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| question: white / red roses in ms imagery? |
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Posted by: geoffreycaveney - 17-04-2021, 04:56 PM - Forum: Imagery
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This is simply a question, since I am sure that many people have studied it, researched it, and know much more about this topic than I do:
Can anyone tell me if we can clearly identify any white or red roses in any of the imagery anywhere in the Voynich manuscript?
My reason for asking is probably already obvious to many of you: the white rose and the red rose were the famous symbols of the English House of York and House of Lancaster, respectively, in their feud throughout the 15th century, culminating in the Wars of the Roses. Although the latter wars themselves postdate the apparent age of the Voynich ms parchment, their rivalry and their central place in English (and French!) history in the early 15th century are entirely contemporary with the 1406-1438 range for the dating of the ms parchment. The third and final phase of the Hundred Years' War between England and France, the Lancastrian War, lasted from 1415 to 1453. England controlled much of the territory of northern France in the period 1415-1429 in particular. (I recall one analysis concluded that the month names in Latin letters written on the Zodiac chart pages of the ms were characteristic of a northern French dialect.)
Geoffrey
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| New Blog Post, [imagery] "Sources for the Voynich Forgery" |
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Posted by: proto57 - 15-04-2021, 02:38 PM - Forum: Imagery
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Through imagery comparisons it is sometimes possible to identify the source of illustrations used in the Voynich. This is of course done all the time. The interesting thing is that many times images are "grouped" in one source... that is, several images seem to be copied from one book or manuscript, when none can be found in many other sources. For instance, only three books on microscopy each contain several close comparisons to specific Voynich illustrations; while no good or exact comparisons like these can be found in the vast corpus of other books on microscopes and microscopy.
This of course defies coincidence, especially when those sources... whether contemporaneous to the creation of the Voynich calfskin, or predating it, or post-dating it... are so varied. I mean, even if one discards (as is often done) those sources that defy one's choice of era for the Voynich, and keeps only those acceptable to the observer, it is still difficult to explain how the scribe had access to a wide range of sources, from geographically distant places, created over a large span of time. But if one includes all good comparisons, without prejudice to the time of creation of that source, the problem goes from difficult to impossible, leaving really only one reasonable conclusion.
https://proto57.wordpress.com/2021/04/12/the-sources-for-the-voynich-forgery
On top of that, there is context to the observations. They are not floating around in limbo, disconnected. For each of these comparisons, they have context in the Primer. From the post:
"The list below includes the Primer [1904 Follies of Science in the Court of Rudolf II, by Bolton], and then a selection of other sources for the imagery found in the Voynich. They all have one or more of the below characteristics. Some are direct, specific, and identifiable sources, and others are not specifically identifiable but probable works used as models and influences for the content of the Voynich.
- The item, person, activity can be directly traced back to Follies, the “Primer”, and or:
- The item is in some work, or in a work by some person, mentioned in Follies of Science at the Court of Rudolf II, and or:
- The item in the Voynich is related to the disciplines, activities, and items which would would reasonably expect to be found in the Court of Rudolph II, as imaginatively conveyed by Bolton in his faulty work.
- The item would, by being in the Voynich, fulfill the goal of the forgery, i.e., to look as though the book came from the Court of Rudolf II. That is, there is a reason behind these comparisons, that supports them being correct.
- Multiple comparisons sometimes come from single books as sources, further supporting the correctness of the hypothesis.
The fact that, through Follies, all these images from the Voynich connect to Bolton’s vision of the Court, and to each other, gives them context, and greatly lowers the possibility that any one of them, or all of them, is purely coincidence, paradiolia, or wishful thinking. These connections, to each other, and the Court, strengthen these identifications in the context of my hypothesis."
Since writing this post I've been reminded of the copies of the "Buch der Natur", also with several illustrations which can be reasonably tied to the Voynich, although predating it. I plan on adding this observation to the post today, for I agree this is another likely source: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Rich.
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| Lipogrammatic text |
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Posted by: geoffreycaveney - 15-04-2021, 01:45 AM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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A lipogram or a lipogrammatic text is a piece of writing in which the author deliberately avoids the use of a certain letter (or possibly letters, although this is not typical), using only words that do not contain that particular letter (or letters).
The concept goes all the way back to the Ancient Greek author Lasus of Hermione in the 6th century B.C., who wrote poems using only words that did not contain the letter sigma. This concept has reappeared in literature from time to time over the course of the three millennia since then. It would not be an unknown or unfamiliar concept to an early 15th century European author or student.
If taken to the extreme, lipogrammatic text could possibly explain some of the extremely unusual statistical properties of the Voynich manuscript text. Naturally it would likely require the avoidance of more than just one letter to achieve anything close to the extremely low entropy and conditional entropy values found in the Voynich ms text. The purpose of most historical literary lipograms was not to lower the entropy values of their texts, and I doubt the statistical analysis of actual historical literary examples of lipogrammatic text would find extremely low entropy values. But if the author of the Voynich ms carried this process to a certain extreme, it could be one part of the explanation for the statistical properties of the text that we observe.
