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| Cheshire at it again: "Palaeographic Instruction for the Ischia Manuscript" |
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Posted by: Stephen Carlson - 18-12-2020, 04:10 AM - Forum: News
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There's a new article about the VM by Gerard Chesire on Lingbuzz: "You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]"[/font]
Here is the abstract:
Quote:The process of palaeography is far more complex and time-consuming than the process of translation, as it requires additional intuition, instruction, involvement and intelligence in order to find the right words, rather than a simple substitution of words. This is one of the reasons why the writing system and language of the Ischia Manuscript took a while to fathom, as the document is unique in the complexity of its palaeographic requirements. This naturally perplexes those who expect or desire effortless translation, but logic dictates that all simple and easy possibilities must already have been eliminated by the experiments of many others over the decades. This paper provides instruction to elucidate and educate the novice about the palaeographic process needed for success with reading the Ischia manuscript.
Cheshire maintains his taboo of referring to the VM under the name "Voynich," but now it's called the "Ischia Manuscript."
In this article, he decodes a line of text as "l o a s a t a s é è l a s d o a s æ o s é a p é a t é e a s é a s o m é a" and then pretends it a form of Portuguese/Galician and offers a translation, "seedpods of rattle, it is they seeds, here bones it’s of foot of end it is and in the sock." It's all nonsense unfortunately.
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| The curve - line system |
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Posted by: david - 18-12-2020, 01:06 AM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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Many years ago (2014? God I feel old) Brian Cham proposed the "You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. which I helped with on the statistical analysis.
We suggested that
Quote:the Curve-Line System is an intentional feature of the text design, and the text of the Voynich Manuscript is a highly artificial system.
Now, my personal opinion remains much the same - the design of the glyphs is highly intentional, and the text is highly artificial (albeit the underlying paradigm is based upon recognisable 15th century tropes).
But the basics of the CLS remain the same. That is, that "like attracts like". A few basic rules allow us to assume, with great confidence, which glyph will follow which.
Some time ago I zipf'ed the percentages and then graphed the number of exceptions to this rule on Currier A vs Currier B. Despite being very different in number, they graphed perfectly:
avsb.ods (Size: 21.67 KB / Downloads: 82)
So what's going on? I asked myself again tonight.
Quote:4.2.3 Results
Currier language A
There are 4,040 invalid words in a text of 10,645. That is 37.95% of the t
The body of 4,040 invalid words is comprised of 1,328 distinct words, a ratio of 32.87 (to 2 dp).
Of these 1,328 distinct words, 793 (59.71% to 2dp) are ungrammatical by one inconsistency, 404 (10%) are ungrammatical by two inconsistencies, 102 (7.68% to 2dp) by three inconsistencies, 26 by four inconsistencies and 3 by five inconsistencies.
Currier language B
There are 5,870 invalid words in a text of 20,969. That is 27.99% of the total.
The body of 5,870 invalid words is comprised of 1.877 distinct words, a ratio of 31.98 (to 2 dp).
Of these 1,877 distinct words, 1,116 (59.45% to two decimal places) are ungrammatical by one inconsistency, 606 (32.29%) are ungrammatical by two inconsistencies, 128 (6.82% to 2dp) are ungrammatical by three inconsistencies, 24 by four inconsistencies and 3 by five inconsistencies.
Total
Out of a total of 31,614 words tested, 9,910 are invalid. That is 31.35% of the total. The total of unique aberrant words across the whole corpus has not been tested.
What we are seeing here is that the idea of the CLS works, and that as it breaks down it breaks down in a Zipfian way. That is, that there is a power law underlying the inconsistencies in the idea. This could very well be attributable to a use of an artificial list of words that cannot be turned into Voynich glyphs, ie, proper nouns.
[/quote]
A Supposition:
Non conforming words have to be non-conforming to the CLS because they are nouns, and reducing them into the CLS system would destroy information.
Quote:Manually skimming through the list of non-conforming words, David noted that almost half had “l” as the first letter. Looked like a good place to start, so I tested word-conformance rate across different beginnings of all words in the manuscript text. Most were above 90%, but there were exceptions: words starting with “l” were about 14.7% conforming and those starting with “r” were 40.8% conforming.
Could this be explained by the idea that “l” and “r” can be prefixed to a word arbitrarily? Turns out that words with these prefixes are otherwise conforming to the CLS without them, confirming my suspicion.
Furthermore...
Quote:Three aberrant glyphs which only have medium or high conformity to the proposed CLS system.
However, these three aberrant glyphs conform to very specific rules, and seem to be part of specific ngrams that occur due to some as-yet-unidentified, but very specific, reason.
