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| Historic cipher mapping |
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Posted by: R. Sale - 07-01-2022, 08:14 PM - Forum: Voynich Talk
- Replies (28)
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The idea would be to create a database and mapping for early ciphers, similar to the mapping of merlons.
Simple entries of date, location and cipher methodology would be sufficient, with substitution (simple vs. complex) most common. But there is also a potential of alternate methods being used, along with when and where that may have been - within relevant parameters.
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| Spatial Spread And Conditional Character Entropy Reduction |
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Posted by: Anton - 03-01-2022, 05:17 PM - Forum: News
- Replies (13)
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Occasionally I got some interesting ideas before the New Year and I took time to systematize them to a certain extent in a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
There's a reasonable statement that if something does not behave like a flow of language then perhaps it is not a flow of language. Now, there's a question of how exactly to read it. Those who explore the "hoax" hypothesis judge that Voynichese is not a flow of language. I think that maybe Voynichese is not a flow of language instead.
I have some further ideas which it would be exciting to develop, but in terms of blog posting I wanted to pause at some point, lest it takes months or years.
Comments and suggestions most welcome.
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Is nymphs gender relevant? |
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Posted by: R. Sale - 30-12-2021, 12:49 AM - Forum: Imagery
- Replies (4)
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From a question, recently posed in the "Of-Topic" thread, this seems to be very much on a relevant topic.
"What if the nymphs gender doesn’t really matter in the manuscript?"
It has been suggested, whether as 'stella' or 'anima', that the multitude of VMs nymphs are the personifications of stars or spirits of whatever type might be preferred. This is a perfectly reasonable interpretation of some normal text or set of illustrations. That is a part of what the VMs attempts to project. That is not exactly what the VMs is. When the nymphs are examined individually, it opens up a whole host of problems.
In European languages that have common nouns with assigned gender, both star and spirit are generally feminine. Therefore, they are ideologically feminine, and therefore, they are pictorially feminine. If they are what they are expected to be, does their gender really matter? It is only where gender differs from the expectation, that gender should matter.
While there are numerous VMs nymphs that almost match this expectation, there are a notable number of exceptions. Exceptions which clearly contradict the expectations as generally presented. In other words, there are a number of intentionally ambiguous and even potentially masculine figures included in the VMs Zodiac sequence. Why was this variety of nonstandard figures represented by the VMs artist?
Is gender relevant? Perhaps just in specific cases of historical (1), literary (2) and mythological (3) examples. However, there is also the problem of the dark ink that has frequently been applied to the VMs nymphs to emphasize their breasts. This would indicate that the identification of gender was important. But, to what purpose? Is it a distraction or an attraction? Are the nude, female nymphs of the VMs intended to disguise the 'others' hidden in their midst? Or are they enhanced to promote the investigation and discovery of hidden characters otherwise known to be relevant to European, medieval society.
(1) The Fieschi popes on VMs White Aries
(2) Lady Bertilak on VMs White Aries (Wife of the Green Knight)
(3) Castor and Pollux on VMs Gemini
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| The chicken and the ink |
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Posted by: bi3mw - 26-12-2021, 10:05 PM - Forum: Physical material
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In a thread about Biocodicology, the following idea occurred to me:
The Mc Crone Institute studied the ink in the VMS in 2009. It was found that Glair (eggwhite) was used for clear or the color white. It was used in the headdress of bather on folio 78r ( clear, not white ) and a face on folio 70v ( see table in the report ). Thus, inks containing protein were used which are hardly contaminated, i.e. they were only mixed with calcium carbonate but not processed in any other way (in contrast to the parchment).
Samples of these inks could help determine the origin of the chicken and thus the ink itself if the ovalbumin (OVA) is sufficient to determine the exact species ( that would be the first and most important question, does it differ from sub species to sub species ?). The protein sequence of chicken ovalbumin was fully elucidated in 1981 [2].
The Red junglefowl ( gallus gallus ) is the ancestor of all domestic chickens existing today ( Wikipedia ). The variations in late medieval times were locally different. The DNA of chicken bones from archaeological excavations could be used for comparison. These are found worldwide ( for example also in my neighboring town ) in large numbers.
From the 15th century onwards breeding of chickens has been demonstrably started, which facilitates the differentiation according to local sites.
