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| Pisces (Folio 70v) and the New Year on the 1st of March in the Republic of Venice |
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Posted by: Dobri - 05-01-2025, 12:58 PM - Forum: Astrology
- Replies (24)
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Folio 70v of the Voynich (cypher) manuscript contains the astrological depiction of Pisces (fishes).
Said depiction is surrounded by an inner ring of 10 naked females reclining horizontally with the lower half of their bodies in cylindrical tubs.
There is also an outer ring with 19 naked females standing vertically with the lower half of their bodies also in cylindrical tubs.
All females are having multi-pointed stars on a string.
Assuming that the manuscript originates from the Republic of Venice, one couldn't help but notice that the New Year in Venice in medieval times was on the 1st of March.
Since 9 of the reclined females in the inner ring and their stars are oriented counterclockwise (except for one, oriented clockwise and sharing the same tub with another female but from the opposite side of the tub), one could possibly interpret the reclined females and their stars in the inner ring as the days in the first decan of Pisces at the end of February. The only reclined female oriented clockwise could possibly depict 29th of February in a leap year.
Here the interpretation could be that the females are reclined to show that they represent past days from the previous month of February.
The stars of all 19 females in the outer ring are oriented clockwise. Here the interpretation could be that the females are standing upright to show that they represent forthcoming days of the remaining 2 decans of Pisces with respect to the New Year in Venice on the 1st of March.
The scheme looks like this:
- first decan of Pisces in February (9 females reclining counterclockwise);
- a female reclining clockwise (29th of February in a leap year); and
- forthcoming second and third decans of Pisces in March (19 standing-up females with stars oriented clockwise).
Note that folio 70v seems to be the only astrological folio where females are oriented in opposite directions (clockwise or counterclockwise).
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| Zodiac series of University of Pennsylvania LJS 449 |
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Posted by: Koen G - 02-01-2025, 07:36 PM - Forum: Imagery
- Replies (17)
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I would like to draw attention to the Zodiac series of University of Pennsylvania LJS 463 449, which Nablator mentioned here:
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This may have been discussed before, but I didn't find anything on the forum.
This series of Zodiac images f.12r-22v accompanies a "treatise in German on favorable and unfavorable days for various activities". This kind of text may be interesting with regards to the "bathing nymphs" in the Zodiac section.
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The Zodiac signs are stylistically different from those of the VM, but there are many peculiar similarities in some of them. Most notably bull, lobster and lion.
- The bull is a silly red creature with a three-pronged tail standing on green terrain.
- The lobster is wonderfully faulty with only two pairs of "walking legs", one of which is on the tail (linking it to the Soissons - Alsace vein). The overall body type is very similar.
- The lion is of a different type altogether. But look at that tail!
For Aries/Capricorn, the VM animals remain ambiguous. But you can see some connection, especially with Capricorn. Climbing a bit towards the left, one tree...
- Gemini is quite different. Nude vs. dressed and a much more spectacular pose. Position of man/woman is the same, but that's about it.
- Virgo has a different dress, but that is to be expected: the VM wide open, dagged sleeves are typical for the first quarter of the 15th century. Both ladies are on terrain and there are flowers involved. However, the Pennsylvania Virgo appears to be making a wreath.
- I thought the scales were quite different at first, but now I think they are related. Notice the rim on the cups and the way the three black lines are connected to it.
The remaining signs are quite different.
All in all, I think these Zodiac symbols are closely related to those in the VM, but stylistically different. It's probably a matter of being on the same family tree.
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| Ugly Duckling |
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Posted by: Mark Knowles - 02-01-2025, 12:06 AM - Forum: Voynich Talk
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Looking at other manuscripts recently makes me aware again how poor and unprofessional looking the illustrations in the Voynich manuscript are. It seems to me, for example, that the Zodiac illustrations were copied without much care or attention. In fact I would say that all the Voynich illustrations were done without much care by an amateur.
So, the idea that the illustrations were made to impress other people seems doubtful. Rather it seems to fit with the idea that the manuscript was kept private and secret than to be made public. The Voynich has the feel of a scrappy scientific/medical notebook. I suspect that the manuscript was intended to be functional and practical as opposed to beautiful, so the illustrations were as good as they needed to be for practical usefulness rather than visual appeal.
I must admit that the scrappy appearance of the manuscript bothers me a little. It makes me worry about the seriousness of the author(s) in making it. On the one hand the hours of work put into making it shows they took it seriously. On the other hand I worry about whether they put as much effort into the text as they put into the illustrations. Maybe the text is as poorly executed as the illustrations. The possibility that I have discussed before that a lot of the text may just be filler with only a small proportion meaningful occurs to me again. It makes me wonder if we have all been treating the manuscript with more seriousness than it deserves.
