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[split] Verbose cipher?
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previous research on Arab...
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Discussion of "A possible...
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J. Michael Herrmann - Can...
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ABCDEFGHI...OPQ on the fi...
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Alphabet on Page 1?
Forum: Voynich Talk
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Agreeing on standard tran...
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The daiin
Forum: Analysis of the text
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previous Basque theories ...
Forum: Analysis of the text
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Pisces 70v
Forum: Astrology
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| Common points of agreement |
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Posted by: crezac - 31-01-2016, 11:35 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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There are thousands of pages of analysis, theory, speculation and pure ranting about VMS out there. Some of it conflicting, some of it taken as fact just because it's been taken as fact for decades, some of it interesting but impossible to prove.
What I want to do here is outline some things about VMS which everyone can agree on, mainly so that I have a starting point for my analysis but maybe long term so that when we are discussing VMS someone can say "that's not a point of common agreement" and have a place to reference the claim. I'm limiting myself to the text itself, if someone wants to do something similar for images, the physical manuscript and so on that's fine but I don't want to put any of that in this post.
I'm going to try to limit myself to the facts we know. I may occasionally say that it's reasonable to assume or speculate something. If I start claiming things are "possibly" something, feel free to shoot me down in a comment; there are so many things that are possibilities listing them isn't helpful. I will edit this post if I need to add, modify or delete items on my list.
VMS is written in a set of distinct characters.
There are 25 characters in the set. (attach jpg illustrating each character)
It is not know what any character represents.
More than one character is written in the same place on some pages.
The character set is used to encodes information in strings of these characters.
Character distribution in these strings is ordered, i.e not random.
There is no string of these characters with a known meaning.
The strings are written left to right.
Individual strings can be organized into arrays separated by spaces.
Arrays are permitted to span lines.
Arrays can be used to label images.
Not all arrays are aligned with the left margin.
A blank line can be used to separate arrays.
None of the characters are used as punctuation.
None of the characters are used only as representations of numbers.
Lets see what discussion those generate, if any. I can add more if anyone actually cares enough to comment 
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| Question regarding the original author's birthday |
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Posted by: crezac - 29-01-2016, 04:27 AM - Forum: Provenance & history
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VMS has been dated to sometime in the 15th century, or at least the parchment has. It has also been noted that there don't appear to corrected errors, i.e. the author made no mistakes he had to correct. Finally the ink analysis seems to indicated that, while more than one type of ink is used for main text, page numbers and some marginalia, it is all consistent with a 15th century origin.
Page numbers weren't common in early manuscripts. Their earliest uses appear to be when making a copy of a manuscript to ensure the copy and original were ordered the same. This would be especially important if one couldn't read the original. If you wanted to work on understanding what the original meant you would want your own copy. And your copy would include marginalia from the original.
If the artist were likewise copying images of plants he had never seen from an earlier work that might account for the fact that none of the plants are easily recognizable from the drawings.
Obviously the only way to prove this would be to find an earlier copy of VMS. But, purely for purposes of discussion, if VMS is someones workng copy of an earlier manuscript, how much will that impact any attempts at a translation?
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| The Nine Rosettes and Kabbalah |
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Posted by: Oocephalus - 27-01-2016, 09:45 PM - Forum: Imagery
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I have seen some speculations (sorry, don't remember by whom) that the Nine Rosettes foldout in the VMS might be connected to the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. symbol in the Kabbalah. However, this has been dismissed because the number of Sephirot (aspects of God) depicted in the tree is always ten, while that of the rosettes is nine. I still think there may be a connection. The Sephirot are thought to be associated with the celestial spheres, with the lowest one, Malkhut, being associated with Earth. In the upper right corner of the foldout there is a T-O map, a symbol of Earth, connected to the upper right rosette. So the T-O map could depict Malkhut, while the rosettes could show the other Sephirot. If so, the diagram must be read with upper right as bottom and lower left as top.
This could also explain the symbol in the lower left of the foldout. In the book "Origins of the Kabbalah" by Gershom Scholem, a doctrine is mentioned that originated in a work falsely attributed to Hai Gaon, which was probably written in Provence about 1230. This work tried to reconcile the ten sephirot with an older doctrine called the thirteen middoth. He postulated that above the Sephirot there was the "root of all roots", which contained three "hidden lights" called the primordial, the transparent, and the clear light. This might have been influenced by the Christian concept of the Trinity.
