The Voynich Ninja

While browsing images of old mosaics looking for similarities with VMS imagery the other day, I came across this interesting image of a leopard from the Qasr mosaics, located in what is now Libya, that bears some interesting similarities to the VMS Leo/August image:




For one thing, the body shape is certainly similar.  I'm not good with animals, but I have always thought that the VMS image looked more like a leopard or similar species of big cat than like a lion, and I know I'm not the only person to make that observation.

The second similarity is the coloration.  The VMS Leo/August animal is blue, the only animal among those in the Zodiac section to be colored that way.  The Qasr mosaic leopard is also blue, and while a few other animals depicted in the Qasr mosaic are also blue, most are not.  Maybe this is a total coincidence, or maybe there was some established convention for coloring leopards in this way.

The third similarity is the tree in the background of the Qasr mosaic image, which is similar in both position and shape to the end of the tail of the VMS animal.

It's interesting to look at these similarities in light of other comparisons that have been made between the VMS Leo/August image and Western European Zodiacs.  For instance, on JKP's site we find a comparison with the Zodiac from the du Barry Book of Hours (which seems to be a fairly typical western European Leo depiction):

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There are some clear similarities with the VMS image here as well, but they are different from the similarities noted above.  The commonalities with the VMS image here are that the tongue is sticking out, the head is facing forward, and the position of the tail between the hind legs is similar.

What I propose is that the image in the VMS is essentially a composite of something similar to the Qasr mosaic image and something similar to the du Barry Zodiac image.  Or, more specifically, that someone started with something like the Qasr mosaic leopard and made some modifications to it, bringing it in more in line with the Western European norm.

- The basic form of the leopard, rather than of a lion, has been retained from the original

- The blue coloration has been retained from the original (possibly)

- The head has been adjusted to face forward, as in the Western European example

- The tongue is sticking out, as in the Western European example

- The position of the tail is between the hind legs, as in the Western European example

- The top of the tree has been retained from the original, but merged with the tail to form the weird tree-tail hybrid we see in the VMS.  This could have been intentional, but more likely it was unintentional.  What probably happened was that, when the position of the tail was changed from the original location, the end of the tail now overlapped with where the tree made contact with the underside of the leopard, and a later copyist did not realize that the tree and the tail were two distinct entities, and so misinterpreted the tail as curling up behind the leopard and terminating as the top of the tree.

I've seen this comparison before I think. What would that mean though, if indeed this is supposed to represent the Qsar mosaic leopard? Other animals in the Qsar mosaic have greenery behind them too. One of them is an actual lion. I don't really see any other connections, do you?

I've noticed some matches while looking at maps, although I don't see the connection there either, but i'll lay it out in case it can be connected back to your mosaic.

The closest match I have seen to the MS leopard or whatever it is, is from the Genoese World Map.

Head tilted, paw raised, looks like a large cat of some kind, although it is not blue nor does it have spots.

Don't rely on the 1912 facsimile thereof, although here it is, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. they drew the tail completely differently for some reason. The original has tail between legs and fluffing into three sections, facsimile has a spiral tail behind. I could come up with a conspiracy story regarding that change. Anyone know the real story?

Here is the original: To the right of top center, animal's head is facing downwards:


The Anglo Saxon World Map also has a similar lion, in the same corner of the world, the Caspian Sea is on the bottom of the picture but it is east up, in terms of the whole map it is top left:

Here is the whole map

This one has the lion in Africa


And one more, Lambert of St. Omer, Liber Floridus:


However I think it is mainly a "here be lions" type of thing, so I don't know what the connection would be with the "zodiac" version unless it is talking about something else, such as a place or a time.

That is the only connection I could see with the mosaic idea as well.

One more problem I see, is how would the mosaic be known to someone to reference it, if it was dug up in 1957 as a mysterious find? It seemed they were surprised by some of the imagery so it seems too obscure a reference, even if somehow someone had knowledge of it during the time of the creation of the MS.

(04-08-2016, 07:36 AM)Linda Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I've seen this comparison before I think.

Really, where?

Quote:What would that mean though, if indeed this is supposed to represent the Qsar mosaic leopard? Other animals in the Qsar mosaic have greenery behind them too.

Right... and depictions of Leo generally do not.

Quote:One of them is an actual lion.

...and the VMS illustration does not look like a lion.

Quote:I don't really see any other connections, do you?

You mean beyond being a blue leopard with a very similar looking tree in the background?

