This Thursday, David and I will have a chat with Adam Lewis, a student at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma in Washington, who is writing a thesis entitled “An Anatomy of Failure: Analysis Attempts to Decode the Voynich Manuscript”.
If there is any question you'd like us to ask, you can post them in this thread.
I'd be glad to know if anyone has noticed this before so I can read their comments before doing more. Obviously vague ideas that it is 'not new' are no use. If you can, please add a name, link and/or quotation from the precedent if there is one.
Thanks
Civo aul di vir adilo amulo voo quimod. Aes vo vi osd amdim, qeilo. Quivi aleses vo doz veilz, vi vos qui, vo vit. Avilo qui vim amám quim as am elo volo, aslo. Amul auz vi. Vim vivon am zams, qeivo does. Alo qui amerdo amlesz, ams fez amzr, ams vilo amdo ams. Ams vilo quido vim oesa, am ales vila am aram. Ares dvi vom, aleses quilo amos amsr, qeim dmom am ela ames. Amoro. Mz vilox dim amz vilor, am cil. Am vilo cim alo amles alam. Am aleses, vim cis. Ciro cira, ams qeim. Diro, aloam cim amsl. Et qui vialez tdo maeres qeima. Quim vi vir.
The plant on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is a weird one, but that goes without saying. I have no idea of what it could be; but just came across an image in the Leiden Dioscorides "f094a" which reminded me of it. Note how the saw-like leaves extend horizontally and the way they overlap to form one surface. This alone wouldn't be enough, but there's also a similarity in the screen-shape of the flowers. Even the arrangement of the roots is similar, although the VM has more of them. Unfortunately I don't read Arabic so I don't know which plant this is.
First to clear away a few chronic anachronisms and likely misapprehensions
1. We can do away with any notion that the Vms' drawings are the work of a European 'artist' or even of a European architect.
The dates 1404-1438 (give or take a couple of years) set the Vms in a period before the 'artist' was other than an artisan, who learned his craft from the basics up, and it is a basic law of iconography and provenancing that muscle-learning cannot be unlearned. In other words, just as someone who spent ten years in school, hand-writing every day cannot get their hand to 'unlearn' how to write, even if they try to imitate a baby's efforts, so too no-one who had been trained in medieval Europe as a painter of manuscripts, paintings etc. could undo it. Same for a Renaissance architect - who could not 'forget' how to think in terms of three-dimensions and perspective. Similarly the artisan was not trained to indulge in 'self-expression' and such importance for an individual was hardly stressed in the way we imagine natural today in our own society.
2. Professional techniques co-incide, not overlap. That is, a scribe might use herringbone stitch to mend a parchment, and a seamstress might use the same technique for a hem, but that doesn't imply that either had any knowledge of the other's professional-technical area.
Right - so there are three distinct professions and one - writing in gold - which might overlap with a couple of the others in using techniques involving scratching or cutting through - we tend to call it all by the same word, 'sgraffito'. The separate activities are:
(i) building - making pretty patterns on the exterior by adding one or more layers of paint or render and then cutting through or scratching to create patterns: we'll call that architectural sgraffito. It has a long tradition in the west, but though very often imagined responsible for every use of sgraffito in Europe, it was quite a separate thing - a folk-custom, pretty much, which some Renaissance people picked up again for their buildings because they imagined it a relic of ancient Romans or Greeks.... which in a way it was.
(ii) Separately from this, pottery decoration developed a cutting or scratching technique which we also call 'sgraffito' but this type is attested first in Asian ceramics by about the 7thC. Certainly by the 10thC we find it in Nishapur, and it was something of a mad 'rage' in the Mediterranean - first in trade centres such as Fustat and in the eastern Mediterranean. It is certainly found in close connection with Sankai (3-colour) glaze in Nishapur, Fustat and Corinth before the end of the 12thC and it was immensely popular to the fourteenth. It is safe to date its peak of popularity from the mid-12thC to the 14thC, in Byzantine and in Islamic regions. There's more one might say, including the possible depiction of a sankai glaze in the Vms' root-and-leaf section, but I'll leave the ceramic part at that
(iii) painting: though we find folk-art use of e.g. drawing through varnish or through paint - notably in Spain, sgraffito really came into its own in European painting during the 'Mongol century' as the newly-opened routes east brought in return - principally through Genoa and, to a lesser extent through Venice, the most stunning fabrics made of silk-brocade, gold-woven brocades and various others whose technical names I won't bore you with, though the merchant books distinguish them. Fabrics weren't 'girly stuff' in those time, and the greatest volume of all traded commodities across borders apart, perhaps from slaves, were fabrics. Trade in fabrics, both inter-regional and international was the most phenomenal money-maker. Bigger than spices, and bigger than jewellery or food. And that importance is part of the reason that the precisely accurate depiction of fabrics was demanded by the patrons. In Cennini's book - meant for apprentices - he doesn't use the word sgraffiti when explaining how to render brocade and has to describe the sort of thing he means, but by the time of Vasari's handbook, Vasari doesn't bother describing it and assumes his reader knows what it is, and why it is done.
