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| Auctions & W. Voynich |
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Posted by: voynichbombe - 17-09-2017, 02:36 PM - Forum: Voynich Talk
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This is about antiquarian book auctioning in the timeframe Wilfried was active in. I know very little about auctions in general, and historic antiquarian book auctions specially. The Schoenberg Insitute Database of pre-modern Manuscripts, which is basically a huge and growing collection of entries from all sorts of auction catalogues has an entry about Wilfried Voynich:
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I may be mistaken, but Wilfrieds record struck me a bit strange, if compared to that of H.P. Kraus's (which maybe invalid
due to the timeframe, so if you'd know any other seller or agent more fitting to compare to, I'd be very glad for a hint).
While Voynich is listed in provenance records probably referring to prior direct sale transactions 388 times, he is listed as selling agent 70 times, only 1 time as a buyer, and ZERO times as a seller.
Does this indicate he didn't own the books he brought to auction, none of them? Does it seem possible to find out about the owner(s)? Also the list of _different individual buyers seems rather short.
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| [Transcription] Stephen Bax on marginalia |
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Posted by: Koen G - 16-09-2017, 08:03 PM - Forum: Marginalia
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We started the interview with Stephen Bax on the subject of marginalia, so I thought I'd transcribe that already and put it here for discussion. This was not the main part of the interview, but still it was well 8 minutes into the video 
[David] The most obvious question to ask a linguist revolves around the marginalia. As you know many attempts have been made to decipher these brief notes without any definite success, although it appears to be some form of medieval High German. Do you think there is enough text to be definite about a reading and what language is this pointing to?
[Stephen] Well I agree that the marginalia are very interesting. But of course they are secondary to the text. I think there isn't really enough to be conclusive and people have been trying for a long long time to work out what's going on, with some idea that there are Germanic elements in it, but also some Latin elements. For me one of the most convincing interpretations of the final page is that it possibly relates to some remedy related to goats and kidneys and so on. I find the attempt to explore it very interesting, but I think there is nothing really conclusive yet that we can draw from it.
[Koen] If you have marginalia in a "normal" manuscript, usually you kind of see what's going on, you can see if it's a Latin or a German sentence. But in the Voynich we have several bits of marginalia and all of the are problematic. Why would that be?
[Stephen] Again I would like to place this in a multilingual framework. If you look at some old manuscripts, I'm thinking about the Vienna Dioscorides which is a fantastic ancient herbal, if you look at the marginalia in that, it's very multilingual. You have some in Hebrew, some in Latin, some in Arabic; it's a manuscript that's been passed around the world and studied very closely by different scholars who have written things in their own note form, their own language or their own dialect. For me the Voynich fits that perfectly. You've got even the month names which seem to be written in a form of old French. Obviously somebody with their own language was looking at the manuscript and decided to write in what he or she thought were the symbols for the Zodiac depictions. And therefor they wrote in their own dialect. Then you have other people who added certain things in German, other things in Latin.
Now I think the most intriguing thing is the last page, where somebody's attempted to write several lines of script. I agree with your implication, Koen, that it's a bit surprising that we can't even make much of that because you would expect it to be several lines of text in a language that we could identify. But it does seem to be in note form and you got the interesting + signs between some of the words. It does seem to be a mixture of some sort of Latin and some Germanic elements too. Most intriguing for me about that last page is that there are definitely two words of Voynich script within the text. That is significant because it implies that is was somebody who could actually understand the Voynich script and the language behind it, who was trying to write, as I see it, some sort of recipe or remedy of some sort. But they actually referred to Voynich words using Voynich script as well. Okay, it could be a hoax, you never know, but that is an interesting mixture of languages. Again, we must understand that many medieval scholars were multilingual and could switch easily from one language, say German, to a language such as Latin which was more readily understood elsewhere. And if we take that text to be notes from a scholar who knew several languages and also could read the Voynich script and language, then it becomes a very intriguing text. But as you hint in the beginning, we can't even decipher even that with any great certainty.
[Koen] Exactly. Now in your answer you mention the month names that have been written roundels. Some people say It's a northern French dialect, other people say it's Occitan, which is on the other side of France. The difference is crucial between those two. Do you think it would be possible to pinpoint the location given the few words that we have?
