| Welcome, Guest |
You have to register before you can post on our site.
|
| Online Users |
There are currently 553 online users.
» 3 Member(s) | 544 Guest(s)
Applebot, Baidu, Bing, Facebook, Google, Yandex, Alberto, BessAgritianin
|
| Latest Threads |
I am not convinced by the...
Forum: Provenance & history
Last Post: anejati
1 hour ago
» Replies: 54
» Views: 2,585
|
Assumptions baked into th...
Forum: Physical material
Last Post: Bernd
1 hour ago
» Replies: 45
» Views: 1,041
|
[Article] What We Actuall...
Forum: Voynich Talk
Last Post: bi3mw
2 hours ago
» Replies: 6
» Views: 160
|
Palatino 766 pipes, pools...
Forum: Imagery
Last Post: Bernd
3 hours ago
» Replies: 77
» Views: 16,702
|
Voynich's anatomy
Forum: Imagery
Last Post: Jorge_Stolfi
4 hours ago
» Replies: 116
» Views: 10,746
|
EVA "qo" in 15th century ...
Forum: Analysis of the text
Last Post: JoeyB
6 hours ago
» Replies: 20
» Views: 2,214
|
No text, but a visual cod...
Forum: Theories & Solutions
Last Post: Antonio García Jiménez
8 hours ago
» Replies: 1,918
» Views: 1,320,771
|
Why and how the text coul...
Forum: Theories & Solutions
Last Post: JoJo_Jost
9 hours ago
» Replies: 366
» Views: 62,194
|
Voynich Reconsidered
Forum: Theories & Solutions
Last Post: dfs346
10 hours ago
» Replies: 153
» Views: 109,604
|
[split] Aga Tentakulus' L...
Forum: Analysis of the text
Last Post: nablator
Yesterday, 01:50 PM
» Replies: 87
» Views: 35,309
|
|
|
| Syllabic Hypothesis |
|
Posted by: pfeaster - 16-03-2024, 04:28 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (7)
|
 |
I've been continuing to play around with the idea that some of the strange properties of Voynichese could be explained in terms of the workings of a syllabic encoding scheme. I decided to try writing up my latest version of this "syllabic hypothesis," not proposing any specific solution (I don't have one), but just outlining the general kind of mechanism I can imagine having been in play. So here goes, with no claim that it's anything more than the usual stab in the dark:
A “vord” ordinarily corresponds to a syllable, and breaks between “vords” correspond to boundaries between syllables. These breaks can help the reader parse the text into pronounceable chunks, but otherwise they’re redundant and expendable. We can draw an analogy with numbers represented with Arabic numerals, insofar as “21734” and “21,734” (or “21.734”) mean the same thing.
Breaks are most practically useful in running “paragraphic” text, where many syllables appear consecutively, for the same reason that punctuation is more useful in longer Arabic numerals: “1934” or “21734” are easy to read without punctuation, but “3478923478923” isn’t. On the other hand, it’s less crucial to introduce breaks into shorter “labels,” which tend therefore to have their syllables less carefully separated and to yield longer “vords” on average.
A “vord” can represent a syllable as V, CV, VC, or CVC, where C can be a consonant cluster and V can be a diphthong. Most multisyllabic plaintext words can accordingly be divided into syllables in multiple ways. Moreover, a single syllabic “vord” can span two plaintext words, or even three (for example, if just a plan were encoded as [jus] [tap] [lan]). To avoid confusion, breaks between plaintext words can be marked explicitly within a syllabic “vord,” for example as [t·a·p], but this practice is optional and inconsistent, just as it was in other writings of the fifteenth century. The mechanism for encoding [·] could also overlap with a mechanism for showing emphasis, comparable to the use of majuscules.
A single plaintext word is never allowed to extend across a line break, which has implications for the forms of syllabic "vords" we'll find at the beginnings and ends of lines.