Quote:Benecke (1994: 370-372)[1] proves that chickens definitely became larger as well as more different in shape and color from the late Middle Ages on. From about the 15th century, there are first indications of incipient breeding. In the Middle Ages, the animals can be divided according to the construction of the skeleton into small chickens similar to today's bantams and heavier chickens such as Leghorn or Italian. Chicken breeds or different types of chickens that emerged in the late Middle Ages are the origin of some breeds still living today ....
[1] Benecke, N. Der Mensch und seine Haustiere, Theiss, 1994
[2] A. D. Nisbet, R. H. Saundry u. a.: The complete amino-acid sequence of hen ovalbumin. In: European Journal of Biochemistry / FEBS. Band 115, Nummer 2, April 1981, S. 335–345, doi:10.1111/j.1432-1033.1981.tb05243.x (free Fulltext). PMID 7016535.
My question now is whether this idea is plausible and considered feasible or ( justified ) why not.
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| Gemini nymphs after 6 |
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Posted by: R. Sale - 24-12-2021, 08:09 PM - Forum: Imagery
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VMs Gemini has some interesting 'nymphs' between 6 o'clock and 9 o'clock in the outer ring. Several of these characters are clothed and ostensibly male. Not the more typical VMs nymph. Also, for some, the style of clothing appears interesting, as it looks like a tunic.
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The term 'tunic' turns up in a number of ninja threads that seem to be concerned with the primary male characters of Gemini and Sagittarius inside the respective medallions. I haven't found where these secondary characters have been brought into the discussion. Any guidance appreciated.
Furthermore, in relation to recent discussions, there is the possibility that these characters fit into the myth of Castor and Pollux, leading up to their catasterism. Perhaps this has been considered previously?
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| Siderial connections: masculine |
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Posted by: R. Sale - 20-12-2021, 08:20 PM - Forum: Astrology & Astronomy
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The general process is called catasterism. It is the process of conversion of a mythical person (animal or object) into something that is seen in the stars <of the night sky>, such as a constellation or star.
This is a search request specifically for stars that can be shown to be masculine. Preferably in a medieval European, historical and traditional context.
Examples so far: Arcturus, Castor and Pollux
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| Plant's gender pronouns |
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Posted by: Ranceps - 18-12-2021, 09:00 PM - Forum: Voynich Talk
- Replies (2)
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If we are to discuss each plant in the "herbal" section of the MS, did anybody tried to compare the gender pronouns of the "known plants". I mean the whole text, if it contains some similarities between the "known plant" from another page. It's normal that we speak about the plant using gender as pronouns.
Maybe we can find something in the vords that's similar to other pages and we can use that to find the gender pronouns in other texts. That's something I wondered for a long time... like I wondered about the phrase from old Herbals, the plants are often introduces as "The plant name is X" (in latin: Nomen istius herbe (like in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Of course, the plants there are hardly recognizable from the picture, but the text helps a lot to understand what plant we are talking about...).
Did anybody tried to find a connection between the gender pronouns or that phrase being in most of the "herbal section"?
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| Transitional Probabilities and Repetitive Loops |
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Posted by: pfeaster - 14-12-2021, 10:17 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (3)
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A few months ago I spent a while looking at first-order transitional probabilities in the VM -- e.g., if all we know is that the current glyph is [d], what's the likelihood of the next glyph being [o]? I You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. about this at the time, but I'd like to summarize one set of observations here because they've continued to tug at my curiosity and I'm not sure how to explore them any further.
Transitional probabilities are radically different for Currier A and Currier B -- so much so that there seems to be no value in working them out for the VM as a whole.
So let's start with Currier B, and also with the glyph [d]. What's the most probable sequence of glyphs to follow from that, ignoring spaces, as if we were using an extremely crude auto-complete algorithm?