[Stephen] I have actually, some time ago, put something on my blog about that and I did investigate briefly some of the origins of the words. For me the most convincing is that it seems to be from a southern French and maybe Occitan dialect, but it's not entirely consistent. One thing I've emphasized on my blog is the issue of language variation. We have to expect that in that period there was a huge amount of variation not only in the way that people spoke, but in the way that they wrote. So for me, the debate over whether it's northern or southern French doesn't seem particularly important. If I were pushed I'd say it's closer to Occitan/ southern French, but that in itself doesn't get us very far because it could have been an Occitan speaker who was living, for example, as a monk in Austria, or in Italy or in Istanbul. It doesn't give us much information as to where the VM was at any particular point in time. So although it's interesting and intriguing, It won't take us very far in understanding where the VM itself came from, or any details of the script or language of the text. For me that's another good reason to say that the VM is an authentic medieval MS which travelled around a lot.
[Koen] It's been used.
[Stephen] Exactly, it's been used, rather than say being a modern hoax.
[Koen] Right. And even if we could find an exact match on the location, it could only tell us where the MS went after it was made and we still wouldn't know for sure if it was made in that location.
[Stephen] No, but equally it might only tell us where the writer of those words came from, and maybe if the manuscript had stayed fixed in one place and the writer was a visitor from another part who came to write in his own language. So it doesn't really help us that much, although again it's one of the fantastic fascinations of the MS.
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| [split] An interview with Stephen Bax - 1 to 1 substitution discussion |
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Posted by: -JKP- - 16-09-2017, 07:46 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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To all of you... do you honestly believe that the VMS is a one-to-one substitution code in a natural language?
No one should be immune from critical analysis of their theories, regardless of their credentials, especially in Voynich studies where there are no experts.*
* (To be an "expert" in Voynich studies one needs high-level expertise in code-breaking, medieval languages, medieval paleography, history, iconographic analysis, botany, and more. Not a single one of us is an expert, no matter what credentials or experience we may have. We are all students of the VMS and there are many people with credentials equal or greater than Bax's who have spent decades working on this who receive less respect than he does. Think about it.)
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| An interview with Stephen Bax |
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Posted by: davidjackson - 15-09-2017, 05:01 PM - Forum: News
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Koen and I had a great chat with Prof. Stephen Bax today. We discussed the Voynich manuscript in general, and had some very interesting talks about the linguistic side of things, as well as his personal thoughts on the book.
It is a long video, but I think we flagged up some very interesting ideas!
There's no transcript at the moment, simply because of the length of the video. Anyone interested in contributing is welcome to use the YouTube tools to help correct the automatically generated subtitles that are currently being used.
The video is here:
Stephen has publically joined the forum and says that he looks forwards to chatting with us on linguistic topics. Let's all welcome him to the forums and I hope we can put some really though provoking questions forwards that we can all work together as a community to solve.
[Edit KG]
I'll add links to the transcription threads here as they come in:
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| "De Balneis" - a recap |
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Posted by: ReneZ - 13-09-2017, 06:49 AM - Forum: Imagery
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In the wake of last week's Voynich MS publication by Nicholas Gibbs in the Times Literary Supplement, the historical discussions of the manuscript copies of "De Balneis Puteolanis" in relation with the Voynich MS were picked up by several people, and the information may be found scattered over several blogs, including those of Nick, JKP and Koen, but also in (what seems to be) the first "rebuttal" article in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
I attempted a first brief summary in the comments of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , but I believe it deserves a bit more, and in a more central place.
These discussions were triggered by the fact that Gibbs did not mention any of these earlier references. Now while he might be excused for not having read all web resources about the Voynich MS, this does not apply for the recent Yale volume. Not only are the "Balneis" manuscripts mentioned in the essay by Jennifer Rampling, they also figure in the Preface by Ray Clemens, with a rather prominent illustration on one of the first pages.
Nick, in a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , presented a quote from a Voynich mailing list question I asked Jim Reeds on 19 Feb 1996. The answer came pomptly, on the same day:
Quote:Toresella is thinking of some late 1400’s books describing the public thermal baths of Italy. This sub-genre of topographical book has, typically, sections describing the special medicinal properties of the waters in each of several towns. Each section might have an illustration showing what the baths were like. The page layout and the architecture is similar to what we see in the VMS.
The second part was a follow-up by Brian Smith on 9 March 1998:
Quote:It is a reproduction of a 15c copy of “De Balneis Puteolanis” which was written by a Petrus de Ebulo c. 1200. The content was very reminiscent of an herbal — a picture of the bath and a page of text describing it physically and its healing properties. The pictures generally showed a large tub surrounded by pillars or other building elements. Some of the tubs were shown being fed by streams flowing down from mountains in the background or from pipes. A few naked figures stood in each tub, usually men but sometimes women. All of the tubs were single-sex. The style of the illustrations was unlike the VMS but I came away feeling fairly confident that the “balneological” section of the VMS is, in fact, balneological. “De Balneis Puteolanis” would not be at all out of place in a work otherwise about herbs and astrology and the VMS pages showing large tubs stretching across the width of the page would not be out of place in “De Balneis” (if drawn by a more skilled artist).
