I've been working on a thesis regarding the provenance of the VM and have been paying special attention to the New World hypothesis as I'm fortunate to live very close to one of the best New Spain/Aztec manuscript collections in the country (U.S). Although skeptical (as I am with any claimed origin), I'd like to thoroughly review the subject and have been focusing on a paleographic analysis against codecies of colonial New Spain and indigenous documents. One of the contentions made in Janick and Tucker's 2018 "Unraveling the Voynich Codex" is that the signature of their purposed author, Gaspar de Torres, can be found concealed at the top of f1v.
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I was curious about this claim and have a some experience with Photoshop so I decided to do my best to reduce as much of the concealing ink as I could. I'd like to share my results with this community and gather some feedback. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
For the sake of duplication, I completed this using Gimp 2.8.16. I used the original image on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and processed it with Unsharp-Mask, followed by Despeckle and then adjusted the contrast. Although I do believe there's a word or name there, I don't believe it to be Gaspar de Torres. It appears to me that the capitalized "G" and "T" Janick and Tucker point out are simply part of the overlying ink. The word/name that I see is "D i o/g d v/y o/? t a l" followed by "G a b/l/r/ e/a s y. Interesting to note is that the second word appears to be larger and with heavier ink on the what appears to be the "G". This could simply be a result of the author re-inking their quill, or perhaps something else entirely. I'm not sure.
I'd like to know your thoughts on this. It's entirely possible that there's nothing there and that I simply rorschach tested myself into seeing something. I've also considered applying this method to other areas of the manuscript and wonder if it's worth pursuing. I've already spent hours teasing these words out of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and need to move on to other parts of my research, so I hoped others here may be interested in pursuing this further.
It's wise to be careful about VMS "translations" that rely on an assumption of "polyglot" in order to be meaningful. The reason is simple... with enough degrees of freedom even nonsense text can be made readable (or almost readable).
But... I thought it might be worth discussing this subject because some languages are inherently polyglot.
For example, I was just reading a 14th-century letter in Frisian, and it is such a weird experience because it's English, Norse, Norse, English, Norse, German, English, Norse, Norse, Norse, English, English, German... It's a blend of these languages and if you know all three, you can pretty much read it.
I did notice that the grammar leaned more toward English than Norse (which in itself is interesting because Old English and Middle English sometimes have Norse grammar mixed in, but only bits of it, here or there, not the whole thing).
So, if Frisian were enciphered and someone were looking for word or letter-frequency patterns, it might still be possible to decipher a relatively simple substitution code, but... it would be a challenge, because it mixes three languages with different spelling structures.
In some ways, English is polyglot as well. A huge proportion is French, words like chauffeur, entrepreneur, bureau, critique, beau, recipe, bourgeois, valet, hors d'oeuvre, depot, chamois, ballet, armoire, cafe, a la mode, cliche, decor, savant, fiance, etc.
The "eau" combination is common in French but not otherwise characteristic of English words. Patterns like this could throw off computational attacks because they would not be consistent or in the same frequency as in the parent language.
Following the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., I would like to compare the VMS with the Fontana's works which are, as Nickpelling says, the best matches for the Voynich. Let's say for example Bellicorum Instrumentorum Liber.
Both of them, the VMS and Bellicorum..., are contemporary and some pages have the same layout. The VMS pages have plants with a weird script and the work of Fontana also has an image with some lines of an encrypted text. For more similarity, most plants are fantastic like most of the images in the Bellicorum..
Given these evidences and observations, we can do some hipothesis or assumptions. Par example: the script of the Voynich is a cipher with an underlying language or the exotic alphabet of a natural language. This is a valid and legitimate assumption...but has not worked in many years of research. Why?
We don't know why Fontana encrypted the text. It was not to hide it because there are lines in Latin and the cipher is a simple substitution, easy to decipher. A modern theory is that it was a kind of copyright. I don't believe it. Too anachronistic.