Some plaintext words end in such a way that their final syllables will almost always end up shared in a single "vord" with the beginning of the following word in running text. It’s only when one of these words appears at the end of a line that we’ll encounter a "vord" that represents this type of word-ending syllable in isolation.
Similarly, some plaintext words begin in such a way that their opening syllables will almost always end up shared in a single "vord" with the end of the preceding word in running text. It’s only when one of these words appears at the beginning of a line that we’ll encounter a "vord" that represents this type of word-opening syllable in isolation.
Consonant clusters that occur only at the intersections between words in running text will never be found at the beginnings of lines. Take for example a mechanism for encoding double letters, as in est tua = [es] [t·tu] [a]. Syllables of the form [t·tu] can appear within lines but never line-initially.
A “vord” can represent a syllable of the form V, CV, VC, or CVC, but the mapping of characters to phonemes within it isn’t necessarily straightforward. An empty slot might be marked, e.g., [0V0], [CV0], [0VC], to help with parsing. Different glyphs might be used to encode the same consonant initially as CV and terminally as VC. There might be some consonants or consonant clusters that can only be encoded as CV or VC – for instance, maybe [x] can only be encoded as such at the end of a syllable. And encoding might be verbose in any number of unintuitive ways, leading a "vord" that represents a single syllable to look superficially multisyllabic.
When a plaintext word is broken into syllables for encoding, there may be a loose tendency for successive syllables to display the same structure, e.g., e civitatis = [e] [ci] [vi] [ta] [tis], consistently favoring CV, or [e·c] [iv] [it] [at] [is], consistently favoring VC. Combined with the marking of empty slots, this would result in a strong tendency towards repetition of similar-looking forms, e.g., [0e0] [ci0] [vi0] [ta0] [tis] or [0e·c] [0iv] [0it] [0at] [0is].
But in some cases, it's legitimately ambiguous what "counts" as a syllable. For example, is ia one syllable or two? This type of situation may have been handled inconsistently or in a deliberately ambiguous way, and could partially scramble some of the foregoing pattern.
Even if a given plaintext word is unlikely to be written twice in exactly the same way, plaintext words are made up of consistent syllables, such that if the same plaintext word recurs repeatedly in a passage, a “vord” that can be used to represent one of its syllables is likely to recur there as well—as are similar-looking “vords” that represent its combination with adjacent parts of the same word or with other adjacent plaintext words.
A writer might have favored some particular syllable structure, such as CV, when starting a line, and only switched to a different syllable structure, such as VC, when forced by an uncooperative word to do so, but then stuck with it, leading the dispreferred form to favor the latter part of lines, only slightly but consistently.
A syllabic “vord” will tend to be followed preferentially by syllabic “vords” that start in phonetically compatible ways. Thus, a syllabic “vord” ending in [m] is more likely to be followed by another syllabic “vord” beginning with [b] than by one beginning with [d] or [g] if mb occurs more often within plaintext words than md or mg. (To be clear, I'm using plaintext Latin characters to represent themselves here, and not EVA!)
Over time, a system like this would probably have been called upon to handle unanticipated situations. For example, it may at first have made no provision for encoding consonants without vowels, since that violates its basic syllabic logic. But then maybe a need arose to encode Roman numerals or unusually complex consonant clusters—or maybe the original approach to encoding consonant clusters just turned out to be too clunky. The problem could have been solved by permitting the vowel slot to be marked as empty [0] – which would have required introducing some new and distinctive glyph or glyph combination to serve this purpose, and would incidentally also have offered a lot of new options for encoding consonant clusters. The result might have ended up looking like a different “language” entirely. In the absence of any content, encoding could then also have defaulted to [000] [000] [000] if needed purely to fill space.
|
|
|
| Broken Sword 3 |
|
Posted by: Lissu - 16-03-2024, 12:14 AM - Forum: Fiction, Comics, Films & Videos, Games & other Media
- No Replies
|
 |
Voynich Manuscript is also mentioned in the 2003 adventure video game Broken Sword 3!