- “o” is aberrant 44.51% of the time, when it appears in the following bigrams: “ol”, “or” and (rarely) “lo”, “ro” (where “ro” could be a confusion for “lo”).
- “l” is aberrant 26.83% of the time, when it appears in the following bigrams: “lo” (see rule 1), “ly”, “ld”. Furthermore, these two bigrams always appear in the following trigrams: “oly”, “aly”, “old”, “ald”.
- “r” is aberrant 15.76% of the time, when it appears in the following bigrams: “ro” (see rule 1), “ry”, “ra”. These last two bigrams are almost always part of the following trigrams: “ara”, “ora”, “ary”, “ory”.
What can account for this?
Let's get into a 15th century mindset. It is perfectly logical that if you create a writing system, you reduce work. By creating a system that allows you to draw a line, followed by a curve. Faster and easier. You only break the system to introduce necessary information.
Could it be as simple as a syllabic reduction of words, with added expansion of contractions, but when proper nouns are included the syllabic reduction doesn't work because of the loss of information so extra consonants are included?
(And yes I'm fully aware of recent work carried out in this area in recent years, hello Emma and Marco!)
So the question here is : Can we speak the Voynich? we just need some experts in spoken medieval Romance languages to give it a try.. Or is there a different angle I'm not seeing?
(offtopic) As always, the statistics are interesting, but we end looking at them slack jawed with no real new insight....
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| Every terminal glyph has a tail... |
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Posted by: -JKP- - 13-12-2020, 04:49 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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I have a mostly written blog on this, but I am falling farther and farther behind in my blogs (I don't know when I can finish it) and, despite the pandemic, work is busier than ever, so it's becoming difficult to fit in any Voynich research.
This topic came up on another thread, but I think it deserves a thread of its own.
I've written numerous blogs about shapes in the VMS that are similar to Latin scribal conventions.
I want to point out another analogy, and that is that EVERY GLYPH that could (by convention) have a terminal tail in Latin has a tail in the VMS. Look at this example that I snapped from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. in the big-plant section. There are no exceptions. Every terminal glyph that has a tail-appropriate shape has a tail:
![[Image: VMSTails.png]](https://voynichportal.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/VMSTails.png)
This is pretty important because they do NOT put tails on everything in medieval scripts, but they do have a method for deciding which shapes CAN be given a terminal shape.
For example, in languages that use Latin characters (French, German, Italian, English, Czech, Spanish, etc.)
- It is NOT customary to add a tail to the letter "o" because it would be confused with g or y.
- It is NOT customary to add a tail to letters that already have a descender or ascender (thus "g" does not normally have an extra terminal tail, nor does "d").
- It is NOT customary to add a tail to an x-shape (EVA-d is similar to a looped x), and it almost has a descender the way it is usually written in the VMS.
If there is a "tail" on the above letters in Latin-alphabet languages, then it is usually an abbreviation, not a terminal tail. A terminal tail is a shape convention, not an abbreviation convention. For example, if you write Roman numeral 4 (iiii) in the old style with 4 minims (rather than iv) then it was usually written iiij. It's not a "j" as we know it, it's a minim with a terminal tail.
If you look at the marginalia on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. you will see that some of the letters have terminal tails, like the "n" and "h" on the last line. This is pretty normal in medieval script. Some scribes also added a tail to "h" within a word (and sometimes not).
It might even be argued that y is a c-shape with a tail rather than a Latin-like abbreviation symbol, but that's a separate discussion.
So, the VMS text respects this basic convention of which shapes may have a tail and which ones usually don't BUT it is highly unusual and distinct in having a tail on every terminal letter that is, by convention, allowed to have a tail. This is NOT something you see in medieval manuscripts.
It is, however, a very western way of doing things, even if it is idiosyncratic and specific to the order and choice of VMS glyphs.
So... putting a tail on everything that might normally have a tail seems to me to be significant because the entire manuscript is crafted like this. It's not like normal narrative text. It's almost like an exercise in scribal conventions and discipline (skills that a would-be scribe would need to have to get into a guild or to secure an apprenticeship).
I've often thought that the VMS was unfinished. There are a few things that look like they were left out. One of these is the illuminated initial that would normally be in the upper-left corner of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (it is missing). But maybe it's not "unfinished". Maybe this is part of the exercise. Indent the text to make room for an initial. Demonstrate that you know how to do it.
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| The four (or five) rivers... |
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Posted by: -JKP- - 13-12-2020, 07:15 AM - Forum: Imagery
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I've posted many images here and on my blog that show the "four rivers" of paradise. But this 13th-century mappa munda (from the BL Map Psalter) is different. It has five rivers:
![[Image: ArborSolis.png]](https://voynichportal.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/ArborSolis.png)
The four that are usual are phison, geon, tigris, and eufrates (which you can see on the right). There are numerous spellings for these rivers but the names are more-or-less the same on most maps.