Following this mail, I found a a link with some illustrations. This particular site no longer exists, but now there are of course on-line digital copies of several of the manuscripts.
It's worth stepping back to the first mention that traces back to Sergio Toresella. His opinion about the Voynich MS, reported by Jim Reeds, and partially reflected in his 1995 paper, had an enormous impact on the general opinion about the MS that prevailed in the old mailing list. He strongly argued for an Italian origin, a humanist handwriting, and a possible relationship with the tradition of alchemical herbals, even though the MS clearly isn't one by itself. In particular the Italian origin seems to have been largely accepted by the majority as likely.
. . . to be continued . . .
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| 68r1 and 2 |
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Posted by: Andrew Harrington - 11-09-2017, 09:25 PM - Forum: Astronomy
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Hello
First post…The following is an explanation of how I generated a possible solution to 68r1 and 68r2 in the manuscript. I’m not sure if anyone has done this before (I can’t believe it) but I hope you like it anyway. If not then I’ve wasted a few hours on a rainy Saturday.
Andy Harrington
58f and 58r indicate that stars with different numbers of arms or a tail are different. There are 4 paragraphs, each with a single star with either 6, 7, 8 arms or a trail. I suspect that each paragraph is about the nature of the relevant star. I don’t know what each paragraph says, but this solution is about 67r1 and r2 so I don’t care at present. The important thing is that they look deliberately different.
So looking at 67r1 I made the following assumptions:
More arms mean a brighter star. This is common sense and similar to modern star maps which show brighter stars bigger.
The stars should be viewed as being on a sphere that rotates about the earth. (Medieval view of the universe).
The page represents the top half of the sphere (see below)
The star in the dead centre of 67r1 is the star in the top of the sphere that does not move (ie Polaris). You can see the pin hole in the centre of the star where the compass was rotated to draw the feint outer circle so it is deliberately put in the centre. Since all the other stars move about, there isn’t any other one a sensible person would stick in the middle.
Based on these assumptions I tried to map out the stars.
I took a modern star map (Phillips Star Chart) and put stickers on it for the top 10 brightest stars and those used for navigation. The real stars are pretty much the same as in the 15th century and people’s eyes are the same so it is reasonable to assume that significant stars could be the same.
Then I marked the stars with 8 arms on a copy of the manuscript page and tried to see if it was similar to the marked up map. It wasn’t the same until I rotated one of the maps by 35 degrees. Then the manuscript stars with 8 arms were a pretty good match for the brightest stars in the Northern sky. Vega wasn’t represented but there was one star with seven arms and a black circle in the centre in the right place. The rest was just a matter of looking at the star chart and identifying stars on the manuscript based upon the position of the stars with 8 arms. The further the stars identified are from the big, bright stars the less reliable the names are. Particularly around the edges of the page, the star names may need some work to confirm or reallocate them- they are at a “best fit” stage.
Northern Star Sphere 5.jpg (Size: 269.23 KB / Downloads: 1397)
I also tried rotating the map against the manuscript all the way around and also with a reversed manuscript. No other angle worked.
So what do the faces mean? I guess that the one with a yellow toothed circle around represents the top of the star sphere. The yellow teeth could represent light providing the force to turn the sphere. The face at the bottom represents the star sphere’s equator. The 2 faces symbolise what the map between them is about.
On the next page 67r2 there is a similar map with a similar face to the equator at the top and a similar face to the yellow toothed face at the bottom (but edged with some darker teeth). If we assume that this symbolises that the map is of the bottom half of the star sphere then it should be possible to plot the real stars on this map as for the previous page. There is only one star with 8 points so I had to use the stars with 7 instead. I tried this with the normal page and the page backwards. There were 2 possible solutions. The one which looked like the modern Southern star map rotated by 35 degrees seemed the best based upon the bright stars and the blank areas in the sky. It is much harder to line up the stars as the observer probably won’t have seen the most Southerly real ones- so they might not be included. For example, Sirius could be one of 2 positions and the 8 pointed star could be Acamar (with Achernar below it) or Achernar with (Canopus below it in the wrong place). However, Rigel at 10:30 clock position looks good and Nunki-Kaus Australis-Shaula and Sabik look like a good match to me.
Southern Star Sphere 5.jpg (Size: 296.02 KB / Downloads: 1427)
So does it work?