Quote:One more problem I see, is how would the mosaic be known to someone to reference it, if it was dug up in 1957 as a mysterious find? It seemed they were surprised by some of the imagery so it seems too obscure a reference, even if somehow someone had knowledge of it during the time of the creation of the MS.

Well I'm not saying someone saw this exact same image of course, but something similar that stemmed from the same tradition.

Sam

I had not seen this image before. It is relevant beyond any doubt and your conclusion is plausible. It is also the view that I hold, following Diane: the figures in the centres of the roundels were initially non-European month emblems and they have been edited to bring them closer to what a medieval European would expext.

In this image we see that it may have been custmary to depict this type of feline with a palm tree behind it. Maybe as an emblem to mark its species? This would have looked strange in Europe, so they turned it into the tail, still allowing the original image to be understood for those who knew.

(04-08-2016, 02:20 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I had not seen this image before. It is relevant beyond any doubt and your conclusion is plausible.

Thanks.  I guess it's just a judgment call, but I have a hard time seeing how the similarity here could be a total coincidence.

Quote:It is also the view that I hold, following Diane: the figures in the centres of the roundels were initially non-European month emblems and they have been edited to bring them closer to what a medieval European would expext.

It seems like something along these lines is probably correct.  In some cases it seems like the original image must have been totally replaced with a contemporary example, such as in the case of Sagittarius, but in other cases it was merely modified, as in the case with Leo here and probably also Aries, Taurus, and Scorpio.

Quote:In this image we see that it may have been custmary to depict this type of feline with a palm tree behind it. Maybe as an emblem to mark its species? This would have looked strange in Europe, so they turned it into the tail, still allowing the original image to be understood for those who knew.

Depicting animals with a tree directly centered in the background seems to have been common in the Hellenistic period.  Diane has a picture on her site of a coin with a lion in front of a tree that looks similar to this (somewhere... can't find the link at the moment).

Forgot to mention as well: the fact that suchimagery was found in mosaics is relevant as well. There appears to be some Carolingian influence in the transmissionof the month roundels, like in Gemini. And the Carolingians used exactly such sources for their imagery. (See Marion Dolan's doctoral thesis about the subject).

Sam,
Thanks for finding that mosaic. It's great.  This feline from the calendar was one of two images sent me by someone asking my opinion... almost exactly eight years ago... of a manuscript I'd never heard of - MS Beinecke 408.  )

I sent him back a photo of the coin that Koen's talking about, but the problem was really to show any continuance of that tradition in the western Mediterranean, and I think you've done that.  Fantastic!

In case you're interested, my re-post to Voynichimagery about this figure (reprinted from my research blog 'Findings') was entitled, "cross-eyed feline and red splash" .. you might enjoy some of the comparative imagery included.

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PS -  Back then I was using the original Yale foliation, so if the foliation goes weird, it might help to cross-check with that, even though we don't use it now.  (Actually in some cases it was more elegant.  At least one side of one folio was always numbered as one side of one folio... :  
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Great find, though.

I also found this goat, from El Djem in Tunisia (2nd century AD):



Coincidental similarity?

Also, Diane, I think you've mentioned before that you think one of the VMS goats is wild and the other domestic, and the stock imagery site with this mosaic image specifies that it is a wild goat:

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Sammy G, you're on fire Another great find. I think you are right about the goat representing a wild one, given its rough coat.  There is just no way that this is a coincidence. 

This is another indication to posit a Carolingian stage in the roundels imagery, since they copied from mosaics all around the mediterranean. 

One weird thing is that the goat's beard wasn't copied. Also the neck is more slender. Maybe a female goat in the same style?

(07-08-2016, 04:16 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This is another indication to posit a Carolingian stage in the roundels imagery, since they copied from mosaics all around the mediterranean.

I can think of many possibilities for how these images wound up in the VMS.  One thing I wonder though is if we need to posit that they were copied from mosaics, or if manuscripts of the time would have also contained similar imagery.  At the very least I would imagine that whoever made these mosaics was working from a visual model of some kind.

I'm also becoming convinced, for a number of reasons, that some predecessor of the VMS must have already existed in classical times.  So the question then becomes whether or not this imagery was already associated with it then, or whether it's some kind of later addition.

Quote:One weird thing is that the goat's beard wasn't copied. Also the neck is more slender. Maybe a female goat in the same style?

Maybe the changes were intentional, or maybe it's just degradation of the image over a number of generations of copying.  I could imagine that it would be easy to mistake the beard for part of the tree, for instance.