For example, if an English writer wrote a lipogrammatic text using only words that do not contain the letter "a", very common words such as "and", "a", "that", "are", "was", "as", etc., would have to be absent from the text. (Full disclosure: This idea occurred to me while considering this very possibility for a Middle English text.) If the Voynich ms text is indeed lipogrammatic in this way, then we would have to consider not only the effect of the lack of a particular letter or letters on statistical properties of the text, but also the effect on the grammatical structure imposed by the necessity of avoiding, for example, such normally essential function words as "and", "a", "are", "was", etc., throughout an entire text.
Geoffrey C.
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| geoffreycaveney's Middle English theory |
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Posted by: geoffreycaveney - 10-04-2021, 07:01 AM - Forum: Theories & Solutions
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[Edit KG: I changed the title of this thread so Geoffrey can discuss his Middle English theory here]
Recently in the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. threads, I have tentatively raised the idea of a Germanic interpretation of certain possible readings of the Voynich manuscript text. To be clear, I certainly do not mean that the Voynich ms text could represent standard German, Dutch, etc., even in their late medieval forms as Middle High German, Middle Dutch, etc. In fact, in my tentative hypothesis I have made reference to an extremely divergent dialect, Wymysorys, strongly influenced by Polish in the area of southern Poland where it is spoken, and moreover exhibiting a curious mixture of High / Central German (like Standard German), Istvaeonic (Dutch / Flemish), and Low German (Saxon) features that even make it difficult to classify within the branches of the West Germanic languages.
But in this thread I want to focus not on the arguments in favor of this latest idea of mine, but rather on its weakest and most problematic points. Among a number of these, I want to begin with the matter of word-final sounds, letters, and characters or units. This is a huge issue for any theory about the interpretation of the Voynich ms text: The number of distinct final units of Voynich vords, however they may be parsed and classified, is strikingly small and limited. The vast majority of Voynich vords end in EVA [y], [n], [l], or [r], with a significant but much smaller number of them ending in EVA [s], [m], [o], or [d]. EVA [n] is virtually exclusively vord-final.
To justify a correspondence of such a distribution of vord-final units with any reasonably possible known language, I must attribute to EVA [y] a special nature, either as a "null character/unit", or at most as an ambiguous laryngeal "H", which may variously reflect an /h/ sound, a lenition or fricativization of the adjacent sound (as in Irish), possibly a vowel sound in certain environments, and/or possibly still a null unit. This analysis allows, for example, the vord-final sequence EVA [-ky] to possibly represent the unit [k] as the actual final unit, possibly modified in some way by the [y] unit, or possibly not modified at all if [y] is a pure null.
In this way, one can develop a system with [l] and [r] as consonants that occur very frequently in word-final position, and reasonably frequently elsewhere (more so for [l] than for [r]). The special nature of [y] allows a possible modest frequency of word-final occurrence for other consonants, but not a great frequency.
So the question then becomes, which is the consonant EVA [l] that is frequent in both final and non-final position, which is the consonant EVA [r] that is frequent in final position and modestly frequent elsewhere, and how does one account for the positional occurrence of all the other consonants?
In the Germanic interpretation, I propose that EVA [l] is "s", frequent in both final and non-final position, and that EVA [r] is indeed simply "r", frequent in final position (syllable-final as well as word-final) and only modestly frequent in other positions. This seems reasonable for Germanic languages.
But the problematic issue, then, is how to account for all of the other occurrences of word-final consonants? In particular, how does one account for and represent word-final "n" and "t"?
The only explanation I can think of is that EVA [ky], for example, represents "tH", and EVA [qoky], for example, represents "nH", and in these sequences "H" is merely a null unit. However, even this solution only provides for about 600 words with final "t" (or possibly "d") in the entire Voynich ms text, and only less than 200 words with final "n".
Clearly there is no way that a Standard German text of tens of thousands of words will only have less than 200 words with final "n". Only 600 words with final "t" is a less extreme restriction, but still requires careful justification and explanation. These are the most problematic points, prima facie, for any Germanic theory of the Voynich ms text.
Now it does so happen that Standard German is rather extreme among Germanic languages for its very high frequency of final "n". Dutch / Flemish, Saxon, and even other High German dialects drop the final "n" in many places where Standard German retains it. Thus, a divergent dialect such as Wymysorys, an East Central High German dialect with an unusually significant presence of Flemish and/or Saxon features, is at least a much better candidate to be the underlying language of the ms than standard German itself.
In short, any theory that the language of the Voynich ms text is Germanic will first of all have to account for the representation and frequency of all word-final consonants, in particular "s", "r", "n", and "t", and also explain how they are represented in non-final position and with what frequency.
