The Voynich Ninja

See how is spelled  the letter "N" in the recipe (prescription ) for Russian and Ukrainian elementary school. Maybe for the letters "N" and the gallows was the common source of inspiration?

Tiquesusa,
Over the years, I've noticed an interesting phenomenon in this field of endeavour - a majority of those involved cannot bear to treat this manuscript, or even to see it treated, as any other manuscript might be.

For example, the usual thing would be to begin by having an experienced person (or three) comment on the vellum and binding.  This is a perfectly normal and routine aspect of manuscript studies, the day-to-day business of appraisers, auctioneers and keepers of the larger manuscript collections.  It should have been done a century ago. (Well, actually it was, but the amateurs didn't like the professionals' conclusions - which is that the whole looked appropriate for something made in Englland or the southern Mediterranean,  late thirteenth century)

More recently, instead of asking another professional opinion on the manuscript -as -manuscript, the exteme step was taken of using the destructive radiocarbon dating dating method.  But that still didn't tell us anything about the date of what is in the text or imagery, nor which part of the world it had been made - something a qualified appraiser could have  done instead.

After that, a manuscript usually (in the normal way) would get a palaeographic assessment of the handwriting.  This still hasn't been done by any qualified persons willing to write a formal opinion, only by persons connected to  'Voynicheros' having a vested interest in hearing only such ideas as might support a pet theory.

Because the imagery in this manuscript is problematic for most people, it is also a good idea to get the opinion of someone qualified to explain the pictures, set them in their historical and social setting, and offer comparative imagery and background historical notes.

Apart from the palaeographic assessment, other specialists including linguists might be called in when the language is problematic.  Lately we've had Anna May Smith and Professor Stephen Bax offering their time and professional expertise.

Unfortunately, and especially since about 2000, as far as I've seen, enthusiastic amateurs tend to ignore the work of specialists if they have other ideas, themselves, about how the manuscript should go.  Specialists then tend to be ignored, and or to leave in disgust.

To any newcomer my advice is always: assume you know nothing. 

Be dubious about ALL other claims to know very much.

Study the manuscript.

Study the manuscript.

learn...

palaeography, codicology, history, the materials of pigments... and anything else you need as reasonable equipment before you form any opinions at all.

 the Voynich manuscript, as a manuscript, is not unique.

 It is just one of several thousands of fifteenth century manuscripts in existence.

A good appraiser can usually tell you within less than a week where and when a manuscript was made.  After a century, some people are still treating that basic issue of provenance as though it were something decided by popular vote!



Hope the above hasn't discouraged you! - welcome to the Voynich world.

Having studied both the history of the manuscript, and the history of research of the manuscript, more intensively than most people, I can state with confidence that much (if not most) of the above is invented.

Anyone interested in the first 60 years of study of the MS, can download:
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which describes (among others) much of the scholarly attempts in understanding the MS.
(I just realised that the link at my web site does not work anymore - will be updated).

Indeed, when Voynich was still alive, he controlled both access to the MS and opinion about
it, but already a few years after his death that changed.

Tisquesa,

Apart from the problematic issue of one researcher saying that what everyone above them in the thread has said is "invented" - which could be taken to mean that everyone is a liar (something which is considered a comment infra.dig. among scholars), it has to be kept in mind that each person represents one person's views.

The book by Mary d'Imperio is not without its flaws, errors, and assertions which later research has denied.

Of course you should read it, as you should read anything and everything you feel is of interest or help to you.  But do remember that it is now half-a-century out of date on a lot of things, including many of its initial premises.

There are many people - and some of them experienced and formally qualified cryptologists and linguists - who do not believe the text is in cipher.

Wilfrid Voynich died in 1931.

And while rene's website presents the people and ideas that he thinks are worth recording, and I find it very helpful for the biographies, especially, no one book or one person's website or blog is the "Voynich gospel".

The proof, of course, is that we are still referring to work done in the 1940s or 1960s,  work which ended with no translation, and no better knowledge of what the manuscript is about.

So newcomers do have a real potential to change the tired old inconclusive arguments. 

Best of luck.

---

Rene,
Might I suggest that when you wish to offer personal remarks about other members of the forum, or say that your own opinion about something differs from theirs, that you preface your remark with a phrase which makes it clear that you are speaking as just one researcher ... e.g. "In my opinion, everything that every one else has said is invented". 