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| 10% of Medieval Manuscripts survive to this day - Is that an overestimate? |
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Posted by: Mark Knowles - 01-01-2025, 05:06 PM - Forum: Voynich Talk
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In the case of early 15th century ciphers from my research I would be inclined to the view that much fewer than 10% of enciphered letters survives. I suspect the percentage is higher when it comes to cipher ledgers, though I doubt it is as much as 10%.
However when we are talking about illustrated manuscripts then I would think they are more likely to have survived than in the case of letters, especially if they are very beautiful manuscripts as I would expect people to have taken more care of them.
Having recently having allowed myself to be distracted by the subject of Diebold Lauber's manuscripts I have wondered which of these manuscripts survive and having seen the following listing:
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I wonder how many manuscripts in total Diebold Lauber's workshop would have produced and what percentage of that figure this listing constitutes. Of course, there may well be a number of surviving Diebold Lauber manuscripts not listed here.
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| Well used? |
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Posted by: Mark Knowles - 31-12-2024, 03:30 PM - Forum: Voynich Talk
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I just watched a recent YouTube video by Paul Whitewick. He seems to be saying that according to Lisa Fagin Davis the Voynich manuscript was well-used by the people who created the manuscript. That might well have been the case, but I am curious as to whether we can really say that with confidence. Can we distinguish between wear and tear from around the time that the manuscript was created and wear and tear that has resulted from the many people who have studied the manuscript at later times?
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| Dioscorides and Tacuinium sanitatis as sources of VM imagery |
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Posted by: Bernd - 26-12-2024, 10:52 PM - Forum: Imagery
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There are several similarities shared between the history of the Dioscorides and Tacuinium sanitatis manuscripts and both appear to have served as templates for VM imagery. Both manuscripts most likely were prestigious luxury objects created for bibliophile nobles rather than tools to be used for practicing medicine or another profession. All existing copies of both manuscripts appear to have been derived from now lost precursors and both manuscripts appear to have been copied by individually compiling text and images instead of copying existing books page by page. Which means that stock image collections must have existed in the workshops carrying out the deed.
Furthermore it is extremely unlikely any commoner ever had access to those books which were considered treasures (that also explains the extraordinary shape they are in today, they were never used). There must have been much simpler budget copies for mere mortals which did not survive the centuries. If illustrations created for such masterpieces became available to a broader audience than probably through workshops which reused them in other works.
Quote:As the two late 14th-century Tacuinum manuscripts, Vienna 2644 and Rome 4182 are similar to one another but contain different inaccuracies, it seems to us that they must have been derived from a common, more accurate model. Based on other similarities and differences between Vienna 2644 and Rome 4182, Hoeniger (2006) arrived at the same conclusion. Not only did more Tacuinum manuscripts exist, one of them must have predated the Vienna 2644 and Rome 4182 manuscripts. Moreover, the artists who drew this hypothesized model manuscript must have been familiar with the plant material, as it is drawn with a good degree of detail and accuracy in these two manuscripts.
Quote:According to Hoeniger (2006), a hypothetical reconstruction of the relationships among these manuscripts would run like this: Giangaleazzo had a lavish Tacuinum sanitatis created in the first place for his own personal enjoyment and that of his wife, but this version has not survived. Soon afterwards, he commissioned the Paris and Vienna manuscripts as beautiful gifts to be bestowed on family and friends on highly politicized occasions. As the manuscripts came to be admired at courts in northern Italy and in Vienna where Verde Visconti resided, other rich nobles desired their own copies.
By comparing Rubus L. (Rosaceae) images appearing in extant medieval Dioscoridean manuscripts, Hummer and Janick (2007) offered an analogous hypothesis, that is, a lost Dioscoridean manuscript furnished with accurate images must have antedated and served as the template or inspiration for the extant manuscripts.
There is another striking parallel between Dioscorides and Tacuinium manuscripts: While illustrations are often extremely similar, some have been switched or mislabeled. This again suggests that at least some of the Tacuinium and Dioscorides copies were not copied book-to-book but that text and images were compiled independently by the workshop and that this workshop had a collection of stock images, most likely in the form of pinakes, larger images on wooden boards that served as templates for the artists illustrating the book. This actually makes sense. Those books were luxury items for nobility and copying such book would take significant time, thus making it unavailable to the owner and subjecting it to the risk of damage. Therefore it is highly likely that those high-profile manuscripts produced by workshops were never copied directly but from the source material present in the workshop that had originally made the book. The owner or another potential buyer merely requested an additional copy to be made.
