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The myth of Melusine
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Counts
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Black ink fading
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Who holds pears like that...
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[Essentials] Counts discu...
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Marks on f103r
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Cipher database
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No text, but a visual cod...
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Proposed solution by Gera...
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Cary Rapaport's Voynich a...
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| Marks on f103r |
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Posted by: -JKP- - 20-11-2020, 10:34 PM - Forum: Marginalia
- Replies (8)
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I couldn't find a thread on this, so I thought I would add it to the marginalia section:
Top-left corner of f103r... the top left is hard to decipher. It almost looks like a rune shape or like a monogram of letters E and F, but I don't know what it might be. After it there's something the resembles plaintext that has been partly scraped:
[I'll add the clip when the forum attachment button is working again.]
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| Cipher database |
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Posted by: Mark Knowles - 20-11-2020, 10:27 PM - Forum: Voynich Talk
- Replies (7)
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I have been in touch with Beata Megyesi in Stockholm who runs the DECODE database. This is a database of ciphers that they are collecting there.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Michelle referred me to them, although in truth I had come across them before. Nevertheless, Michelle mentioning them encouraged me to get in touch with them. I am searching for Milanese ciphers keys from between the years 1425 to 1445 and these are very rare, though I have managed to collect other early 15th Milanese cipher keys. So I thought martialing all forces I can find in this search would be advisable.
The problem of course can be that when these ciphers are not already digitised obtaining permission to share photoreproductions is difficult. Beata has been in contact with archives and will do her best to request permission.
In contrast to the opinion of one user of this website obtaining permission to share photoreproductions requires effort.
[personal stuff redacted - Anton]
I have amassed a very large collection of early 15th ciphers, despite their scarcity. Yet, until permission is obtained I cannot share them. Obtaining permission is slightly arduous as it requires contacting archives individually, however I am happy to leave that to Beata. I have informed Beata of all the knowledge that I have as to the location of early 15th century ciphers amongst others, which I know she has really appreciated as I have amassed quite a bit of knowledge on the subject.
Whilst my interest in general is really only in ciphers before 1447 and after 1350, I know that some researchers have expressed interest in much later ciphers, which I am sure Beata would be keen to add to her database. So it might be an idea for people to share their cipher discoveries with DECODE and similarly benefit from what they have to share.
DECODE have 120 members in 24 countries and they go on cipher hunting trips to various archives to expand their database. Also members on the ground help by investigating their local archives. I have offered to help with their hunt in British Archives, where possible, and I am sure they will do their best to assist me in finding what I seek.
Now I appreciate that most researchers do not have the focus on ciphers that I have, especially when it comes to early 15th century ciphers, nevertheless some might know of cipher records unknown to Beata and her team. I would be happy to share those or others can share them directly. They have collected a large number, so I imagine that they are aware of the most obvious sources, but smaller or less well known archives are more likely to have eluded them.
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| Suggest missing Aquarius folio may show January 2022 event? |
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Posted by: bunny - 06-11-2020, 07:22 PM - Forum: Astronomy
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Given my theory that the folios in the manuscript are demonstrative of multiple events, subjects and languages on each folio rather than a 1:1 translatable text/subject, I am looking at the missing Aquarius (presumed Aquarius) folio to show January 2022. Data suggests this month being specifically relevant in a historical manner. This is the point where the current world situation is expected to reach a specific stage where the current issues will either be contained/resolved or conversely hit a (new) worsening scenario. I have suggested the folio moths in the VM are out of synch with actual months being in advance by 1 month. VM Aquarius folio following the others should be labeled February but refer to January. The Age of Aquarius is said to be the start of a New Age in human history. So aside from whatever relevance January 2022 has to our current circumstances, Aquarius has perceived historical big picture relevance.
