The Voynich Ninja

(29-08-2016, 11:18 AM)Diane Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hello Searcher,

I think the line of thought might have got a bit distracted.  What we were doing were finding examples of creatures which resemble the feline in the manuscript.  Everyone has supposed it was meant for a lion, but it doesn't have the characteristics of a lion, so Sam G. and Koen are doing what I've also done - trying not to look for examples of what we suppose it "should be" in sources where we think it "should be" but actually looking for images that exactly match the Voynich creature's appearance.

Interestingly, the animal with the spotted hide that you included is not a lion but was called a "panther" too - just as Dionysius' animal was that we've been talking about.

I know that because in medieval bestiaries, the story went that although the 'panther' was the fastest of animals, if it saw a glass ball and its own reflection in it, it would think the reflection one of its cubs, and stop chasing you.

So actually you did find a sort of "panther" as a near match, just as we have done.

Cheers.

Hello, Diane.
Actually, I compared 3 animals in my post: lions, leopards and tigers. All the examples of them are taken from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. That image you mention shows a tiger (I didn't checked it, though), I signed two bottom images which depict the same scenario, as "You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.".
My main idea was to show a confusion between mentioned animals in medieval times. We can see that some lions look like You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., leopards, cats or, even, dogs; another leopards look like lions, indeed. 
As well, I mentioned two fragments about unusual colouring of animals and about confusion between lions and leopards:
1. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.;
2. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
I would not want to say about the black cat in the dark room... All I can say is that the VMs illustrator (may he excuses me) is not Leonardo Da Vinci.

Searcher - you are absolutely right about the  'tiger' also being represented as a dark blue creature, and as you see from the picture below, both might be depicted in very similar ways.  Memory failed in this case.  It is the "tiger" which is linked to the story of the glass ball.

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  Rene is of course entitled to believe that comparisons are arbitrary, but that's a luxury one can hardly afford when a client's money is at issue.  It may be to one's taste that a picture should be by Rembrandt, but if it's by a minor Dutch master, taste is of less relevance than accuracy, and a difference which may be small can have great significance.

In this case, I agree with Koen and Sam G. that the protruding tongue and association with the 'palm' (which has been misinterpreted here, I think as the "tuft of the tail") is also highly significant.  A creature with a spotted hide, round ears and no mane cannot be made a lion because it better suits our personal aesthetic, can it?

Postscript: I feel it would not be honest to omit mentioning that within Leo is an important formation known as the "tuft of the tail".  I don't think that reference was part of the original image, but by the time the forms that we now have reached their present form (more than 16 centuries, I'd say after their first enunciation), the last users might have had that in mind.  Another reference to a star is found in the "angel with the wand", and here it is fairly obvious that the original form which is found in an early Hellenistic medallion - of which the Voynich image is jolly near an exact copy - at some time had the original shield translated into the form of a star, an equation which makes sense if we assume that 'translation' made by a speaker of a semitic language, in which the words for shield and star are the same.

more TMI, I expect. 

-- - unclear post removed (for clarity) - - -

Rene,
You haven't addressed your remark to anyone. I've noticed that when you do this, it is usually just after a remark of mine.

However, it does make the conversation less clear; perhaps you were addressing Searcher, or Koen.

I'm not at all clear what you are trying to imply.  Are you saying that someone wanted to represent the constellation we call Leo, but accidentally or deliberately used a figure derived from older north Africa and Syria?  Or do you mean that a person had a series of creatures that originally did not represent the Roman zodiac, and wrote month-names on them, thereby inventing a connection between this creature and the constellation of the Lion?

I can think of other possibilities, but hypotheses bore me; I prefer to know than to guess.

(29-08-2016, 02:17 PM)Diane Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In this case, I agree with Koen and Sam G. that the protruding tongue and association with the 'palm' (which has been misinterpreted here, I think as the "tuft of the tail") is also highly significant.  A creature with a spotted hide, round ears and no mane cannot be made a lion because it better suits our personal aesthetic, can it?

Postscript: I feel it would not be honest to omit mentioning that within Leo is an important formation known as the "tuft of the tail".  I don't think that reference was part of the original image, but by the time the forms that we now have reached their present form (more than 16 centuries, I'd say after their first enunciation), the last users might have had that in mind.  

