| Welcome, Guest |
You have to register before you can post on our site.
|
| Online Users |
There are currently 526 online users.
» 7 Member(s) | 513 Guest(s)
Applebot, Baidu, Bing, Facebook, Google, Yandex, Jacob Carolus, ololololo, Oscroft
|
| Latest Threads |
Why and how the text coul...
Forum: Theories & Solutions
Last Post: ololololo
3 minutes ago
» Replies: 371
» Views: 62,368
|
Assumptions baked into th...
Forum: Physical material
Last Post: Jorge_Stolfi
36 minutes ago
» Replies: 47
» Views: 1,127
|
I am not convinced by the...
Forum: Provenance & history
Last Post: JoJo_Jost
3 hours ago
» Replies: 55
» Views: 2,640
|
Voynich's anatomy
Forum: Imagery
Last Post: JoJo_Jost
4 hours ago
» Replies: 117
» Views: 10,800
|
EVA "qo" in 15th century ...
Forum: Analysis of the text
Last Post: BessAgritianin
4 hours ago
» Replies: 21
» Views: 2,265
|
[Article] What We Actuall...
Forum: Voynich Talk
Last Post: bi3mw
7 hours ago
» Replies: 6
» Views: 194
|
Palatino 766 pipes, pools...
Forum: Imagery
Last Post: Bernd
9 hours ago
» Replies: 77
» Views: 16,743
|
No text, but a visual cod...
Forum: Theories & Solutions
Last Post: Antonio García Jiménez
Yesterday, 07:40 PM
» Replies: 1,918
» Views: 1,321,049
|
Voynich Reconsidered
Forum: Theories & Solutions
Last Post: dfs346
Yesterday, 05:36 PM
» Replies: 153
» Views: 109,637
|
[split] Aga Tentakulus' L...
Forum: Analysis of the text
Last Post: nablator
Yesterday, 01:50 PM
» Replies: 87
» Views: 35,350
|
|
|
| 15thc perception on swallowtail merlons? |
|
Posted by: Koen G - 03-09-2021, 08:39 AM - Forum: Imagery
- Replies (605)
|
 |
EDIT: This thread has evolved into a collection of images and examples of swallowtail merlons. For more explanation and an overview, see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
The map gathering all our data is You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
There are broadly two ways we have generally tried to explain the presence of swallowtail merlons on the Rosettes foldout:
1) Generic architecture: the artist wanted to draw a crenelated wall and a castle, and in his mind this was what they looked like. We have seen examples of this in various manuscripts: swallowtail merlons on an anonymous wall in a manuscript about siege weapons, or in a country where we know they historically did not occur. The artist just drew crenelations like this, and no additional meaning is intended.
2) Specific architecture: this is what people think of when they look for possible candidates to identify the castle: the image is a "portrait" of a building that existed in the 15th century. Maybe the artist wanted to draw his city, or one he knew.
These are usually discussed in neutral terms, i.e. "this is what the building looks like". However, we also know that the so-called Ghibelline merlons were once a powerful political signal, and their appearance would have been far from neutral. Is it possible that some additional meaning was still meant in the 15th century? Since these merlons are some of the only connections we have between the VM and the real world, it might be worthwhile to investigate the possible extent of their meaning. I don't know much about this, so I'll start from the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.:
"The Guelphs and Ghibellines were factions supporting the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor, respectively, in the Italian city-states of central and northern Italy... During the 12th and 13th centuries, rivalry between these two parties formed a particularly important aspect of the internal politics of medieval Italy."
What remained of this division in the 15th century? There is not much on the wiki, but it is clear that the division was still somewhat relevant. For example as late as ca. 1447-1450 thier rivalry dominated politics in Milan. And ideological differences remained, where Ghibelline factions tended to support the Emperor, while the Guelphs supported the Pope and later also the French.
However, by the very end of the 15th century, the division had become obsolete.
|
|
|
| Cvetka's Slovenian Theory Thread |
|
Posted by: cvetkakocj@rogers.com - 25-08-2021, 05:22 AM - Forum: Theories & Solutions
- Replies (118)
|
 |
The Voynich Manuscript consists of normal language used in Slovenia in the 15th century. The examples could be found on my web page Voynich Slovenian Mystery in the long article on the VM grammar. Since then, I have discovered another manuscript with minims shaped with upward flourishes.