Could this "root of all roots" be the symbol in the lower left corner? What do people think who know more about Kabbalah than I do?
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| Why is Pisces first? |
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Posted by: R. Sale - 27-01-2016, 08:48 PM - Forum: Imagery
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It should be clear, even to the casual investigator, that there is something unusual about the VMs Zodiac. In fact, there are a number of differences with more traditional zodiac representations. And first among them is the fact that Pisces is the first sign in the VMs sequence. Traditional astrology has Aries as the first house, putting Pisces at the end (#12). Likewise the quasi-medical image of the Zodiac Man has Aries as the head and Pisces at the feet. So here is the VMs Zodiac being presented feet first.
Just to be clear, I am looking for ideas - not claiming to have the answers. Hopefully discussion can proceed in that manner as well.
I have looked at several aspects and here are two that might have some relevance. The first is calendar reform. The Gregorian reform took place in Feb 1582. From the VMs parchment dates, a composition date of 1430 would leave a century and a half where the errors in the Julian continued their progressive growth. And the knowledge that this discrepancy existed can be historically verified at various instances. But, throughout this prime time for VMs composition, efforts were made, but no action was taken to effect a correction.
The second factor is the astronomical phenomenon known as the precession of the equinoxes. It has resulted in the movement of the spring equinox from Aries into Pisces. The Hebrew calendar took these factors into account and was reformed accordingly in the 12th Century. Roger Bacon made note of the situation. The equinox was halfway through Pisces by then. Regiomontanus was called to fix the calendar c. 1500, but when he arrived, he died instead. And suddenly we're all the way back up to 1582. And finally the days are back where they are supposed to be.
Is Pisces position at the start of the VMs Zodiac an indication that the traditional zodiac sequence has been updated to reflect the accumulation of errors in the Julian system and the movement of the spring equinox?
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| A and B plants |
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Posted by: Oocephalus - 27-01-2016, 04:06 AM - Forum: Imagery
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It is well known that the Voynich herbal pages can be classified into two distinct groups based on the characteristics of the text, termed the Currier A and B languages. I know there is no sharp division but rather a continuum, but the herbal pages seem to group at both the two extremes of it rather than in the middle (see René Zandbergen's You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. on this). There also seems to be a correlation with the appearance of the handwriting.
However, I haven't found anyone mentioning consistent differences between the plant illustrations on A and B pages. So this is a paradox, where sections that appear to refer to the same subject have text with very different properties. The only explanation I've seen is that of Nick Pelling, who claims in his book that the B plants look much less naturalistic (which may be true, but is hard to quantify, and many A plants are not very naturalistic either), and suggests that they are actually hidden drawings of machines. However, this seems not very convincing, and I don't think it has been generally accepted.
I think I've found a feature that differs between A and B plants. Namely, in many plants, the stem is separated from the root by a horizontal line. This occurs in "grafted" plants, where the stem is placed on a much thicker root that appears to have been cut off (but not in all of them), but also in ones where the stem and the root have the same thickness. With one exception, this only appears in plants where the text is Currier A.
The following pages have "grafted" plants with such lines: f3v, f6r, f7r, f9r, f11r, f13r, f14r, f16r, f16v, f19v, f22v, f23r, f36r, f37v, f44v, f45r, f45v, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (?), f54v, f57r, f90r2, f93v. With the exception of f54v, these are all Currier A. Not that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is quite exceptional anyway, as it is on a bifolio (autocorrect thinks I mean "buffalo") that includes both herbal and text-only pages, which I think is unique.
In the following pages, the plant does not look grafted, but the line is there: f5r, f5v, f7v, f8v, f13v, f27r, f28r, f30v, f32v, f38r, f38v, f47r, f47v, f65v, f87r, f87v, f90v1, f90v2. These are all Currier A.
In the following pages, the plants are "grafted", but there is no line separating the stem(s) from the root: f26r, f39r, f39v, f48r, f55r, f65r, f95r1, f95r2, f95v1. These are all Currier B.
There are of course non-grafted plants without such a line, which occur in both A and B.
So this doesn't resolve the paradox, Herbal-A and B pages still both depict plants, but there seems to be at least a difference between them. Has anyone else noticed this, or other differences? If so, I would be interested to know.
