The use of Arabic numerals has been promoted in Europe since the 10th century, but it took until the age of printing for them to (almost) entirely replace Roman numerals. One reason for the lasting popularity of Roman numerals in certain contexts would be that they are harder to tamper with, so they kept being used for things like accounting. (So far I've only seen anecdotal mention of this though. May need confirmation.)
The idea would be that they wrote for example xxvij. Because of the "j", nothing could be added. By contrast, something like 27 could be changed to 271 with minimal effort and drastic effects.
Obviously, one often-mentioned commonality of Roman numerals with Voynichese is low character entropy, or "low positional information". If I give you the alphabetically sorted set EVA [a, d, i, i, n], you know exactly how to combine them into a vord. The position of glyphs in clusters is inherent to the system and hardly provides information. In Voynichese as well as in Roman numerals, this is not an absolute truth (IV does not equal VI), but the contrast with regular texts and Arabic numerals respectively is similar.
Now I'm not saying Voynichese is designed for accounting or to prevent tampering, but the writing system also shows some resemblances to the practice with Roman numerals described above. There are some glyphs that look like they have something added to them, and those tend to "guard" edges of vords.
* The "c" or "a" with a swoop, in EVA called [y], guards both the left and right sides of vords. According to Voynichese.com, only 3% of [y] tokens do not appear at the edge. I think the actual percentage is even lower, since many examples seem to involve uncertain spaces.
* If you add an upward swoop to the [i] minim, you get what EVA calls [n]. This extended form of the minim could be said to "guard" the right side of words.
* EVA [m] is another glyph with an added swoop, and it appears almost exclusively at the end of vords. Exceptions often occur at the ends of lines, where some compression may have taken place.
* EVA [q] seems to guard the left side of vords. But [o] can do this as well, which is an argument against the system: if you have a word starting with [o], you could change it by adding [q] in front.
* 83% of [s], a curve with a swoop, is found at the first or last position of vords (this is [s] as a standalone glyph, not as part of the capped bench. I just did some quick calculations on Voynichese.com but there may be errors).
To be clear, this is not an attempt to read Voynichese as Roman numerals. But it is interesting to see some common tendencies between both systems.
this is to let you know that I am planning two, largely overlapping, talks about the Voynich MS.
The first will be on Saturday evening 9 October near Frascati. It will not be online. The title is: The Voynich MS in Rome and Latium.
Please contact me directly if you are in the area and would like to attend.
The second will be on Sunday 17 October at 16:00 UTC. (That's 18:00 Central European Time, or 12:00 US Eastern time). It will be online only. The title is: The "discovery" of the Voynich MS by Wilfrid Voynich.
I will provide registration details for this event as soon as I have them.
Stefano Guidoni commented on my blog that swallowtail merlons appear to come in two styles: straight an curved. I agree with him that the VM style *appears* straight, though we don't know if this was intentional.
Still, I wondered if there is any regional or chronological preference for either style, so I decided to copy our map and mark all straight V's in yellow, curved V's in black.
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Something weird happened though: the more I scrutinized existing buildings, the more I noticed that most (if not all) swallowtail merlons appear curved to some extent. They only look straight from certain angles, and some are more obviously curved than others. A nice and straight V only seems to occur in images.
Now, there are several possible explanations, which are not all mutually exclusive:
1) I was too strict and classified some pretty straight V's with the curved ones. Or I should have used different categories, like "a bit curved" versus "very curved".
2) Both styles exists in buildings, but our list of castles happens to lean seriously towards the curved side.
3) The straight style was once more common, but was often replaced by the more decorative curved style.
4) The "V" in swallowtail merlons is almost always curved, and the straight shape is just an artistic convention. Possibly because even curved merlons might appear straight from certain angles.
I almost certainly made mistakes in the list as well, so everything so far should be taken with a grain of salt. What do you think?
Since there has been a lot of interesting research and discussion recently about the swallowtail merlons castle drawing and comparable known examples by Koen, Marco, Aga, and others, I have a question about the text in this rosette:
Does anyone have a clear transcription of the entire circle of text going around the rosette in which the castle with the swallowtail merlons appears? And also of any text in this rosette that looks like it could possibly be related to this castle drawing? For example, I see what looks like a label word or phrase outside the text circle directly "above" (technically to the left of, since the castle is actually oriented to the left on the page) the castle. The spiraling text in the middle of the rosette may also be interesting and relevant. Unfortunately, the otherwise very useful voynichese.com transcription does not include the Rosettes page, and even in the Beinecke images, when one zooms in on this rosette to make it large enough, the text is too blurry to read and make out the characters.
I have attached an image of the castle with the label outside the text circle, so that you can see which text I am referring to, and so you can see how the text in these images is either too small or too blurry to read and distinguish the characters.
It was mentioned that a number of letters, although frequent, can not be seen on some pages. I want to know, what these letters are, and how many of them have been found.
You know, it doesn't really look like a castle.
No keep or Bailey, a huge unprotected entrance, windows al over the walls and a single prominent tower...
With the two side walls, it looks a lot more like a fortified Italian town.
Klaus Schmeh has published a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. about the Voynich manuscript: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Quote:Timm’s method involves first creating a few pieces of text and then repeating them many times with changes. This procedure, which can be called “self-citation,” sounds extremely simple, but is apparently able to reproduce many features of the Voynich manuscript text. It also explains the fact that the content of the manuscript has some properties of natural language, but to all appearances is not written in such (thanks at this point to the linguist Jan Henrik Holst, who recently made this clear to me again).