The VM is not written in code, but in the language the Stična Codex from 1428-1440, but by a foreign monk from Strassburg.
|
|
|
|
| Rightward and Downward in the Voynich Manuscript - Patrick Feaster |
|
Posted by: MarcoP - 21-08-2021, 05:53 PM - Forum: News
- Replies (80)
|
 |
Three days ago, Patrick Feaster published You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Like the previous one (discussed You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.), it is full of observations, data and graphics (that's why reading it took me a few days). Patrick's work is innovative and thought-provoking: not only he computes interesting quantitative measures, but he presents them visually, making his results much more accessible.
For instance, these two graphs are about line-position for words starting with o- and qo-
Words in each line are assigned to one of 10 positions (longer lines will have more than one word for some positions, while shorter lines will not contribute to some positions). In the first plot, the Y axis shows the % of words starting with o- and qo-.
The plot on the right has the same 10 positions on the X axis and shows the o/qo ratio on the Y. It makes visually clear that, in the first half of the line (with the exception of position 2), the two classes of words have similar frequencies; in the second half of the line, the frequency of o- rises, while that of qo- drops, so that the ratio increases steeply.
This research really deserves to be read carefully. But if you don't feel like reading the whole post, examining the graphs and reading the conclusions will give you an idea of Patrick's results.
|
|
|
|
| Can statistics help crack the mysterious Voynich manuscript? |
|
Posted by: lurker - 21-08-2021, 07:19 AM - Forum: News
- Replies (14)
|
|
Can statistics help crack the mysterious Voynich manuscript?
Q & A with Claire Bowern
Link: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Quote:Bowern created and taught an undergraduate class to explore the possibilities, which she and post-doctoral researcher Luke Lindemann describe in a recent paper in the Annual Review of Linguistics. She spoke with Knowable about some of their insights. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
|
|
|
|
| Crinoids |
|
Posted by: -JKP- - 20-08-2021, 03:07 AM - Forum: Imagery
- Replies (3)
|
|
I have over 1,000 unread posts, I haven't looked at my Voynich research for months, I can't read anything right now, but I wanted to quickly post this image because the textures are so Voynich-like:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
They are crinoid fossils, look it up on a search engine to see more of these awesome relics of the past.
Gotta run.
|
|
|
|
| How woud an attack work? Spiral text as Rev. 6:14. |
|
Posted by: Koen G - 11-08-2021, 12:44 AM - Forum: Voynich Talk
- Replies (71)
|
|
In the "sky" part of the top-right rosette, there is a line of Voynichese text in a spiral. Some time ago, by coincidence, I noticed a similar "spiral in the sky" in depictions of Revelation 6:14: "The heavens receded like a scroll being rolled up". I didn't pursue this any further since depictions of the event are really rare and it I didn't think Revelation as a whole was relevant to the Rosettes page (I still don't think so, but that's beside the point).
![[Image: attachment.php?aid=5609]](https://www.voynich.ninja/attachment.php?aid=5609)
But now I'm thinking: no matter what one's view is on the Rosettes page, we are looking at a medieval document and a quote from the Bible is always possible. So even if I wouldn't know what to do with this on the level of the analysis of the whole page, it may still be interesting to consider this line of Voynichese in isolation and compare it to the bible verse.
Since there are a lot of variables involved and I believe in the power of collaboration, I wonder if you guys are interested in trying this exercise here together. There are a number of advantages why this particular parallel is suitable:
- It is a theory-neutral proposition. I am just putting the possibility out there that a particular line of scripture is used, which can be applied to many contexts. It stands alone to be tested neutrally.
- For example, various people believe the foldout to depict cosmic events, and/or the top right some kind of disaster like flooding. This line from revelation about a rolled-up-scroll-sky may have come to mind to the maker even if the page has no religious meaning overall.
- The text spirals itself, imitating the movement of the heavens being rolled up and reinforcing the parallel with a scroll. Assuming this interpretation is correct, the line of text itself does what it is about.