There is nothing special astronomically about that date apart from a massing of planets between Scorpio and Aquarius at that time, but not in a tight bundle, by no means a one off event, and the full-ish Moon in Taurus near to SN 1054 mid month. But if it showed an event like a supernova the mundane surrounding astronomy is of no consequence, the event is the star of the show. I would expect the folio to show nymphs male and female as drawn in other folios and within patterned barrels, no nymph with outstretched arms. Aquarius apart from depicting New year (European) shown holding a star, or more likely the star being poured in the water from the water bearers jug. The Aquarius water bearer may have facial features like the top image on f68r1 (Sun?/star over Earth, as opposed to f68r2 Moon over Sun), the solar Sun being shown differently to "New stars" and such, they being displayed more like Greek gods. Query whether January 2022 astronomically is when the Tawny Horse starts making its journey here from its origin and starts behaving like the white ball in snooker/pool/billiards and deflects matter from its usual orbit along the way leading up to first note of increasing meteorite/asteroid reports here. Whether there will be a concurrent visible astronomical event like a supernova shown on the missing folio, only time or seeing the actual folio would say. A supernova type event occurring atm best guess in one of the bird constellations near the full Moon mid month as this draws attention to it being observed more widely as the general population rarely takes note of the sky beyond the Moon looking bright, big, haze ring, red etc.
So in conclusion f68r1 may among other events show the Tawny horse as the classical god sun (also f68r1) and an astronomical one off event like a new star. December is also coming up as an important event from data, VM Capricorn possibly showing SN5 BC may also show another astronomical event for 2021.
I suggest the date of concern is specifically the 18th January 2022 in the constellation Cygnus, and the time 6.30 PM or earlier in the morning at around 5 AM when it is level with SN 1054 location. Note that this will be described from a London location. In the Northern hemisphere Cygnus circles low on the horizon not fully setting, in the Southern hemisphere it is below the horizon at night and low on the horizon in daylight, but some supernovae and great comets are daylight visible. Suggest phenomenon occurs on the edge of the Northern Cross asterism near Delta Cygni, between Deneb and Vega in the NW, and on a similar level with the full Moon and Jupiter in Aquarius, there is also a weak comet in Aquarius above Jupiter. The 5 AM scenario with Cygnus in the NE low on the horizon, Aquarius is below the horizon but the suggested position is level with the location of SN 1054, also suggested to be relevant to the VM folios.
Cygnus dives between Lyra and Aquila, constellations suggested to be shown on f86v3 (Aquila and Lyra), separation is thematic. Astronomical landscape in comparison to f86v3 to follow.
Images now available, let me know here if interested or on Voynich list mail or PM here or there.
thank you,
Bunny
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| Is This a Theory? |
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Posted by: peasy - 30-10-2020, 12:35 AM - Forum: News
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Hi All,
Has anyone thought the VM to be a diary? And whomever was writing in it scribbled and drew (like we normally do) as a combination of art journal and writing?
They could have invented their own code to write in, possibly to protect themselves, similarly to what Anne Lister did in the early 1800's, who wrote diaries in her own language, this being done to protect herself and her partner as lesbians. When she died, if anyone found her diaries (even though they were well hidden) it would have been hard to decode, and especially hard for her family to do, so her secret could be safe.
The writer could have been a scientific drawer (i.e: creating plant diagrams) and used this book as a place for their sketches, as well as writing (perhaps they were overly protective of their work and wrote drafts in code? If the VM were a draft of a later diagram book)
Some drawings are similar to botanical art of the time, but there are some parts that strike me as stylistic choices, meaning they were either rough sketches/drafts, drawing for pleasure in a style, or both.
Please let me know if this has already been discussed and disproved, apologies if so!
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| Lindemann and Bowern (2020) is available |
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Posted by: cbowern - 29-10-2020, 02:23 AM - Forum: News
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You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. has a new paper by Luke Lindemann and myself, where we pick apart some of the details of character entropy. Here is the abstract. The paper also includes links to some corpus materials which might be useful (freely available from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). This paper expands on some of the material from our other 2020 paper (overview for the Annual Review of Linguistics). We have another couple in the works.
This paper outlines the creation of three corpora for multilingual comparison and analysis of the Voynich manuscript: a corpus of Voynich texts partitioned by Currier language, scribal hand, and transcription system, a corpus of 294 language samples compiled from Wikipedia, and a corpus of eighteen transcribed historical texts in eight languages. These corpora will be utilized in subsequent work by the Voynich Working Group at Yale University. We demonstrate the utility of these corpora for studying characteristics of the Voynich script and language, with an analysis of conditional character entropy in Voynichese. We discuss the interaction between character entropy and language, script size and type, glyph compositionality, scribal conventions and abbreviations, positional character variants, and bigram frequency. This analysis characterizes the interaction between script compositionality, character size, and predictability. We show that substantial manipulations of glyph composition are not sufficient to align conditional entropy levels with natural languages. The unusually predictable nature of the Voynichese script is not attributable to a particular script or transcription system, underlying language, or substitution cipher. Voynichese is distinct from every comparison text in our corpora because character placement is highly constrained within the word, and this may indicate the loss of phonemic distinctions from the underlying language.
