In the Dombibliothek of Freising (near Munich) there a 1501 manuscript titled Regula Sancti Salvatoris - Pro Monasterio Sanctae nostrae Birgittae in Altmünster (reference DBF-Hss Alto MS D 11).
It contains text with just one illustration :
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but which has some interesting parallels with the VM :
- ink type and width of quill strokes
- wiggly plants
- not so precise greenish coloring
- white lilies
- women involved
- particular shape of the nose-to-eyebrow (very reminiscent of the VM, from women to moons and suns, e.g. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. )
Note that the illustrator is not necessarily the person who wrote the text of that manuscript.
Of course I'm not claiming that this is the same illustrator of the VM based just on this. But I'd be truly curious to compare the DNA of the vellum from both documents.
Are you aware of other illustrations with that type of nose to eyebrow and VM-like appearance ? If so please do mention them in this thread, thank you.
I was researching a blog post about the crossbowman during the last few weeks (as you may have guessed) but it became too chaotic and the avenues too diverse, so I thought I'd just post this bit as a thread.
In comparing the VM crossbowman to other human Sagittarii, we noticed a few differences. The crossbow is one thing, and another is his pointy beard. Seemingly without a moustache, though this is hard to tell since the VM isn't too keen on facial hair - which makes it all the more remarkable.
Now if you look at the other Sagittarius crossbowmen in particular, you'll see that non of them have a beard (at least that we can see). And indeed this is the rule for human Sagittarii and many medieval archers and crossbowmen in general.
However, while researching a related aspect, I started noticing a pattern in images of the martyrdom of saint Sebastian. According to folklore, Sebastian was punished by being tied to a tree (or pillar,..) and shot at by "Mauritanian archers". Mauritania is In Northern Africa, comparable to the modern Maghreb. I have not yet been able to find out when and how exactly the Mauritanian archers part entered the story, but it makes some sense since indeed around the time of Sebastian's life, archers in the Roman army were often Mauritanians.
Now I'm not sure if Mauritania in itself is of any importance; what we see in a large portion of Sebastian imagery is that at least one of the archers is made to look "foreign", whether that be Southern or Eastern. Some examples:
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You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (North Italy?)
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15thC German
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Some versions of this (very common) scene have all bearded archers, some have none, others have one or two guys with the typical pointy beard. My point is that it's relatively easy to find archers with the VM crossbowman's facial hair style here, and it appears to be connected to the "foreignness" of the figure. Additionally, these foreign figures are more likely to be marked by a large hat unlike the other Sagttarii, who either wear no hat or a "robin hood" type. Note the headgear of the bottom right image.
And that's how far I got. So basically, is it possible that the VM Crossbowman is marked as a foreigner/Southerner from a European perspective?
I read that in (one of the first /or the first / letter) Kircher wrote that the VMS resembled Illyrian language.
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I did not find examples of the exact characters he meant, but investigation of Kircher's suggestion looks interesting.
See also
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It seems that once there was a kingdom of Illyria (regnum nostrum Ilyriae) and the term was used by the Romans for pointing at "Serbs". Also it looks that Croatian is very close, or proto-serbo-Croatian. Source You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
The Kingdom about 10 BC
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From the Illyrian language there survive only three or four unambiguously identified lexical items and some personal names and place-names. There are no full sentences or even phrases available for analysis. Illyrian language, Indo-European language spoken in pre-Roman times along the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea and in southeastern Italy. The language of the Illyrian fragments found in Italy is usually called Messapic, or Messapian. source :https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messapian_language
It looks like (consists mostly of personal names)
klohi zis thotoria marta pido vastei basta veinan aran in daranthoa vasti staboos xohedonas daxtassi vaanetos inthi trigonoxo a staboos xohetthihi dazimaihi beiliihi inthi rexxorixoa kazareihi xohetthihi toeihithi dazohonnihi inthi vastima daxtas kratheheihi inthi ardannoa poxxonnihi a imarnaihi
and
klauhi Zis Dekias Artahias Thautouri andirahho daus apistathi vinaihi -> Hear Zeus, Dekias Artahias to the infernal Thaotor set up (the rest untranslated)
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What is interesting is of course “daus”, but if I look at the structure of the transcribed text it is obviously following the standard Western language structure and it does not resemble the specific repetitive start and ending characters in the VMS. Also it seems to be written from right to left.
Some examples of the scripts can be found here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Examples of the language would have been extinct around the 1st cent. BC and merged into the Albanian language. See more on wiki.
Also, the many forgeries of the “found” inscriptions make it difficult to believe it has something to do with the VMS.
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Please note that many “Illyricum” examples of the script are just wrong or “self-invented” examples, aka forgeries or just bad research. Try google with ‘Illyricum alphabet’ and you see what I mean.
Perhaps Postel has some good examples, but I did not check.
For me the conclusion already is that Kircher really had no clue, because Illyricum is just a name used for languages they did not understand or could categorize properly.
A hot topic on the forum these days is how and why the VM script resembles Latin script, and people like JKP have done a good job of stressing the importance of this resemblance.
I've been thinking about a way to make this more tangible for people like myself who don't have that much experience yet reading various scripts. And at the same time, impose some system on the comparisons.
Let's assume for this exercise the following:
The Voynichese glyph set was composed at one point before or during the MS creation.