In my opinion, in the invented script of Fontana there is a call to the supernatural forces. It's the power of magic. Fontana invokes this power so that his machines and artifacts work.
Is it the same for the VMS script? I think so. This of course is another assumption. The script is not the human language but the language of the stars. The same magic in both cases.
I'll present a statement which I believe is true, and I wonder what you think about it. Note that the statement starts with an IF clause. I don't believe the IF clause is true, but assuming this as a given, then I do believe the consequences are true.
IF Voynichese does not represent natural language, then:
- it is still intended to look as if it does
- it is intentionally deceptive
Some arguments are the following:
- High resemblance between Voynichese glyphs and scribal conventions, both in form and positioning.
- Weirdos on first page, one of which I have recently found a parallel for in an initial "V".
- Layout as left-aligned paragraphs following the images to a large extent
So in conclusion I would say that the VM text either is natural language, a real text written in a way we don't understand
OR it is intended and designed to look as such
Here is a try to make list of substantial tests which may be useful to evaluate proposed simple solutions. Distilled, extreme descriptions are given. Pros and cons of applicability are considered.
It's assumed, that solution consists of the Algorithm which converts Voynichese to Text and claims that it is written in Language. The Algorithm must also have ability to convert Text and Language back to Voynichese.
Letter frequency test Letter frequencies of Text must match ones of Language.
There statistical methods to compare vectors of frequencies are needed.
+ It may be the only test which not only tests, but is also able to find solution.
+ It may cope with "null symbols" by considering relative letter frequencies.
+ Allows a lot of variations - frequency of adjacent, first, last letters, etc.
Word frequency test Word frequencies of Text must match ones of Language.
There statistical methods to compare vectors of frequencies are needed.
+ May be also useful if Voynichese word for some reason matches several Language words.
- Certain words and word forms may be ommitted due to stylistical reasons, which affects results in unknown way, so comparison methods there may be much trickier.
Word combination test Translations of the most frequent Voynichese word combinations are meaningful and common.
+ Good test for repetitive text and when at least something is known about sentence structure.
- More subjective than others.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Algorithm must distinguish meaningful and meaningless Voynichese text.
Number of test cases depends on required precision, but it should be quite high (6 originally proposed by the author are obviously not enough).
+ Ideal test for "black boxes".
- Number of false positives is unknown in advance and may be quite high.
- In some sense manuscript itself is big "Klaus' test", so for sufficiently advanced Algorithm this test is redunant.
Rene's test Text written in Language when transformed by the Algorithm to Voynichese must possess all properties of Voynichese.
Need method to determine if given text is Voynichese or not. It may not match Rene's proposal exactly, since the test requires not only convertability (which goes without saying) but also matching certain criteria.
+ Ideal test to remove pair <Algorithm, Language> from consideration.
- "Null symbols" can affect results in non-obvious way.
- Difficult to perform when Language is constructed language - no source texts.
Productivity test Each attested Voynichese word can be constructed with the Algorithm.
It's may be somewhat complicated to perform this test manually.
+ Analysis of words which do not pass this test may point to erroneous part of the Algorithm.
- Proper names, composite words, "null symbols" are substantial obstacles.
Quote:I talk about observation and not assumption.
The main difference is that an observation should be made objectively; of course when I see a tree, there are always people that say: no that is a bush. I will quickly give up then, because I can spend my time better than convincing those people.
An assumption would imply that you start somewhere, without showing exactly why you start there or have no underlying metrics.
I agree that an assumption is most of the time a scientific mistake, sometimes it leads to new paths however.
google says: Assumption - the act of taking for granted, or supposing a thing without proof;Observation - the act or the faculty of observing or taking notice; the act of seeing, or of fixing the mind upon, anything.
This is something I already had in mind to write something about.
My train of thoughts can be well described by using the example of the similarity of Voynich MS f68v3 with an illustration from Nicole d’Oresme’s Livre du ciel et du Monde (1377) as pointed out by Ellie Velinska.
Let's start with:
Evidence.