I’ve taken the marked up manuscript out at night with the star map and it seemed to be pretty good for the Northern stars I looked at. I think there is a strong chance that these 2 pages are a representation of the Northern and Southern stars. (But a smart man once saw canals on Mars, so confirmation bias is easy to fall in to!)
Does it help with translation of the rest of the manuscript?
Maybe. But that is beyond me at present. It may give you a list of identifiable stars to Voynich words which is a starting point. It could be used to confirm whether a decryption method works.
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| the 9 or g |
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Posted by: Davidsch - 11-09-2017, 03:56 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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Paleographical exercise on the handwriting in the Voynich
There are reasons to believe that the handwriting of the Voynich is deliberately obfuscated by the scribe. duh.
At present my focus lies on the [9] or Eva [y].
I assume that the [9] is actually the number nine and I want to try to build some paleographical proof for that.
Here a piece of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is shown. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
[attachment=1655]
In the circle we see the character [9 nine] but it is clear that the [c] was made first and then the [j-stroke].
Normally when one writes a [g] this is done...eh thank you Mr.brock (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)
always starting at the top, going down, up (don't take the pencil of the page !) and do a tail.
Here the [9 nine] is done like one would write a number nine: exactly the same as writing [g],
however because we do NOT want the tail to have an extra curve on the end, we slow the pen down deliberately. for example You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
The last exercise is more in line with the [9 nine], which we see in the VMS and therefore the chance based on this alone, if higher that a nine-character is meant and not a g-character. True?
Secondly, in my experience it is easier, with a quill pen, to write a [g] without taking the pen of the paper, and it is harder to write a [cj=9 nine] as explained. (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) True?
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| New solution announced by Nicholas Gibbs |
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Posted by: davidjackson - 07-09-2017, 07:51 AM - Forum: News
- Replies (41)
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From today's the times:
An increasing tendency to check “Dr Google” for worrying symptoms is driving health anxiety (Credit: PA)
The Italian artist Luigi Serafini wrote the Codex Seraphinianus in the 1970s with a writing system that still defies complete analysis. He has said there is no hidden meaning, and he wanted his alphabet to convey how children feel with books they cannot understand.
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Dr Google fuels health anxiety that costs taxpayers millions
The Rohonc Codex appeared, it is thought, in the 1700s in Hungary. Its unknown language appears to have more characters than any major language apart from Mandarin. Some think it a hoax.
Kat Lay, Health Correspondent
12.01am, September 07 2017
Trials of green energy will be launched on ships and ferries as part of plans to cut pollution levels (Credit: PA)
The Book of Soyga is a 16th century Latin treatise on magic. The Elizabethan scholar John Dee was supposedly obsessed with deciphering the encrypted tables it contained. It was presumed lost until manuscripts were found in the British and Bodleian libraries in the 1990s, when the formula to construct the tables was uncovered. Their contents remain a mystery, however.
Wind power for greener British ships
Graeme Paton, Transport Correspondent
12.01am, September 07 2017
Documents of the 18th century Great Enlightened Society of Oculists in Germany took 250 years to crack. Scholars realised that familiar letters were spaces and messages were in other symbols.
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| Transcription and collaboration |
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Posted by: ReneZ - 03-09-2017, 03:28 AM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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When I started my web site, way back in the previous century (so to speak), the primary aim was to collect and summarise all text analyses of the MS and, by the way, provide an up-to-date account of the MS similar to D'Imperio's work.
As it turned out, I became more interested in the MS history than the text analysis, and the emphasis shifted in that direction.
At the same time, I was frustrated when trying to write the text analysis part of the site, because most of the really obvious questions could not be answered:
- how many characters or words are in the MS?
- what is the character frequency distribution?
Lots of partial answers (also in D'Imperio) but nothing comprehensive.
All of this could be done with a good, complete transcription of the MS. There are several transcriptions that are more-or-less complete. However, they all follow quite different conventions. I have long worked with my own complete (as I thought) transcription, and tools written on the basis of its format.
In order to bring in some standards and to improve collaboration, I have designed a new transcription file format that allows the representation of all existing publicly available transcription files, in their own original transcription alphabet.
They have all been converted to this new format.
There is a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. at my web site , which also includes my own transcription made in 1999, on the basis of the material available at that time.
I also converted my own command-line tool for processing transcription files to support this format.
Details are You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
I will use these files for all future work, but I also believe that they invite collaboration.
There is a great opportunity for people to write more clever tools than my "ivtt", based on this new format.
Once there are standard formats, tools can be made that can be used by everybody.
It is now also possible for anyone presenting text analyses to state exactly on which (part of the) text it was based, allowing others to repeat and verify these analyses.
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