At the same time, I feel, it is not honest to make a "tuft of a tail" to be a tree or a part, which was drawn later. It is just a mere guesswork to make a certain theory closer. As for me, I can draw a lion easily, but I'm not so sure about an ordinary medieval man. The same story with the Scorpio which looks like a salamander or a lizard, and with the little dragon (or the snail?) near the herb in the herbal section.

A Roman mosaic showing "Assyrian influence". We still see a griffin, but it clearly has a pointy tongue instead of a beak. This griffin does not show a similar style to the VM, but it does reveal that the beak could become a tongue. There are more examples of beakless griffins.



I've also been looking for more Roman Syrian mosaics. Many are from the 5thC and 6thC CE, and show a similar style, which does remind me of the VM creatures.





Searcher: one thing is not to be able to draw a lion because you don't know what it looks like. A totally different thing is to draw a completely different, non-lion animal.

To me this whole thread is about sources and cultural influences. As Rene correctly remarks, some customs and patterns were very widespread and run like a branching river through history. Even those experts who believe the VM has stylistic parallels in contemporary art, do remark that it still contains very unusual elements. There is a possibility that these elements go back to earlier motifs (from sources) rather than to an author's fancy. This is what we are exploring in this thread. If we want to capture the VM feline, we must also attack it from the rear.

Well, look at all these pictures of medieval lions.  It's as though I haven't already addressed this topic, and these images somehow contradict something I've said.  But I already posted this comparison table back on page 6:



Now, something I said in my original post, and have repeatedly emphasized throughout this thread, is that I think the VMS Leo image is basically a composite of a classical original with some medieval modifications.  At the very least, it's a copy produced by a medieval illustrator, so of course we should expect at least a subtle medieval stylistic influence of a "subconscious" kind.  And we may need to go beyond even this to account for the position of the tail. So obviously this view is not contradicted by pointing out that there are some similarities between the VMS image and medieval lions.  The question is whether the features of the VMS Leo image can be exclusively derived from images in medieval manuscripts, which I think they clearly cannot be.

Getting back to the comparison table: like I said before, in light of the griffin mosaic find, the idea that the sharp tongue represents a medieval addition probably has to be dropped, since the griffin beak provides a much more precise match.  So I think the MS Walters 734 can probably ignored as an influence.  (It's still possible that the reinterpretation of the beak as a tongue occurred in medieval times, but the point is that we do not need to account for its precise shape with a medieval image.)

That leaves us with the Cod Sang 402, which despite being red instead of blue, is just as good of a comparison in most ways as the images that have been posted more recently, and better in that the tail shape is similar and it's actually a representation of Leo rather than just some arbitrary lion.  So, again, this point has already been addressed, and I will just copy and paste what I wrote above (in response to Marco):


To be clear, the tree-tail still resembles the mosaic tree far more than it resembles any Leo tail I've seen.  I said that before, and you posted Cod Sang 402.  I admit that it's similar in its basic outline, but don't see it as possible that the VMS Leo tree-tail was derived from that image.  The similarity could be due to coincidence, or to a later reshaping of the tree-tail under the influence of something similar to that image.

As far as how we wound up with the tree-tail in the first place, I now think that the precise model I outlined in my original post, where it was formed unintentionally as a result of copying error, is probably incorrect.  More likely it was an intentional choice made by an illustrator somewhere along the chain of transmission to merge the tree and the tail ending, since they were already in the same position after the tail was (at some point) moved.  This is probably not as strange a thing to do as it might seem, when you consider that adding weird endings to lion tails was apparently a pretty common practice in medieval times (as also discussed earlier in the thread).

This is the reason why I don't like to build a theory just on images, all the more, on one image. No image gives 100% proof of an assumption. 
In the present case, no image from mosaics or manuscripts fits entirely, and I find it natural. It is difficult to say, which example is better. 
My first point (I hope, it is clear):
I don't see big difference between these: lion, tiger and panther below.



My second point:
If this image of Leo relates to ancient Greek or Assyrian and so on depictions/ mosaics/ zodiacs, how it relates to the whole VMs Zodiac, including the Sagittarius-crossbowman and the Scorpio-lizard? Does it relate to this Zodiac at all? 
My third point:
Why can it be a transformed medieval Griffin, since You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. presented in medieval bestiaries as a separate beast, still with the head and wings of an eagle.
My fourth point (last, not least):
The Leo of the VMs Zodiac has a mane, but it is too thin and obscure. I made a contrast of this fragment, so this detail must be visible a little.