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| IVTT recipes |
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Posted by: ReneZ - 28-10-2020, 11:34 AM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (13)
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As suggested by this post:
(23-10-2020, 04:29 PM)RobGea Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (23-10-2020, 12:45 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Does anyone happen to have separate text files for each folio?
I can make them from Takahashi ( they would be created from the lowercase version ) --You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
For Takahashi with capitals most individual pages can be found on his site --You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
For some other transcriptions you can ( if i understand the manual ) extract pages using IVTT ( a thread with some cmdline examples of IVTT would be nice )
Here's an IVTT recipe to create one file per page. This works with any file in IVTFF format, in particular the five main transliteration files by Friedman (FSG), Currier, Takahashi, GC and Zandbergen-Landini.
It is based on 'csh' scripting language, and can be varied in many different ways. The output files only have the plain transliteration without any annotations.
Code: foreach qq ( A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O Q S T )
ivtt +Q${qq} ZL.txt temp.txt >&/dev/null
foreach pp ( A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X )
ivtt -x8 +P${pp} temp.txt ${qq}${pp}.txt >&/dev/null
end
\rm temp.txt
end
The first ivtt command splits the file into quires, preserving all annotations. The second one splits each quire into pages, removing all annotations.
The result is a series of files: AA.txt , AB.txt , AC.txt etc.
If a page does not exist, the file will be created but will be empty. It could be removed with another line in the script.
It may take some time getting used to these two-character codes, but they have some advantages.
The shell syntax ??.txt matches all pages in their correct order.
The first character indicates the quire: A=1, T=20
One can add further ivtt arguments to select only one Currier language, one illustration type or only text in paragraphs (for example).
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| The clerical shift |
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Posted by: R. Sale - 27-10-2020, 07:09 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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Regarding a recent posting on a technique of word alteration as a method of encryption, there seems to be some interesting further possibilities.
The basic system takes the first two letters in a word as valid, then shifts all other letters one space forward in the alpha-numeric sequence.
Then, there's a brief clerical 'arms race' when the shift changes to two, three or more spaces.
And if someone was serious about more complex methods, there is the potential for stepwise increase of the shift value according to some mathematical formula. This opens a variety of possibilities with differing, specific structures. Easy to use when the structure is known. Otherwise it's clearly more difficult.
So the basic example, besides its simple structure, was in the Latin script and Latin language - with a picture as well. So its fairly obvious when a simple solution yields an obvious result. The creative use of the clerical shift would create a lot more problems, even if it were restricted to the Latin script and language.
Now consider the VMs. We don't know the script or alphabetic sequence. We don't know the language. And we don't know the nature of the clerical shift, if there was one.
What level of complexity is required to create a virtually unbreakable encryption that can be easily used with a known key?
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| I believe I found the translation for the word blue, flower, and spot! |
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Posted by: geujfys - 19-10-2020, 09:24 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (7)
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I originally posted this on the Voynich subreddit, but I will post here as well.
I did some analyses on the document, seeing if words followed certain types of illustrations. I looked at a bunch of pages with prominent flowers and found a word that consistently followed these pages (chckhy in EVA). I then looked for words next to my candidate for the word flower, and I found a word that consistently followed illustrations with blue in them (ykchy in EVA). This word for blue would act as a modifier for the word flower. I did the same kind of analysis again and found a word that followed illustrations with spots very consistently (chkeey in EVA).
I believe this is the first claim for a "translated" adjective. The chain of verification these words have with each other makes them at least a little more legitimate. I also did some more analysis, which you can see here: [color=var(--newCommunityTheme-linkText)]You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[/color]
If you do not want to read the whole article, I encourage you to look at the pages "chkeey" appears on (7v, 17v, 30r, 33r, 39r, 50v, 82r, 93v, 99r, 100r, 111r, 11v). I use this link to view the manuscript: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. If there is a word for spot in the Voynich manuscript, chkeey is certainly the best candidate for it.
Please tell me what you think. I would like some more input.
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![[Image: v101a_RZ.gif]](http://www.voynich.nu/img/extra/v101a_RZ.gif)