I have played this game through a couple of times. In this story the manuscript is about ley lines.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
The manuscript is mentioned slightly after 11 minutes in the video I linked!
|
|
|
|
| Ambiguous Spaces |
|
Posted by: Emma May Smith - 12-03-2024, 11:18 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (28)
|
 |
I'm currently putting together some new research and wonder what the general consensus was around ambiguous spaces in the transcription.
Ambiguous spaces are honestly highlighted in the transcription but I'm unsure exactly how they should be processed. Short of examining each one individual and making my own judgement, I'm faced with one of three solutions:
- Treat all as real spaces.
- Treat none as real spaces.
- Treat them according to the glyphs/words either side.
Option 1 and 2 are easy and quick. Three is a little more time-consuming but still possible, but I don't know whether it will bring me any real benefits.
A fourth option might be to run all the analysis twice with options 1 and 2, but that would still leave me with the question which set of results is correct. I would then face the risk of choosing the results which looked best even though the choice regarding spaces was not optimal.
Any thoughts would be welcome.
|
|
|
|
Image processing, highlighting hidden details |
|
Posted by: ReneZ - 11-03-2024, 11:45 AM - Forum: Imagery
- Replies (34)
|
 |
Following are some processed images of the Voynich MS that did not involve photoshop.
They also do not try to simulate the effect of wetting and rubbing the pages. In fact, I am unsure in several cases what it is that they are showing.
They are intended to be false-colour images of the parchment.
They were made using the following procedure.
Largely speaking, in colour scale terms, the parchment has a certain hue, with a varying lightness.
One can establish the R-G-B coordinates of the lightest parchment, and set up a new colour coordinates system with one axis pointing from (0,0,0) to this point and the other two axes perpendicular to this axis.
One can then compute the distance of each pixel from the 'parchment axis' as the root-sum-square of these two perpendicular components.
That distance is then colour-coded. If it is zero, we render it black, and increasing values become increasingly colourful. If it is above a certain limit, we assume that we are no longer looking at parchment, and we use grey for the colour code.
I will show links to the images of the biological section in the next post.
In some cases we can see parts of the other side of the page (just like we can see in the normal scans).
In some cases, we can see things that are on the opposing page.
Also, we can see shading from the illumination and blemishes and folds in the parchment.
Then, in some cases there seem to be things that cannot be easily explained by any of the above.
|
|
|
|
| The Light of God Powers the Universe |
|
Posted by: pjburkshire - 10-03-2024, 04:08 AM - Forum: Imagery
- Replies (8)
|
 |
I reviewed the herculeaf posts about the Rosettes page. I do not agree that all nine circles represent one city. I think the center circle is the Empyrean where God resides. In Christian religious cosmologies, the Empyrean is "the source of light" so I think that nozzle-looking thing at the bottom with the chevrons coming out is God's light pouring out. There is also a place at the top with small circles pouring out and a nozzle to the left with line segments pouring out. There is also a place on the right with something pouring out but it is lost in the fold damage.
I think all of this imagery of something pouring out from the center circle is God's power pouring out and powering the universe. I think the circles that God's power is pouring into are the classical elements; earth, water, air, fire. I think air is the top, earth the bottom, fire the left, and water the right. The elements are the building blocks of the universe.
I don't see the city as intended to descended from Heaven to Earth. I see it as something that is expected to exist beyond the clouds/ether/aether when people get to Heaven after death. It probably doesn't matter if you call this Heavenly city the Empyrean or New Jerusalem or any other name, I think we are talking about the same basic idea of the residence of God in the Heavens.
I agree with this comment about the upper-right circle: "a sign of the ruling class and its wealth." I would continue with this idea that the opposite circle in the lower-left represents the clergy and the circle in the lower-right represents the common people; merchants and farmers. Maybe it's just me but I think that green rectangle with the squiggly lines looks like a garden or a field. I don't know about the blue X. Maybe that is a crossroad to represent traveling merchants.