Searcher:

Quote:1. I don't see big difference between these: lion, tiger and panther below.

I know what you mean, but I don't know why this is relevant to the discussion. The "Flemish lion", the heraldic symbol of Flanders (where I live), originally did not look like a lion at all. Especially in the early middle ages, the names for big cats and what they represented were fluid and interchangeable.


Most zodiac Leos, however, are actual lions. The fact that this beast appears to point towards a different species is not something that can be ignored by showing bestiary illustrations.

Quote:My second point:

If this image of Leo relates to ancient Greek or Assyrian and so on depictions/ mosaics/ zodiacs, how it relates to the whole VMs Zodiac, including the Sagittarius-crossbowman and the Scorpio-lizard? Does it relate to this Zodiac at all?

No! That is the point, it does not relate to the Zodiac. Nor do usually two bulls with baskets or two browsing goats or two lobsters or whatever critter is meant by the "Scorpio". The whole point of this thread is to attempt to uncover what the original nature of these images was, before they became adapted. Even those experts who favor a medieval European origin for these figures, agree that they are very peculiar.

Instead of saying "yeah this is weird but whatever", we gather pieces of the puzzle that explain their origin and might illuminate their original purpose.

Most of the images you gather are from non-Zodiac sources as well.

Quote:My third point:

Why can it be a transformed medieval Griffin

Nobody has proposed that it can be a transformed medieval Griffin. Or did I miss that?
Edit: right, technically the griffin I posted is medieval - sorry. But still it is like Sam says - nobody argues that it actually is a griffin.

Quote:My fourth point (last, not least):

The Leo of the VMs Zodiac has a mane, but it is too thin and obscure.

I see what you mean - there appears to be a circle of hairs around the neck. However, these longer hairs are also visible in other parts of the (front) body, lige behind the front leg and on the back under the neck. This seems to indicate more of a rough pelt than an actual full mane.


Like these guys (just a random example):

(29-08-2016, 07:47 PM)Searcher Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This is the reason why I don't like to build a theory just on images, all the more, on one image. No image gives 100% proof of an assumption. 
In the present case, no image from mosaics or manuscripts fits entirely, and I find it natural. It is difficult to say, which example is better. 

It seems to me that the most precise matches are coming from these old mosaics, despite the fact that there are vastly more surviving medieval manuscripts than mosaics, and of course we are only looking at mosaics in the first place because there are basically no surviving ancient books (which is where the best comparisons would almost certainly be found).  So I think that's a strong indication that these similarities are not coincidental.  Based purely on numbers, we would expect all the best matches to be in medieval manuscripts.

Quote:My first point (I hope, it is clear):
I don't see big difference between these: lion, tiger and panther below.

I don't see much stylistic similarity with the VMS image at all.  Or do you mean that those three animals resemble each other (but not the VMS image)?  

Quote:My second point:
If this image of Leo relates to ancient Greek or Assyrian and so on depictions/ mosaics/ zodiacs, how it relates to the whole VMs Zodiac, including the Sagittarius-crossbowman and the Scorpio-lizard? Does it relate to this Zodiac at all?

That's a good question.  I don't know exactly how the zodiac sequence we see in the VMS was produced.  I think analyzing the individual images in detail is the best way to figure that out.  As far as the other images, I haven't seen any strong parallels for the Scorpio image (which looks more like a monkey than a lizard to me, though I'm not saying that's what it is).  I suspect (but am not certain) that Sagittarius was originally a conventional archer who got a clothing update, like all other clothed human figures in the VMS, when this particular copy was made, and that update included changing his bow to a crossbow.
 

Quote:My third point:
Why can it be a transformed medieval Griffin, since You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. presented in medieval bestiaries as a separate beast, still with the head and wings of an eagle.

Because it's a more precise match for the mosaic Griffin, especially in terms of the beak shape but also in terms of the ears.  Actually, other than in those precise details it doesn't look like a griffin at all, especially the more conventional eagle-headed kind.

Quote:My fourth point (last, not least):
The Leo of the VMs Zodiac has a mane, but it is too thin and obscure. I made a contrast of this fragment, so this detail must be visible a little.

I have trouble seeing it.  Maybe there are some lines here and there but I don't see an attempt at depicting a mane.