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| Narration structure as the tiebreaker between cipher & (synthetic) language |
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Posted by: Anton - 26-01-2016, 12:21 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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If the text in the VMS is related to the pictures therein contained (which is not definite but quite reasonable), then it is reasonable to expect certain repetitive narration structure of the underlay message throughout the homogenous folios (such as plant folios).
In other words, when describing plants, the scribe would likely have followed more or less constant pattern, such as (just for example) "this plant is called
XXX, it is associated with such and such days, stones, stars, angels etc., it is useful in such & such cases, it is to be used in such & such form etc."
Provided that there is the narration structure, synthetic language will preserve it in its written form (natural language, obviously, will do that too, but I rule it out offhand for other reasons). On the other hand, cipher may preserve it, but not necessarily will. For example, a simple substitution cipher (which, btw, the VMS is definitely not) does only change individual letters through a pre-defined rule and does not change the order of words. Hence, the narration structure is preserved. A cipher involving interleaving of text blocks (words, lines etc.) will destroy the narration structure, and it becomes not traceable in the overlay.
So whether we observe or do not observe the narration structure in the overlay may serve as a (conditional) tiebreaker between cipher and synthetic language: namely, if the narration structure is not observed, then a cipher is most certainly in place.
The question is ready - what do we do to "observe" the narration structure? Actually that is the question that I was about to ask - does anyone know any computational methods of revealing narration patterns in unknown texts?
In my You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. I utilized most basic and rough approach - namely, I followed the location of occurrences of "Voynich stars" (f68r1 and f68r2) labels within botanical folios - whether their position in the folio exhibits any patterns or not. No definite evidence towards the narration structure was collected. The only positive result was that in multi-paragraph folios, the first star occurrence tends to be in earlier paragraphs while the subsequent star occurrences (if they do exist) tend to be in the last paragraph. However, folios with only one star occurrence do not support this picture - the star is very often mentioned in the last paragraph.
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| The 600 ducat question |
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Posted by: ReneZ - 25-01-2016, 05:27 PM - Forum: Provenance & history
- Replies (23)
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Did Rudolf II really buy the Voynich MS for 600 ducats? Would that not have been an unrealistic price?
We don't know the answer yet, but we can see some of his other acquisitions, showing that the price would not have been unrealistic, as has sometimes been suggested. (This only works for those who can read German).
Here, he pays 600 Taler to Jacopo Strada for some books:
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(Note that the silver Taler was worth a little more than a gold florin, and a little less than a gold ducat).
From other references, this seems to concern 6 printed books.
Here is a contract with Sambucus for 2500 ducats for a collection of Latin and Greek classics:
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This concerns 500 books. There was some haggling about the price: 5 or 6 ducats a piece. Not so funny: Sambucus died before being paid and his widow is asking for the money afterwards. A nice list of debts after Rudolf's death:
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But I digress.
Here some herbal books of Clusius. He is not sure what is their usefulness, but still pays 200 Taler.
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1350 Taler to the Dutch trader Emanuel Sweerts for flower bulbs (making up 700 Taler) and a book:
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There's a curious book (but only 150 florins):
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My favourite: 500 Taler to Carolus Widemann for books. These are almost certainly paracelsan and/or alchemical works. Several are still preserved in the Vossius collection in Leiden (NL):
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On a side note, here's a list of people receiving a monthly stipend of some 20 florins. Who can spot Jacobus de Tepenec?
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| Word Fitting |
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Posted by: Fachys - 25-01-2016, 09:56 AM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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At the bottom of folio f56r, there is a large space between "kchoar" and "sotodan".
In my interpretation, the spacing exists because "sotodan" would overlap with the illustration. Do you agree?
I mention this because the Voynich text itself could be meaningless gibberish - certainly the qok*dy chains in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. have low information content - in which case it's improbable that the author would not make good use of that space.
While there are other plausible explanations for that particular whitespace, in my opinion it suggests that:
- The author's intent was to write down "sotodan", and no shorter word would do.
- It was not desirable to split up the word in order to fill up the space.
- It was not acceptable to fill in the space with a random set of glyphs.
If true, these are three important points, and a sensible set of axioms for further analysis and interpretation of the text.
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