Quote:The labels used for the images of Cucurbitaceae and Solanaceae have been conserved across the archetypal
Tacuinum manuscripts, except for a few spelling variations.
The variant orthography occurs mostly in the Liège 1041 manuscript, from which Segre Rutz (2002) concluded that this manuscript was not derived from Lombardy, but rather from the neighbouring Veneto region. Nonetheless, there occurred a major error in assigning two of the cucurbit labels to the correct illustrations. Vienna 2644 folio 22r and Paris 9333 folio 19r, each labelled Melones indi i palestini, depict a person smelling a large, yellow round fruit, consistent with a melon, Cucumis melo. The illustrations in Rome 4182 folio 36r and Rouen folio 18v, which show similar large, yellow, round fruits, are instead labelled Melones insipidi. On the other hand, Vienna 2644 folio 21v and Paris 9333 folio 18v, each labelled Melones insipidi, depict plants bearing dark-green fruits, consistent with Citrullus lanatus as do the illustrations in Rome 4182 folio 37r and Rouen 3054 folio 19r but labelled Melones indi et palestini. The Latin text of Vienna 2644 is longer and more descriptive than those of the other manuscripts and it indicates that the Melones indi i palestini fruits are yellow (Cogliati Arano, 1976), consistent with C. melo. Therefore, the labelling of the illustrations would be correct in the Vienna 2644 and Paris 9333 manuscripts and misplaced in the other two.
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We have similar mismatches in the early Dioscorides copies
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| Let's rate some bulls |
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Posted by: Koen G - 23-12-2024, 12:13 PM - Forum: Imagery
- Replies (71)
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LINK TO SPREADSHEET: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Inspired by the conversation in R.Sale's You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., I created a template for assessing images of bulls. This might allow us to trace certain features and perhaps learn more about their origin and spread. The current checklist is as follows:
- elongated horns
- lyre-shaped horns
- round eyes
- both eyes visible
- round ears
- few hairs on forehead
- facing left
- long, upright neck
- far front leg raised
- separated dewclaws
- reddish color
- weird back legs
- tail behind legs
- biforked tail
- genital confusion
- smooth outline
- stands on terrain
- accented terrain
These are currently weighed at 1 point each, but we may want to add more weight to certain features.
I propose to double the impact of: - lyre shaped horns
- long, upright neck
- stands on terrain
because I feel like these are big things that are most likely to help us corner the type. But let me know if I should change anything about that.
Any bull you find that appears to check some boxes is always welcome. This can obviously be a long, ongoing project.
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| Khalkotauroi |
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Posted by: R. Sale - 19-12-2024, 08:03 PM - Forum: Imagery
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As I recall, the bronze, fire-breathing bulls were in the story of Jason and the Argonauts. Interesting to note the lyre-shaped horns and the green paint over the leaves in the trees.
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Interesting provenance as well.
My question is, how can that scimitar fit in that scabbard?
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| Fakery? |
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Posted by: GlennM - 14-12-2024, 11:50 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (38)
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As much as I'd like the book to be authentic, I understand that if it were, there is nothing of real value to be learned from it. As such, the decoding of pamphlet only satisfies curoisity. None of my commentary is unique, nor profound.
I am skeptical that the VM was created without error in text, nor in art. I find that an impossibility owing to the human thought process. Can we point to a handwritten medieval bible doen without a single error. Other investigators have demonstrated how gibberish can be manufactured with charts, wheel and the like.
Then again. In order to prove fakery, a thing must be readable. If it can not be read, it can not be proven to be fake. This is a comfort to the creator.
It is clear that considerable effort was put into the VM. That said, I have seen examples of forgers putting a ridiculous amount of time to fake a a five dollar bill. As a faked book with the promise of revealing astronomical secrets and well as perhaps a botanical way to make women more pliable, a wealthy patron with occult interests and a weakness for the temptations of the flesh would pay to have it. The fact that it could not be read immediately also plays into the buyer's desire to solve a puzzle to stave off boredom.
Would you think the VM took a week or a month to create? When sold, would it buy food and shelter for a week or month? Certainly, sitting at a table making the VM with a drink at hand beats working in the sun and tilling the land.
If instead, the work was authentic, then its author was interested in women's health, but constrained by the mores of the times. That would then point to an educated clergyman who was also practicing alchemical and astrological gynecology..
Look to history for a humanitarian clerical healer.
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