Voynichese glyphs were chosen, intentionally or not, resembling more or less contemporary Latin glyphs, likely including contemporary scribal habits.
This implies that certain scripts will have more in common with Voynichese than others. So my question is simple: which manuscripts have the most glyphs in common with the VM? Which writing style is most likely to have given rise to the VM glyph set? It might be useful here to focus on the standard set, i.e. ignore shapes which only appear a few times.
I've made an example from the Trinity college herbal, not because it must be the best candidate but because it is a slightly comparable script which I've studied for a while. I'll try to add psd template as an attachment as well. I'm going by purely visual similarity, not thinking too much about meaning. Not using numerals for 4, 8, 9 since those will be common to most MSS. added "iin" as one glyph to keep options open. "i" is a minim so it makes little sense to add it separately.
A new Voynich decoding was posted on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
I don't want to hijack the entire message from Nick's blog, so I'll quote only the first section from folio 1r until forumites have seen it on Nick's site in its original form. According to Hoffman, this is what it says:
fa ea re der reo et re que mure a ea at est id errat ur eam re. dat re os et ater re it ea que usu ne tex te set es et meus.der e ut uni re rate re reum unam es a etam es ed met eum der. da usa qui i re a qui ad te a a quer es e at meum aleum ales. dexter ea i et es eum em at eo eum. rem et ex ur re.
I only have time to glance through it, but as far as I can see, it's another substitution solution. I'm writing this in haste, I have to go, so please don't rely on my glance-analysis, check out the original on Nick's blog, but it looks to me like he is substituting as follows...
EVA Transliteration
------ -----------------
or at
y re/er
d m
f f
a a
s d
ch ea
etc., that is hopefully enough to give the flavor of it.
Opinions welcome (I'll keep mine to myself for now).
From You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Due: July 29, 2018
"First scientifically researched study on the Voynich Codex"
Quote:Unraveling the Voynich Codex reviews the historical, botanical, zoological, and iconographic evidence related to the Voynich Codex, one of the most enigmatic historic texts of all time.
The bizarre Voynich Codex has often been referred to as the most mysterious book in the world. Discovered in an Italian Catholic college in 1912 by a Polish book dealer Wilfrid Voynich, it was eventually bequeathed to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University. It contains symbolic language that has defied translation by eminent cryptologists. The codex is encyclopedic in scope and contains sections known as herbal, pharmaceutical, balenological (nude nymphs bathing in pools), astrological, cosmological and a final section of text that may be prescriptions but could be poetry or incantations. Because the vellum has been carbon dated to the early 15th century and the manuscript was known to be in the collection of Emperor Rudolf II of the Holy Roman Empire sometime between 1607 and 1622, current dogma had assumed it a European manuscript of the 15th century. However, based on identification of New World plants, animals, a mineral, as well as cities and volcanos of Central Mexico, the authors of this book reveal that the codex is clearly a document of colonial New Spain. Furthermore, the illustrator and author are identified as native to Mesoamerica based on a name and ligated initials in the first botanical illustration. This breakthrough in Voynich studies indicates that the failure to decipher the manuscript has been the result of a basic misinterpretation of its origin in time and place. Tentative assignment of the Voynichese symbols also provides a key to decipherment based on Mesoamerican languages. A document from this time, free from filter or censor from either Spanish or Inquisitorial authorities has major importance in our understanding of life in 16th century Mexico.
What does it mean two or three repeated words in a row in the Voynich?
To me is the better way to see that there aren't any words at all. I'm convinced that all the manuscript is about the influence of stars on the medicinal herbs. So, for medieval mindset it is very important to identify the stars. They only know 1.022 stars, and only 346 are located in the Zodiac. The last ones according with Ptolemy have higher virtues.
I think that the repeated string of glyphs are stars in the same position in the celestial sphere, almost the same latitude and lenght, very difficult of identifying
For example, at the top of the drawing of Sagittarius we can see, in the center, two stars with the same label: oteody. It can't be a name. The two stars occupy the same position in the sky
On the other hand, in different sections of the Voynich we can see the same string of glyphs. This might mean that a star o more give its virtues to an herb; the better time for collecting herbs; the appropiate time for preparing a recipe, etc
I think that the scribe of the Voynich held in a hand a volvelle with rotary wheels of the Sun, the Moon and the stars of the Zodiac signs, and in the other hand he was writing the glyphs in the manuscript. The text was generated like that
Were missing Capricorn and Aquarius? Really? This is just a supposition, a guess. Maybe they were never drawn
Why the Zodiac starts with Pisces instead of Aries, something very odd? And why Aries and Taurus are repeated? Maybe the author of the pictures thought that the Zodiac would not be complete without twelve signs
I think that the unusual Zodiac makes sense with the message of the whole work. In chilly winter (Capricorn and Aquarius) don't grow herbs. All the Voynich is about the influence of the stars in plants. They make them germinate and give them its virtues. That don't occur in winter. Likely, Capricorn and Aquarius never were drawn
I think there is not a language in the Voynich. No letters, no alphabet, nothing phonetic. It is only a visual code, an astronomical-astrological code which indicate the location of the stars in the celestial sphere. Each star of the Zodiac provide its virtue to an herb, therefore was very important identify well the stars