The presence of swallowtail merlons (aka Ghibelline merlons) on the Rosettes foldout may be an important cultural marker. However, focusing on existing buildings with this type of merlons is problematic, since it is usually hard to find out when the merlons were added. Battlements were often replaced, added or embellished during renovation efforts, and the documentation of this process is often hard to find. In other words, a building that has swallowtail merlons now, may not have had them at the time the VM was made.
Therefore, medieval images of swallowtail merlons may be a more reliable indication. This thread collects such images, and shows the results on a map. The examples are sorted chronologically. If you know any that should be added, please use the discussion thread You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
(Edit 21 Oct: separated manuscript art from other art forms).
Manuscripts:
c. 1310: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. from "Padova, BSV, Cod. 74, fol. 13v." (Venice, see Michelle's post You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).
c. 1321-1324: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (Venice, see Michelle's post You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).
c. 1324-1331: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (Naples)
1328-1329: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (Naples.) From a group of manuscripts reported by Rene, see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
c. 1330: Bodleian MS. Laud Misc. 587 fol. 1r. (Venice) (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)
c. 1330 - c. 1340: Egerton 3781 (Genoa) (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)
c. 1330 - 1340: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (Naples) (Diane O'Donovan)
c. 1350: Sarajevo haggadah (Barcelona), see Marco's post You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
c. 1350-1400: Zibaldone da Canal, MS Beinecke 327 (Venice) (Diane O'Donovan, see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)
c. 1370: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (Venice)
c. 1370-1400 Tacuinum Sanitatis (Codex Vindobonensis, series nova 2644, fol. 104v. Lombardy) (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)
c. 1370-1380: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (Milan)
c. 1380: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
c. 1385: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (Bavaria)
c. 1385-1390: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (Milan)
c. 1400 Biblioteca Guarneriana (S. Daniele del Friuli) You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (Florence)
c. 1400: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
14th century, heraldic devices found by Marco You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Tirol
c. 1435: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (Lombardy)
c. 1440: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (Lombardy region)
Other art forms:
1292: stone slab at Castell'Arquato (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)
1295-1299: frescos by Giotto in the Upper Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, see Marco's post You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
1304: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. fresco by Giotto in the Scrovegni chapel, Padua
1320: frescos by Giotto in the Peruzzi chapel, Florence.
c. 1340: Kapelle St. Maria Magdalena in Dusch (Switzerland) (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)
c. 1350-1360: "Fresco depicting a castle, inside the castle of Sabbionara, Avio, Lagarina Valley, Trentino-Alto Adige, Italy" You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
1390-1395: Castel Roncolo (Runkelstein), Bolzano, Italy (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)
c. 1397: Castello del Buonconsiglio fresco, Trento
1400-1410: Novacella abbey / Kloster Neustift (see Aga's post You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)
1400-1450: Fresco in Zwickenberg, Austria; see Aga's post You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
1420-1430: Frescos at Rocca di Vignola
1420-1430: church of Tramin/Termeno, Bolzano; see Aga's post You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
c. 1437: Ivrea, see Marco's post You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
1441: Marseiller (Verrayes) Cappella di San Michele
1444: painting (?) from Auer, Italy. See You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and the next.
1446: Rimini, see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
Extant buildings:
Castell'Arquato
Fenis castle
Locarno Castello Visconteo
Sirmione castle
Rhodes fortifications (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)
Pala tower in San Vittore
Castel Grumello
Castello Visconti Venosta, Grosio
Castello di Champorcher
Castle Foppoli
Castelgrande Bellinzona
Castle of Sasso Borbaro
Montebello castle
Montmayeur castle
Blonay Castle
San Giorio di Susa Castle
Saint Pierre Castle
Castello di Castelcorniglio
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Sudak Castle
Porta Soprana (Genoa)
Castello di Salorno, Haderburg
Castel d'Enna
Castello di Caccamo (Sicily)
Castello di Venere (Sicily)
Castello di Sperlinga (Sicily)
Castello di Carini (Sicily)
Castle of Almeria (Spain)
Castello di Brescia
Tour L'archet Morgex
Porta Palatina in Turin
Castello di Porta Giovia (Milan)
Porta Marina in Civitanova Alta
Piombino castle
Castelvecchio Verona
Castel Roncolo / Runkelstein
The map can be viewed here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Voynich Manuscript is a corpus of unknown origin written down in unique graphemic system and potentially representing phonic values of unknown or potentially even extinct language. Departing from the postulate that the manuscript is not a hoax but rather encodes authentic contents, our article presents an evolutionary algorithm which aims to find the most optimal mapping between voynichian glyphs and candidate phonemic values.
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![[Image: VM-5a7c473c2b6e7-560-308.jpg]](https://www.moleiro.com/vista/estaticos/formateadas/VM-5a7c473c2b6e7-560-308.jpg)
![[Image: 29218509195_fe67579086_o.jpg.webp]](https://www.venturists.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/29218509195_fe67579086_o.jpg.webp)
![[Image: Nine-Hill-Towns-of-Central-Italy.jpg]](https://academytravel.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Nine-Hill-Towns-of-Central-Italy.jpg)
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