Evidence is first of all the Voynich MS itself, but there is much more. It is also the combined set of other medieval manuscripts that have come down to us, and lots of other historic material. Evidence is mostly 'objective'. However, evidence can include subjective material, for example historic letters expressing opinions. For the above example, the evidence is the Voynich MS on the one hand, and the Oresme MS on the other hand.
Observation.
An observation is something that can be made by someone. It can be a spoken or written statement. In the above example, the observation is: "the two drawings are similar". This case is clearly subjective. Similarity is an opinion, and different people may see it differently. An observation isn't necessarily either true or false, but it may be.
Hypothesis.
The hypothesis will try to explain the observation (or more directly some evidence). Here, for example: "the drawing in the Voynich MS derives from some copy of Oresme". Many different hypotheses can be derived from a single observation. A hypothesis is more likely to be either true of false, even if we may not know which of the two it is.
Making hypotheses is not a bad thing. One simply has to remember that they have to be tested, and ideally proven. One should not start taking them for granted, or as some form of evidence. (This last point may seem obvious, but it is a surprisingly common flaw).
Assumption.
An assumption is like a hypothesis, but the word implies that this hypothesis does not derive directly from anything, except, perhaps, what one might call common sense.
An assumption in the current case could be: "the Voynich MS drawing could not have been made independently by someone, who never saw any of the Oresme (or similar) drawings".
Assumptions abound, and again, they are not a bad thing, as long as one is fully aware of them, and ready to drop them if this becomes necessary.
The problem with assumptions is that one tends to make them all the time, without being too much aware of it.
Good assumptions are the ones that are clearly stated. Even if they can still be wrong.
It is not my intention to go into a never-ending discussion about the recent Judaeo-Greek translation proposal by Geoffrey Caveney. However, there are a number of general points related to this that are worth bringing up, and do not specifically concern only this example.
It is important to keep in mind that any decryption or translation is not a process by itself, but it is an inverse of a process that has already taken place.
It is the act of reversing what the person did who wrote the text.
If one proposes a decryption (even when it is just simple substitution) it must be possible to describe the original encryption process reasonably accurately, and in some detail.
The reverse process may in some cases be more complicated.
It is not sufficient to:
1) Take a transcription file
2) apply some more or less arbitrary transformation of it
3) claim that this is the meaning (i.e. the plain text).
One has to describe how this plain text was converted into the text we see in the MS.
If one has the right solution, this will be possible.
If one is doing something very different, i.e. not the right solution, but just trying to squeeze meaning out of the transcription using the incorrect method, this will not be possible.
Also a detailed description of how the decryption is done may not be possible, or if it is attempted, may clearly show the weaknesses of the method.
In recent cases where some document was decrypted successfully, there was never any discussions whether it is correct or not. Take for example the Codex Copiale.
In the case of the Judaeo-Greek example, while we alternatively hear that it is consistent, or that it does not have to be consistent, this detailed description is not given.
The translation goes into two steps. The first is from Voynichese to "Greek written in Hebrew characters", and the second is from this to more standard Greek. In both steps changes are made.
In the first case, there is a many-to-many mapping of characters. In the second, parts of words are added/deleted and some more characters are modified.
What we need to see is:
- the Greek text that is proposed to be the plain text
- the method how this is represented using Hebrew characters
- the method how this new text is then mapped to the Voynich text
Both would normally involve a table.
We then need to see an explanation why the resulting text in the Voynich MS exhibits the typical word patters and the low entropy values.
This is true for any solution, of course.
One thing that this particular proposal covers is the appearance of Eva-f and Eva-p in top lines of paragraphs, which is typically overlooked in proposed solutions (because the would-be solver usually is not aware of this feature).
This is a general, philosophical question. It is about Voynich ms research, about all of our research, about all of us, including myself.
Could it be possible that, in some way or in some respect, some of us actually prefer that the Voynich MS remain undeciphered?
