The Voynich Ninja

An exciting project is going on on the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. We are gathering all possible readings for the marginalia on this folio. The goal is to compile a table with possible glyph readings. This thread is for the discussion of this project. I think the first questions we should ask are:

• are there any problems with any of the proposed readings?
  
• are there any additional readings for glyphs that have not yet been mentioned- regardless of whether the word would still make sense or not? 
  

I will edit this first post to reflect the discussion in the thread and add stuff from the wiki. Anton and David, feel free to edit as well! I remove all things between brackets because we are looking for possible glyph readings, not for what people wish was there not for possible abbreviations yet. Duplicates are omitted. For references and background, see wiki.



Line 0





Line1





Line2





Line3

Brackets are not used to specify what people wish, but how abbreviations are interpreted.

See for instance:
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When you expand a word which was abbreviated in the original text ... put the letters that you have added in square brackets [ ]

Yeah I know, but this part is not about possible word readings yet, just about the glyph readings, independent of possible meaning. Hence I thought in the first stage the brackets would be confusing.

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I added everything from the wiki, any important transcriptions missing?

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I'm going to edit the post again and remove all duplicate words, so the result doesn't have to be seen as a list of transcribed lines but rather as a table of possible glyph readings.

Sure, no problem with that. I just see no point in denigrating the efforts of others as gratuitous "wishes". 

In ancient manuscripts, abbreviations are likely to appear and it is natural that those attempting to read them try to detect and expand abbreviations. When done by trained paleographers (like You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. for instance) this is unlikely to be biased by wishes.

Marco - are "portad" and "oladabad" valid readings? What about olasabas?

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is another transcription (no first line) by Takeshi Takahashi (not sure).

>        + ancicon oladaba8 + mlco8 + cc + cc* ccve + noovca8 +n+
>
>        ix + andiix + mo*ix + vix +abia + ma(+)na +
>
>          <aror sheey> pal8ch ubven  o mm gal mich o

"abia" is what I read too.

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (page bottom) is the complete transcription by Stolfi (including the characters that David lost because of the encoding):

Quote:# In the "digits" line, "a" trough "d" mean "10" through "13",
# each numeral being squeezed into single letter slot.
#
# Line 0 Roman:    p**labo*.pinŠn.pati*er=
#
# Line 1 Roman:    nuchiton.ola6…ba8.+.m–Lcò8.+.te.+,tar.cev‡,+.porta8.+M++-
# Line 1.5 Digits: .1234567.489a9bc*.*4**854d*.!**..,***.5545-
#
# Line 2 Roman:    siX+*j–ariX+moriX+,v¡X+abta+ma+ria+-
# The "j–" is an "m" rather out of shape.
# The "+" in "ma+ria" is raised and takes no space between the "a" and "r".
#
<f116v.P.3;U>      oror.sheey!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!=
# Line 3 Roman:    ****.*****.val8e^,vbreY-{gap}so.nim.gas.mich.o=
# The "8" is small and tilted to the right; it may be an EVA "d"
#   or a Roman "a" with some noise.
# The final "o" may be a spot, or a vellum defect.

The "digit line" is lost on me...

Just some random comments: 

• When I looked, I missed Salomon's reading of the last part, but his reading is the same as the one quoted by Panofsky. Panofsky is almost certainly quoting Salomon, though his (telegram-style) answers to the questions do not say so.
  
• One should probably not say that these lines are commonly accepted to be a later addition. We simply don't know either way
  
• There are some more readings. I believe there was one that was presented in the D'Imperio / Currier conference
  
• Generally speaking, readings from people without any experience in palaeography should robably not receive too much attention. This is not easy to implement since often we just don't know whether they have or not
  

Rene - I agree with your remarks. My idea for this thread is to gather a number of possible transcriptions, and then have people like Marco, you, JKP... weed out the ones that are really impossible. That should leave us with all possible glyph readings, which will make it much easier for people to look for possible word readings.

Marco - Thanks, new words from both have been added.

I strictly belong to the non-palaeographers...

Personally, I don't feel I can rule anything out. I am curious to know the ideas of other people (and I would certainly add Helmut Winkler to the list of those who can read manuscripts).

About the problem of how to transcribe "8", if we transcribe it as "8", we don't have to choose among "d" and "s"
But this can only be provisional. It would be interesting to see examples of perfect "8" used as a letter (I am sure this has already been discussed many times).