(iv) a fourth type of sgraffito was used to aid adherence of gold ink or gold-leaf to vellum or parchment . (If you want to find out more, the search term should be 'chrysography'.
It seems to me that whoever scratched the pigment in folios of the Vms either did so accidentally - as may well be the case - or they did so quite easily because they had been accustomed to scratching pigment - as a technique used in one of those four professions.
Sgraffito in Renaissance painting is one stage within a series of technical stages, so that it is embedded within a complex process that involved layers of gesso, egg binder, gold leaf and pigment. It isn't 'scribbling' and it was never casual or purposeless. Not as it appears in the Vms.
This is as long as a blogpost, so I'll cut it here. I don't think the Vms sgraffito is the work of an accomplished Latin EUropean artist; it could be the work of a scribe, but if so why should be employ a technique which had little purpose in Byzantine or Latin manuscript art apart from when writing in gold? I don't think anything in the manuscript justifies attributing the sgraffito to a builder's labourer. So that leaves us - temporarily anyway - with ceramics.
And here's the kicker -
ceramic artists were brought in to work on early Renaissance paintings.
A few of the easily accessible references
Jaroslav Folda, Byzantine Art and Italian Panel Painting
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (also shows Sankai glaze).
Detail from folio 102r that may or may not be meant for Sankai glazed ware - The reference to Nick Pelling's post is because that's where I first saw the picture. Nothing to do with the written part of the post. :0
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the link to Pelling's blog is because that post contains the illustration that told me we might be looking at Sankai glazed ware. If we come even as far west as Corinth, the date is most probably 13thC-earlier 14thC... which is exactly the period to which most of the early appraisers assigned Beinecke MS 408. So if it were Sankai (I reasoned back then), the chances were that we'd been looking too late, and too far west, for the informing sources. Nick's illustration proved very helpful in pointing me to the right time-frame for the current manuscript's near exemplars.
Well, that's the barest bones of the matter. Note how the definition of sgraffito shifts, depending on the professional environment. This definition is for high-art work using gold-leaf.
Can't say whether this is news to anyone else, but there is a second cloud band in the VMs rosettes. The original one is in the Central Rosette, just outside the circular band of text. The one more recently added to my investigations is found in the center rosette on the right hand side. Both examples were brought to the current discussion by D. Hoffmann.
Cloud bands are relevant to VMs investigation because of the cosmic comparison of Oresme's illustration (BNF Fr. 565 fol. 23) with VMs f68v, as proposed by E. Velinska.
If this comparison is sufficiently strong to show that there was an actual, structural connection between these two cosmic representations that exists despite their visual differences, because those visual differences were intentionally created, then there should be no problem connecting the cloud band of the central rosette with the VMs cosmos of f68v. Firstly. this is because the VMs clearly has other examples of cross-page connections and, secondly, because of the high degree of pattern similarity in the designs that compose both of these examples.
The Oresme cloud band is an excellent example of the scallop-shell patterned cloud band. Technically, it is built on an exaggerated nebuly line where the bulbous extremities have been depicted in a series of small arches, to give the characteristic scallop-shell shape. These running arches are similar to an engrailed line in heraldry.
The cloud band in the VMs Central Rosette is quite similar, with the difference that the engrailed characteristic runs throughout the entire nebuly line pattern, rather than only across the tops of the bulbs. This requires the engrailed line to be flipped when crossing the mid-line.
The cloud band in the VMs Right Center Rosette is even more elaborate. Like the Central Rosette, the engrailed line continues throughout. The interesting feature that I noted was that each bulb in this example contains a second line segment that follows the engrailed pattern. So I suggest that this pattern might be called 'double-topped'.
This double-topped construction has a hint of something familiar, but I can't pin it down. Unfortunately, many of the illustrations posted to the old 'wolkenband' thread seem to have gone to URLs
Does anyone have an illustration that shows a double-topped cloud band?
Not only does the second cloud band make it a pair of cloud bands side by side, but the Central Rosette contains a pair of Stolfi's markers. Both of which help advance the pairing paradigm.
[The pairing paradigm holds that, in some areas of the VMs research, the material that is relevant to finding the proper course of investigation will be found in pairs.]
