tiers. Was the parchment a bit below average, or barely worth the effort of processing it? (We don't know).
As far as I am aware, there is no consensus on the general order of the damages. I think this topic was more often discussed in the past, but hasn't drawn much attention in recent years.
I think you're right to point out f14 as a special example. There are other cases where the edge is compromised, but there the text and/or drawings take that into account. In the case of f14, it looks like the damage was a bit different. The edges are sharper - was part of it cut out, maybe in an attempt to stop the damage from spreading? And it does look like further damage took place after the drawing was done.
(Today, 06:52 AM)mykiavellian Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hello all! This is my first post on the forum (shockingly, I have not come in to say I have cracked the code and it's actually all in pre-Christian Pictish), and I am well-aware I am not an expert, so please, feel free to correct me if I'm incorrect at all in my question.
I was looking at f14v/r and I noticed the unusual page shape. I do understand that the vellum is extremely precious material and even the highest quality manuscripts would not necessarily dispose of a damaged/misshapen piece.
Hi and welcome!
I agree that this looks like some very particular type of damage. I wonder what happened to the descender of
q and the lower part of its
o and whether
oy was retraced later?
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attachment=16160]
Just both sides, for easier comparison. I know nothing about parchment, but to me the surface damage looks a bit as if someone was scraping off something?
[
attachment=16161]
Welcome!
The description of pages on ReneZ's website has all holes, tears and imperfections listed (I hope) on folios 14, 15, 34, 36, 50, 72, 89, 107, 113, 114, 115, 116.
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The 2004 images allow for a little bit more detail, at least for 14v:
[
attachment=16164]
(9 hours ago)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The 2004 images allow for a little bit more detail, at least for 14v:
What I see there is that the hole was a defect of the hide itself. There is an extended area around that hole where the vellum is so thin that its individual fibers are visible, and the surface is no longer smooth and compact.
The vellum along the upper half of the hole is crumpled up and shows that an attempt was made to sew a patch over the hole, folding the edge over. The small holes and grooves left by the thread are still visible there. But that attempt was apparently abandoned, leaving the bottom half of the hole with the original smooth edge. Maybe a thin sliver was cut off to make that edge smoother. The folded-over upper rim was then pounded flat.
The Scribe wrote a few glyphs on You are not allowed to view links.
Register or
Login to view. over the bad area of the vellum, just to the right of the hole, as he tried to stick to the left rail defined at the top of the page. There is some doubt as to whether the
oy in the word
oykShy is original. The combination
oy is very rare (only 18 occurrences at the start of a word). It is possible that the word was originally just
okShy, and the BEEP (sorry) turned that o into an
y (mistaking the plume of the
Sh below for a tail) and added the initial
o.
All the best, --stolfi
(Today, 10:56 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Regarding the parchment: in recent months, Lisa Fagin Davis has made the point that the VM was not written on choice vellum, but rather on lower-quality parchment. Voynich researchers have long been calling it vellum though, and there is a bit of confusion around the terms. The jury is out on just how poor the parchment is, and how it compares to other manuscripts of the lower tiers. Was the parchment a bit below average, or barely worth the effort of processing it? (We don't know).
As far as I am aware, there is no consensus on the general order of the damages. I think this topic was more often discussed in the past, but hasn't drawn much attention in recent years.
I could see the parchment/vellum quality being hard to evaluate using the scans (although I didn't realize there was that much difference between my copy and the 2004 scan!), although to me this is the most interesting part. Are these off-cuts? Could they be from someone who is preparing or selling or storing parchment for other, more conventional purposes, that is skimming the worst of their stock for this manuscript? Are there differences in the quality between folios? If so, can we conclude that different scribes sourced parchment differently?
I have heard it said that the text is unusual for lacking obvious scrape marks as evidence of correction, could this be because the parchment they used would not have survived scraping? Or was this because they had access to lots of parchment and had some sort of ability to take as much as they wanted, provided it was below a certain quality? (It could also be because they just didn't make mistakes, or the ink they used was easy to wipe off, or whatever writing system they used was flexible enough to accommodate mistakes, or that they simply did not notice mistakes or that mistakes are fine because it's gibberish...)
Still, this is interesting as an unexplored topic - probably unexplored for a reason but I am surprised that any part I notice is not completely old news to you all!
(11 hours ago)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Just both sides, for easier comparison. I know nothing about parchment, but to me the surface damage looks a bit as if someone was scraping off something?
I could see that it would be possible, I wish I had more knowledge of what it looked like up close when someone has deliberately scraped text off parchment or vellum. To me it kind of looks more like fibres pulling apart and degrading from age, specifically because the "scrape" would be at a diagonal to the text and doesn't seem to have a ragged edge you might see if you were targeting something for scraping off and didn't care about the condition of it afterward. But I could also see it as wear on a scraped part that over time turned into a softer and larger patch where the fibres were weakened. It could also be that there was something like a stain on it that wasn't a scribal text error and they were trying to scrape that off, which would fit with the idea that this is a lower quality, maybe even off-cut parchment.
(11 hours ago)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.the surface damage looks a bit as if someone was scraping off something?
You are not allowed to view links.
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All the best, --stolfi