I haven't given up on the idea of the small T-O Map in the upper-right as representing the world of the nobles of the larger circle. In life, the nobles rule the physical world on Earth.
I haven't given up on the idea of the clock/compass-looking thing in the lower-left as representing the Holy Trinity and relating to the larger circle representing the clergy who are the Earthly spiritual guides in life. I think maybe that cloud-looking thing with the trumpet-looking thing that is between the lower-left circle and the center circle may be an illustration that the clergy are the ones who hear the voice of God the loudest.
Maybe all those pipes are both for the voice of God from Heaven to Earth and as representing the prayers from people on Earth to God in Heaven.
I took the two suns in opposite corners to mean that the page was to be rotated and viewed from different positions.
This is just a wild guess but maybe the upper-left circle is the gateway between Earth and Heaven. Maybe it is the Aether, the fifth classical element. Maybe those pipes coming from that upper-left circle towards the center circle represent the prayers from people on Earth to God in Heaven. If someone asked me to draw a picture representing God in Heaven hearing the prayers of people on Earth, I'm not sure what I would draw.
I don't see the story as an end-of-the-world story. I see the story as the personal journey of each soul (I still think all those stars on the Zodiac pages are souls, not stars up in the sky) from pre-birth, to Ensoulment ( You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ) following conception and pregnancy, to life (f85r2), to death (f86v4) and Judgment (f86v3), and then to Heaven (Ros).
I think the story of how each pre-birth soul is selected to be born on Earth is told in the Zodiac pages of Quire 9, Quire 10, Quire 11, and Quire 12.
I don't have a clue what that thing is coming out of the upper-right circle towards the center or what that thing is coming out of the lower-right circle towards the center.
|
|
|
|
| Provenance and history of the Voynich Manuscript (hypothesis) |
|
Posted by: amelkin - 09-03-2024, 05:27 PM - Forum: Provenance & history
- Replies (16)
|
 |
The Voynich manuscript was created by Dr. Johannes Hartlieb (1400 – 1468) in 1448/49. He was in the employment of Albrecht III of Bavaria-Munich from 1440, and of Albrecht's son Sigmund from 1456.
The husband of Anna von Braunschweig-Grubenhagen, Duke Albrecht III of Bavaria-Munich, married Anna out of necessity and continued to love Agnes Bernauer, who was executed in 1435. Anna was tormented by jealousy, especially strong after 1447. Then Albrecht asked his personal physician (Leibarzt) Johannes Hartlieb to direct Anna's attention to practices in the field of white magic, in which Anna was seriously interested.
At the request of Albrecht III Dr. Hartlieb on the basis of his drafts ordered to the scribes the "Chiromancy" and the "Voynich Manuscript" (the "Hartlieb Manuscript"), which were urgently created in the period from 1448 to 1449. Both books depicted a distorted reality, making them ideal divination tools.
"Chiromancy" was created by Dr. Hartlieb in 1448. However, Anna quickly became bored with hand fortune telling (palm reading). Anna needed something more mysterious.
Then started Dr. Hartlieb, in agreement with Albrecht, with the creation of the "Voynich Manuscript", which was based on various secret writing systems and old manuscripts from the early 15th century. There was a lack of time. Johannes Hartlieb had a team of trustworthy scribes and illustrators in the greater Munich area and in Augsburg. Based on secret writing systems such as "Kaldaisch", which Dr. Hartlieb perfectly mastered, since he was also a court diplomat, he created a special font "Voynichese" and a "Vocabulary", as well as drafts of various sections of the future "Voynich Manuscript".
90% of the "Voynich Manuscript" was just science fiction nonsense. The text didn't make any sense. Incidentally, Hartlieb has a manuscript on astrology (Johannes Hartlieb et al. (1448/56)), in which he gives various examples of secret writings, including "Kaldaisch". Only less than 10% of the astrological text of the "Voynich Manuscript" could be deciphered.