Geoffrey
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| interesting new ideas about f17v |
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Posted by: geoffreycaveney - 08-04-2021, 05:49 AM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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This is just a brief note to alert readers of the forum to the very interesting new ideas about folio page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that Koen has recently posted on his blog at the following link: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Koen's post mainly concerns the imagery of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , but his interesting new insights inspired me to take a fresh look at the text of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. as well. My comments on this topic can be found at the following links on the same site and page:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
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I encouraged interested readers to check out all of these new ideas and see what you think.
Geoffrey
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| Domus Aurea |
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Posted by: Ruby Novacna - 28-03-2021, 06:21 PM - Forum: Imagery
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Hello everybody !
I came across a youtibe video in Russian that tries to explain the rosettes page like the map of ancient Rome, including Nero's Domus aurea.
Has such a proposal already been discussed on the forum?
I add the link You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (double the speed!)
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| Regaining the lost order |
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Posted by: Anton - 28-03-2021, 12:05 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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The VMS text is enigmatic on many levels - on the character level, on the word level, on the line level, and even on the alphabet level as well. Dealing with the word and line levels, one notices several features that are simply too well-manifested to be neglected:
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- You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
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Shifting to the folio and paragraph levels, there have been some You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. in the attempts to detect the structure of narration in the VMS text.
The latter point suggests that the plain text, beside being encrypted on the character or/and word level, also underwent some kind of shuffling on the word level - and this has been my idea since I finished that blog post of mine. This point is made stronger if the former three bullets are cumulatively taken into account. In fact, shuffling would explain them all right away.
Vord shuffling would also explain why the text is so difficult for us to decode: to approach vord meanings, one would strongly prefer correct vord order, and, on the other hand, it is difficult to approach correct vord order without any idea of the individual vords' meaning. Much like the chicken-and-egg problem, you see.
Now, what could have been this shuffling? Let's say we are pretty sure that it could not have been as simple (or as complex - for the medieval mind) as pure random shuffling of all vords in a folio. That's because that would have been a one-way process, and the output text would have been made virtually impossible for the reader to decode. Unless - and here is the first option that I can suggest right away - shuffling is run against very short vord chunks of constant length. Suppose you break the whole text into three- or four-word chunks, and then shuffle words randomly within those chunks. Then the plain text order would be fairly simple to reconstruct for anyone who has the idea of the grammar of the language of the plain text. Note that, in principle, the chunks do not have to be line-based. In other words, suppose e.g. that we have a three-line source text, the first three-word chunk can be comprised of the first words of the three lines, the second chunk then would be comprised of the second words of the three lines, and so forth. The shuffling is thus vertical instead of lateral. In principle, this is compatible with examples shown in the multipass thread where it appears as if first vords of lines in a paragraph were written in a single pass, and general sequence of writing was not left-to-right, top-to-bottom, but rather top-to-bottom, left-to-right - at least in part.
The second option that I can imagine is technically also shuffling from the perspective of the observed result, but from the perspective of the algorithm I would rather call it "loading". Suppose that one has the available portion of folio space (it may be as simple as a rectangle box or it may be more complex as the folio space limited by images and other portions of the text), and then he proceeds with loading that space with vords, placing vords into certain (possibly even voluntary) positions of that space. What would be the mechanisms that would allow the reader to reconsruct the original vord order? I can think of some, as follows.
a) A static pre-determined map of where exactly you should place each word of plain text. Possibly not the most probable option, since consistent regularity would probably have been discovered by researchers quite quickly.
b) A deterministic algorithm of dynamic word placing. Think of the knight's move for example. Possibly not very probable as well, since that would not explain the right-alignment feature mentioned above, unless there are some specific alignment adjustments in the algorithm.
c) The dedicated pointer. This is like option a), but the presence of dedicated pointer allows you to implement different order for each new case. The dedicated pointer is some sequence or pattern in the text which specifies where each word is located.
d) Positional markers. This is actually an extended variant of option b), only this time the algorithm is supported by positional markers in the text. The abundance of gallows which visually look like markers indeed, and also the baseline jumps of the leading o (and sometimes y) characters, vaguely hint at this possibility.
e) Each vord has a pointer in itself as to where the next vord is located. The leading or the traling character may serve as such pointer, or the gallows character may, as well. Note that the character serving as a pointer does not necessarily mean that it does not contribute to the semantics of the vord. The pointer function may just be an additional function of certain characters - or of characters occupying certain position in a vord.
f) The gallows coverage may also contribute to the vord order in some way.
So... if there is the lost order, then why not go and recover it? 
What I'm pretty sure of, is that approaching the VMS text as the simple left-to-right, top-to-bottom word flow is a dead-end.
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![[Image: blkx9ean8tt61.png?width=2000&format=png&...79880064e6]](https://preview.redd.it/blkx9ean8tt61.png?width=2000&format=png&auto=webp&s=55d1b7e93696c512e46ccbe466754279880064e6)