[d] --> [y] (63.71%)
[y] --> [q] (28.11%)
[q] --> [o] (97.69%)
[o] --> [k] (30.31%)
[k] --> [e] group (41.86%); probability of that [e] group then being specifically [ee] (54.28%)
[ee] --> [d] (39.79%)
In other words, the most probable path forward turns out to be a closed loop: [qokeedyqokeedyqokeedy....]. Of course, this resembles a common repetitive pattern we actually see in Currier B. A single choice of alternate transition would typically lead to a familiar-looking "path" such as these:
[qokeey.qokeedy]
[qokaiin.okeedy]
[qokeedy.chedy]
[qolkeedy.qokeedy]
[qotedy.qokeedy]
If we try the same thing in Currier A, again starting with [d], we get:
[d] --> [a] (50.40%)
[a] --> [i] group (51.96%); probability of that [i] group then being specifically [ii] (75.52%)
[ii] --> [n] (94.80%)
[n] --> [ch] (21.25%)
[ch] --> [o] (45.67%)
[o] --> [l] (24.99%)
[l] --> [d] (21.92%)
Hence, a different closed loop: [daiincholdaiincholdaiincholdaiin.....]. But this time even some of the most probable transitions are still less than 22% probable: [n] --> [ch] and [l] --> [d]. And if we examine line-position statistics, the most probable transitions actually vary from point to point, so that there seem to be separate, non-overlapping [chol] and [daiin] regions. Thus, a more nuanced analysis might predict [cholcholchol...daiindaiindaiin] over the course of a line, or maybe something even more varied.
Torsten Timm You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. three vord "series" -- a [daiin] series, an [ol] series including [chol], and a [chedy] series including [qokeedy] -- and finds that vords tend to be more common the more closely they resemble [daiin], [ol], or [chedy]. But within each Timm series, the vord most often found repeating identically is the specific one corresponding to the inferred loop sequence:
[daiin.daiin] ×13
[chol.chol] ×23
[qokeedy.qokeedy] ×19
All of which has led me to wonder whether Voynichese might default to some sort of looping pattern whenever there's minimal "signal" present, analogous to an unmodulated carrier signal. But I can't think of a good way to move from that vague notion to any more concrete kind of experiment, and I also worry that there's some circular logic in here somewhere. I don't *think* the commonness of specific vords such as [qokeedy] could itself be responsible for the patterns these vords seem best to exemplify -- but if it were, I suppose that would be one way to discount this line of speculation.
I'll also admit that first-order transitional probabilities don't have very good predictive power. I tried using them as a basis for generating random text and came up with this for Currier B (with spaces inserted wherever two adjacent glyphs most often have one):
qol.dy.dor.ol.Shey.or.Shokaiin.Shotalkar.chedy.Shy.chopcholkedy.Sheokeey.s.chcKhdy.chy.okeor.
odytey.odytodain.SheotShey.pchdy.keedy.dal.Shdy.Shetaiin.ol.ol.ody.dytchedy.qol.ol.Shekeedain.
Shedy.qol.l.chedy.dytar.olal.dy.qotey.qosal.cheokaiin.y.otchokchokeedain.cheey.y.pcholkar.Shar.
cheeotchedy.keedar.ain.cheeyty.Sheey.ol.chcKhoteey.l.dy.kaiin
That's not very good pseudo-Voynichese. Note in particular the frequent vords containing multiple gallows.
But if we advance to second-order transitional probabilities, the [qokeedy] and [chol/daiin] loops persist, and the results of generating random text start to feel a little more plausible (to me, at least):
ol.qokeodar.ar.okaiin.Shkchedy.Shdal.qotam.ytol.dal.cheokeedy.chkal.Shedy.qokair.odain.al.ol.daiin.
cheal.qokeeey.lkain.chcPhedy.kchdy.cheey.otar.cheor.aiin.Shedy.dal.dochey.opchol.okchy.Sheoar.ol.
oeey.otcheol.dy.chShy.lkar.ain.okchedy.l.chkedy.oteedar.ShecKhey.okaiin.chor.olteodar.okal.qokeShedy.
ol.ol.Sheey.kain.cheky.chey.chol.chedy
With these randomly generated text examples, I don't mean to imply I favor a stochastic-process solution -- I'm just trying to illustrate how well or poorly a relatively simple transitional-probability model fits what we're used to Voynichese looking like. These examples aren't based on any "word structure" model as such. They also ignore all line-position patterning.
Apologies as always for any and all reinvented wheels.
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![[Image: Sn-mek-obrazovky-2022-01-10-v-15-52-29.png]](https://i.ibb.co/m4SX0pK/Sn-mek-obrazovky-2022-01-10-v-15-52-29.png)