But this map also one called "ganges" on the left. Now wait a minute... that's India. Do they mean a different Ganges in the Middle East?
Nope, I'm pretty sure they mean the Ganges River in India, which flows from northern to eastern India, because there are clues in other parts of the map.
If you look to the upper right of the rivers, you will see something that looks like buildings with smokestacks. These are oracle trees, or possibly a combination of oracle trees and temples (they look more like blobs than trees).
So what do these have to do with India? They probably trace back to the mythical adventures of Alexander, where he visited the oracle trees (talking trees) in India, one was male (called the sun tree), the other female (the moon tree). This drawing is a bit unusual because the sun tree is frequently on the right in most European illustrations. Here it is labeled on the left.
The trees are described as being in a circle (this attracted my attention because sacred groves all over Europe, especially northern Europe, are frequently in a circle, and the container-like towers on the VMS central rosette are also arranged in a circle).
Two of the trees could talk (in Indian and Greek) and would do so at daybreak, noon, and nightfall. To enter the sacred place, you could not bring iron (weapons). So, this place in India was revered in a way similar to the western reverence for Eden or "Paradise". Eden was often placed at the top of maps. On this map, the oracle trees share a place next to Eve and Adam in the central circle from which the rivers are flowing.
The prognostications from the trees did not favor Alexander, they "predicted" his death, but the myth lived on for hundreds of years, tucked away in these little bits of drawings and labels that are found in some manuscripts and some maps that are not directly associated with the Alexander chronicle.
It's also interesting that this combination of the sun and moon and a tree was a part of hermetic tradition in the west, perhaps an adaptation of the oracle trees to which the other "planets" were added:
![[Image: hermetic-tree-of-knowledge-granger.jpg]](https://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large-5/hermetic-tree-of-knowledge-granger.jpg)
In Rosarium Philosophorum, we have sun and moon trees:
![[Image: 17_detail_suntree.jpg]](https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/library/files/special/images/exhibitions/month/msferguson210/17_detail_suntree.jpg) ![[Image: 10_detail_moontree.jpg]](https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/library/files/special/images/exhibitions/month/msferguson210/10_detail_moontree.jpg)
I thought this was interesting too because the way the suns and moons are arranged is more similar to the Assyrian tree of life:
![[Image: img_5998.jpg]](https://mesocosm.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/img_5998.jpg)
Source: British Museum, Image © Barnaby Thieme
This tree of life was considered the center of the cosmos.
Here are the Hebrew sephirot arranged as limbs on a tree:
![[Image: 441-384x582.jpg]](https://talivirtualmidrash.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/441-384x582.jpg)
[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]This reminds me of the arrangement of some of the more stylized VMS plants.[/font]
And here is a sacred lake and grove on an island in Estonia (courtesy Pt, Wikipedia). Nine craters were created by a meteor strike about 3,500 years ago:
![[Image: 1024px-Kaali_main_crater_on_2005-08-10.3.jpg]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/78/Kaali_main_crater_on_2005-08-10.3.jpg/1024px-Kaali_main_crater_on_2005-08-10.3.jpg)
Visitors view it from a platform partway up the hill (after all these millennia, it is still considered sacred).
When something is sacred, a cosmic boundary is often drawn around it in medieval illustrations. And note the little rocks that are more apparent when the water level is low. This reminded me of the middle-right rotum on the VMS rosettes folio. Could the VMS image refer to something like this? with a cloudband to indicate a holy place?
Is it possible that the VMS rosettes folio is not really a strip map (which has always been my favorite interpretation) but perhaps a record of 9 different sacred places collected together on one folio?
Maybe the oracle of Delphi (Corycian cave) is represented by the top-left rosette: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
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| Applicability of AZdecrypt to Voynich? |
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Posted by: MichelleL11 - 11-12-2020, 11:43 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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This is the program written by Dave Oranchak collaborator, Jarl Van Eycke, a Belgian computer scientist that helped with the recent cracking of Zodiac's 340 code.
See thread:
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Here are links to the downloadable version and a web version.
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and a web version:
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It seems this program assumes that the code is a homophonic cipher -- so are we back to the same issue with the Voynich that this seems unlikely?
I'm interested in any comments anyone has about how this tool could be used to crack our mystery, too.
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| Marks on f103r |
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Posted by: -JKP- - 20-11-2020, 10:34 PM - Forum: Marginalia
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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
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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.
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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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![[Image: VMSVowels.png]](https://voynichportal.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/VMSVowels.png)