This mysterious manuscript is just so much FUN to study! We can all make up our own theories about languages, we can do interesting linguistic and statistical studies on the ms text, we can propose fascinating theories about the possible meanings of the illustrations, etc., etc., etc. It is a fertile ground for our imagination, and for our intellectual inclination to analyze the text, for those of us who are mathematically inclined.
But if the Voynich MS ever were to be successfully deciphered, whether by me or someone else here or someone else anywhere or whomever, ... we would lose all of that. The mystery would be gone. There would be no more puzzle left to analyze and speculate about and research. It would be just another historical document.
Oh, it would still be researched, in detail, for sure. But that work would then be the province of the specialists in whichever language/dialect and in whichever historical specialization the MS happens to belong to. If it's Byzantine Greek or Judaeo-Greek, it would be the specialists in those fields who would study it. If it's a unique method of medieval Latin manuscript abbreviations, it would be the specialists in that field who would study it.
Linear B can still be studied, by those who specialize in Archaic and Mycenaean Greek, in Mycenaean and Minoan civilization, and in the linguistics of the distinct type of syllabary that the script represented. But it can no longer be studied by a broad spectrum of talented and curious intellectuals without those specialized skills, as it was in the 1920's and 30's and 40's in many very interesting and fascinating ways by a wide variety of investigators. I bet many people were actually disappointed when Michael Ventris successfully deciphered Linear B. He had taken their puzzle game away from them.
I don't think many people will admit to feeling this way. But I think it is a philosophical question that is worth asking and worth reflecting on.
I posted a couple weeks ago about the red labels on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 2 , and about medieval medical astrology, and my idea that the labels may represent the body parts that medieval physicians associated with each sign of the Zodiac.
Here is a link to an academic scholar's summary of the traditional medieval associations of body parts and Zodiac signs:
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The relevant table is at the bottom of the page. I have also attached the table to this post.
Now, with my (quasi-Judaeo-)Greek correspondences of Voynich characters, as I have posted regarding the first four lines of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 1, I am able to identify a significant number of Greek body part names in these 12 red labels on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 2 . In particular, the body parts proceed in order from head to toe around the chart, as they do in the attached table.
I only list here the words for which I have interpretations at this stage.
I begin near 12 o'clock position on the chart:
[soy shr ...]
"tos mr ..."
Greek "tous mere ..."
"the parts ..."
Notes: I interpret the [sh] character with a more "closed" loop on top as a Greek "m", as opposed to the [sh] character with a more "open" loop on top as a Greek "t" or "d".
As I noted before, confusion of the grammatical genders of some forms was common in the Greek of the Byzantine period. Here we see the masculine plural article "tous" together with the neuter plural noun "mere".
From here, the body parts now proceed in order from head to toe around the chart, as in the attached table:
I admit I cannot explain the final "s" here, and it is possible the [y] character is serving more broadly as an abbreviation for various word endings, as does the similar-looking medieval Latin abbreviation symbol (often called "9").
[ykeo?y okchy]
no interpretation yet
[?cht?y]
"?hk?s"
Greek "kheires"
"hands"
The difficulty here is more with reading the word in the ms, rather than with the Greek interpretation. VViews has also noted on his blog the difficulty in reading this word.
[chkchdar]
"hthvar"
Greek "tharre"
I interpret this word to mean the heart and surrounding areas of the body.
The modern Greek word means "courage", "ardor", etc.
[ykar ykaly]
no interpretation yet
[lkshykchy okar]
no interpretation yet
Note: It is not necessarily simple to determine the late medieval Byzantine Greek medical terminology for such body parts as "spleen" and "lumbar region"!
Note: If you look very closely and carefully at the gallows characters in these two words, you will see the faint traces of the top left loops, indicating that they were originally intended to be written as [t], not as [k].
[ykchys ...]
"sthist ..."
Here the ms appears to repeat the term "stethos" ("chest"), already listed in a previous label.
[ykecho ols eesydy]
I have an interpretation only for the middle word:
"ost"
Greek "osta"
"bones"