- This means that we can compare an isolated line of Voynichese: the one that rolls like a scroll...
- ... to a concrete, limited piece of plaintext.
- The fact that we have a whole line of text may provide a whole different dynamic than trying to match individual words separately. It means not only nouns but verbs! Grammar!
- Even if it is all for nothing, we may still learn something.
There are a number of difficulties as well:- Various bible versions and languages
- This is a limited version of what Nick Pelling calls the Block Paradigm: you take a chunk of Voynichese and try to (force)match it to an expected plain text. How does one do this? How do you call (partial) success? How do you call defeat?
- We know which piece of scripture must certainly be included, but we don't know which surrounding verses may have been included as well, if any. Just for reference, here is a larger passage:
Quote:12 I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, 13 and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. 14 The heavens receded like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. 15 Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and everyone else, both slave and free, hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. 16 They called to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! 17 For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can withstand it?”
Anyway, I would love to undertake this as a forum project if some people are interested. I personally see it as a test of how to tackle a problem like this more than a surefire way to cracking the VM, but the process may still be interesting.
Edit: I will add A screenshot of the relevant VM text spiral as well as my attempt to "straighten it".
|
|
|
|
| "En" as "ein" |
|
Posted by: Anton - 09-08-2021, 09:33 PM - Forum: Voynich Talk
- Replies (13)
|
|
This is a question stimulated by a couple of observations. The first one is that we don't have any "ein" in all the Germanic marginalia throughout the MS, but we have quite a few occurrences of "en" there. The second one is a statistics observation which may be of importance if some kind of Germanic dialect is the language of the plain text. Since that's far from certain, I hold it back for now.
In short, in my latest pursuit of numericals, I've been in search for "ein".
The question is:
I recall from discussions in this forum, and from certain sources that I saw, that there have been medieval variants of the German word "ein", such as e.g. "ain" and, notably, "en".
I wonder whether there was/is a dialect which would substitute "en" (or something similar) not only for the distinct word "ein", but also for "ein" as prefix and suffix. For example, "Stein" would become "Sten", while "einander" would become "enander"
Something that immediately comes to my mind is Dutch, where "ein" is "een", and "Stein" is "Steen", but this is only "partial match", since e.g. there is no "reen" instead of "rein".
|
|
|
|
The empty throne |
|
Posted by: R. Sale - 09-08-2021, 07:56 PM - Forum: Imagery
- Replies (13)
|
|
Regarding the VMs rainbows and whether or not the double rainbow is a throne that is unoccupied. And further as to whether this was an example of apophasis, of making note of something through the use of a literary device.
Not to mention literary, because it does not appear to function visually. There must be some sort of visual representation chosen <by the artist> to illustrate the artist's intention. A crown may be used to symbolize a king in both literary and visual examples. And if one knows the details of crowns, potentially there is much more to learn. Likewise a throne may symbolize a certain set of interpretations and both classical and Christian illustrations show rainbow thrones in the range of the medieval examples. This type of representative symbolism is metonymy and works in both literary and visual interpretations.
And so, the question is which interpretation might best apply. Is there a specific event that was relevant to such conditions?
There was the papal gift of La Sainte Hostie de Dijon. It was a big deal! There were annual celebrations. But does this apply to the VMs? Is the VMs rainbow an empty throne?
Is the idea of the 'empty throne' a valid one? Are there other examples?
Three examples where an empty throne is the central focus of the illustration occur in different versions of a book by Christine de Pizan, Le livre du chemin de long estude.
1) Harley 4431, fol. 192v, which is 'The Book of the Queen'
2) Ms Paris 836, folio 15r
3) KBR Ms 10982 folio 33v, which is a CdP autographed version from the library of the Dukes of Burgundy
The idea of the empty throne clearly exists in association with other evidence and events having Parisian and Burgundian connections and was in part coincident with the Anglo-Burgundian occupation of Paris from 1420 to 1435.
|
|
|
|
|
)
![[Image: 498px-Polygonon_arren_Wiener_Dioskurides.jpg]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/70/Polygonon_arren_Wiener_Dioskurides.jpg/498px-Polygonon_arren_Wiener_Dioskurides.jpg)