The scribes, who numbered not less than twelve, were given sketches of the various sections of the manuscript, as well as a large quantity of old parchment of various sizes. They were in a hurry and didn't keep the lines straight. They were also allowed to create their own text based on Hartlieb's rules. The fact that the text of the manuscript was created by several people at the same time is indicated by the presence of at least five parts of the manuscript with differences in handwriting, vocabulary and placement on the page. (Lisa Fagin Davis (2022, 2023))
Each scribe had to create at least 12 zodiac diagrams in a relatively free form, in addition to their own text, in collaboration with the illustrator. Some scribes were artists themselves. The zodiac diagrams in the Voynich manuscript were male and female. In total, there were 12 or more zodiac charts for each zodiac sign. Since some of the parchment was not cut into equal parts, some long sheets contained three zodiac diagrams or even more. Many zodiac diagrams differed from each other in drawings and inscriptions. Later this was interpreted as taking into account the characteristics of the customer category (guests of "Anna's Salon").
Dr. Hartlieb gave Anna the "Voynich Manuscript" in 1449. He presented the manuscript as the work of an early 15th-century magician, possibly Abraham von Worms. Anna was very happy and with the help of Dr. Hartlieb to conduct astrological sessions at parties in "Anna's Salon". The manuscript had not previously been stapled together and consisted of individual sheets. Anna conducted astrological sessions using these zodiac charts, so they were always in use and often kept in different places. Most of them were later lost or given away.
Dr. Hartlieb helped Anna to "decipher" the manuscript and made notes ("Michitonese") on the pages. It is also possible that the "Michitonese" inscriptions were the improvisation of one of the hired scribes.
During the sessions, Anna prophesied using zodiac charts. Anna predicted events in the life (fate) of the client (session guest) for a week, a month and a year and recommended various herbal mixtures and water treatments to solve possible problems. Dr. Hartlieb often attended meetings and wrote out recipes.
After Albrecht's death, Anna continued to conduct magical sessions at Nannhofen Castle.
The "Voynich Manuscript" possibly shows either Nannhofen Castle or Blutenburg Castle. Nannhofen moated castle was built a little earlier (from 1423) than Blutenburg moated castle (from 1424), and Albrecht von Wittelsbach and Augsburg bather's daughter Agnes Bernauer sometimes met there secretly.
Externally both castles were very similar and had a similar history. Since Blutenburg Castle was built about five years earlier than originally assumed, some events (for example the birth of Agnes Bernauer (1405 instead of 1410) and her daughter Sibylla (1424 instead of 1430), the meeting of Agnes and Albrecht (1423 instead of 1428) could have occurred, and the construction of Blutenburg Castle ("Blytenburg", "Pluedenberg", from 1424 instead of from 1429)) also took place about five years earlier. (Jutta Czeguhn (2017))
The author of the "Voynich Manuscript", Doctor Hartlieb, often visited both castles. With the creation of the Voynich manuscript, Duchess Anna von Braunschweig-Grubenhagen developed a passion for fortune telling using astrological zodiac cards. She did this in both castles until her death in 1474. In the 16th century, Nannhofen Castle and its library came into the possession of the Court Chancellor of the House of Wittelsbach. Later, the Court Chancellor handed over the “Voynich Manuscript” to Emperor Rudolf II.
Source: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
|
|
|
|
| The Holy Trinity |
|
Posted by: pjburkshire - 09-03-2024, 06:17 AM - Forum: Imagery
- Replies (5)
|
|
On the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Rosette foldout page there are the 9 large circles and in the far lower left there is a smaller circle with three tiny circles connected by two lines. Could these three tiny circles connected by two lines be a representation of the Holy Trinity?
Could this be seen as the opposite of the "T and O map" in the far upper right? Spiritual world and physical world?
|
|
|
|
|