That way it is clear that the statement is only one researcher's opinions of everyone else, not any statement of objective fact.

But perhaps it is not my place, but the moderators, to offer such advice. If so, apologies to the moderators and they are welcome to remove this comment.

"Invented" is not a most appropriate word indeed, giving an impression of accusing the other person with the deliberate producing of false statements, instead of being sincerely errant. If one does disagree with some statement it is better to say "the statement is not true because..." or "I think that the statement is not true".

No further flaming in the thread please.

It's unfortunately difficult to point out incorrect statements without hurting the feelings of the person who made them.

The essence of the 'difference of opinion' is:
- which expert analyses have really been made in the past,
- where can one read about them and
- how have they been received.

This is not topical to this thread, but it is a worthwhile topic by itself, so I may continue in a separate thread.

Quote:in a separate thread

yes, please

Logging in after a while (so many other interests), I read Diane's post and didn't read an attack in René's wording "invented". After all, all our analysis is "invented", in the sense that it is thought up by people. Those people are not all equal in their judgements of course, but that doesn't take away the fact that an idea is "invented". I see the connotation of the word not as negative, but I understand others may interpret it that way.

Reading a bit more about "experts" and "is it cipher or not" also I see many black-and-white ideas. If it is A, it cannot be B?

My idea -and no, I am not an expert, not in any relevant field about the VMS and also no trained expert from experience-, of a combination of natural languageS and a cipher method is just an idea, but it could be the case. After all none of us have figured it out yet, which leaves a lot of free space for speculations, even from amateurs like me or others.

In research funneling the possibilities is needed to exclude the impossible, but here the impossible looking option cannot be excluded yet, because there's still no step closer to the solution. The statistics Nick Pelling put forward of "there are about 10 words in the VMS transcription that look like English and that is more than the 8 found by Bax" is a strong point. I had a lot of doubts about Stephen Bax' video, but at least he tried to make his arguments and that takes courage.

The idea I had in mind was actually that the names referring to the botanical drawings were inverted, and so the whole script. So a combination of Arabic/Hebrew (right-to-left reading) but then only per word, with the whole text written from left to right.

I won't have time to dive further into this interesting manuscript, so will share my ideas here, maybe it can inspire others.

I compared the drawings of a few folios with real plants and using this method (and a different transcription), it may be possible to discover some words.

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The "official" transcription in EVA for the possible "label" of the plant reads oteor. aiicthy
My view of the transcription reads:
- from right to left
- different letters ("EVA" = my idea); "y" = e, "ii" = v, "L" (l) = n, "o" = o (or a, depends, like Russian), "e" = s, "s" = z, "c" = i and the gallow symbol "k" = TR or TH, depends

Thus the text:



Becomes, read from right to left:

Est( r )iva Rost( r )o (extra space added as the software makes a copyright symbol from the ( r )

The Greek name for the tomato plant, that looks a bit like the plant (leaves, and the base of the flowers at least) drawn. Rosto could refer to the red used too.

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Stephen Bax analyses this as "Cotton" - You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

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"officially" reads ytchas.oraiin.chkar=, ytchas.oraiin.chkor=, or ytchar.oraiin.chkar=

What I read is "rothis maro raisCHe" or "roCHis maro raisTHe" or "roTHis maro raisTRe" with Rothis/chis referring to "red" again, "raische/the" to "root" and "maro" is the name of the pea plant, also looking a bit like this plant drawn:
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The leaves of both plants look alike and what is drawn in the VMS looks like the pea fruits with the peas indicated in red as kind of seeds in the VMS plant

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"official" EVA is otchodeey=, okchodeey= or otchodchy=

I would read it as "eisdoistra or eisdaistra". The drawing could be a Devil's tail, used in Chinese medicine:

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The text, when read from right to left, to me has a certain Greek/Cyrillic "feel" with words added from Latin or old German and many other languages. The idea of different languages put together to have a certain natural language combination, but indeed ciphered. What definition of cipher is, may be for that other topic, but a text that is not recognised after almost a century would be a kind of "cipher" (if meaningful), right? If not, it would have been decrypted already.

I admit this is nothing more than an idea and feeling, but somehow it makes more sense to me to read from right to left and to recognise Cyrillic, Greek "letters" in the VMS characters.

The "official" EVA at least looks very arbitrary and biases a lot. Starting from the text itself without paying too much attention to a random choice of transcriptions would be the best option I think.