I reread D'Imperio's The Voynich manuscript: an elegant enigma (Thanks to Rene Zandbergen for reminding). Now I have time to learn more concernicng the other theories about the Elixir of life. I've found in D'Imperio a short description of professor Brumbaugh's theory: "... the manuscript as a treatise on the «Elixir of Life «, designed to interest the Emperor Rudolph II by a forger who wished to make it appear to be the work of Roger Bacon. An ”encyclopedic sequence of drugs», possibly compiled from a variety of earlier manuscripts, is followed by astrological lore: the folios featuring nude female figures may deal. Brumbaugh thinks, with «the biology of reproduction, the theology of psychic reincarnation, or the topical application of the elixir». (1975. pp, 348-349). (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., M. E. D’Imperio, p. 22)
I want to adress to Rene and to all forum members who could help. Is it possible to find free-available articles about Brumbaugh's theory in details (in English or translatable with Google)? Of course, 70's was not the time when the internet, blogs and on-line libraries existed, but, maybe, somewhere his articles are saved. I've found only article in which he was criticized for his method of deciphering (May 6, 1975, The New York Times Archives, Page 41, the article You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) and his paid book The Most Mysterious Manuscript: The Voynich "Roger Bacon" Cipher Manuscript. Brumbaugh's theory, as I understand, was quite much-talked-of in that time. I’d like to know the details as it pretty interests me, although I don't believe that the VMs is a hoax in any sense of this word.
I guess that one of the problems with statistical analyses of the VMS is that, when comparing with other sources, one typically only has modern texts available.
My impression is that some of the strange features of Voynichese might be caused by the script, rather than by the language.
For instance, there are medieval European scripts in which the same character is written differently on the basis of the nearby characters. I expect this could result in lower entropy (but it's clear to me that this phenomenon should be very extensive to result in second-order entropy comparable with the VMS).
This is an example of a script in which 'r' has three different shapes:
* similar to uppercase R (but smaller) at the beginning of words [red]
* similar to '2' or 'z' when midword and immediately following a "round" character ('o', 'p', 'd') [green]
* 'r' in other cases [blue]
Obviously, to an hypothetical transcriber having no knowledge of Latin languages and alphabet, these three would look like different characters and each would be transcribed as such. He would have to deal with a character that only occurs at the beginning of words and another one that only occurs in the presence of a restricted left context.
UPenn You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. - Virgil - [Le livre des Eneydes] - France, late XV Century
Other interesting features in this manuscript are that 'v' only occurs word-initial (in all other cases, the same character as 'u' is used) and 's' has two different shapes (this is actually quite frequent), one only occurs at the end of words, the other elsewhere.
The example of 'v' is a simple case of ambiguity: a single symbol sometimes used for unrelated sounds. This same manuscript typically omits the dot upon 'i', with the result that 'm' and 'ni'/'in' are often indistinguishable. Of course, something similar might be happening with VMS EVA:i and EVA:e sequences (see also this You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., by Stephen Bax).
I'll keep bouncing some "essentials" ideas off you guys
It might be handy to gradually build a list of common misconceptions or mistakes made by people studying the MS. This will allow us in the future to refer to that thread and say "you have fallen for misconceptions 6, 12 and 15". The advantage is that we don't really have to go looking for anything, the material will gradually come rolling in as we go along.
Ideally each misconception or commonly made mistake should be accompanied by a short explanation or a reference. We can divide them into different categories like imagery, text, statistics, linguistics, codicology... depending on what is collected.
If it takes off, I will link this thread to an essentials thread and collect them there.
An example of what I have in mind:
Imagery
Misconception #1: green water is somehow unusual Explanation: people often think that the green water in quire 13 needs a special explanation, like herbal baths. However, it was not unusual in medieval art for (salty) water to be colored green. Examples can be found on maps and De Balneis manuscripts.
And of course any misconceptions we include can be contested at all time.
I see that there is the thread [font=Alegreya, serif]You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. on the voynich.ninja which discusses depiction of this page in the context of Winds, in particular, in the Ptolemaic system. I think that here, in the forum, must be a thread about the page f86v3 to collect all thought about its imagery in different conexts. [/font] [font=Alegreya, serif]This post includes observations on different myths containing scenes with birds and mountains, as well a part of my theory.[/font] During the study I was often surprised with that fact that many myths from different corners of the globe repeat the same stories, sometimes modified, but in the same time, include almost identical details and characters. The issue of my interest is not an exception: most part of myths about the Water of Life or the Water of Immortality includes episodes with a mountain or two mountains and birds, often – an eagle, a dove, a phoenix and a raven. I couldn’t ignore such a detail because of the same motive of the page f86v3 which contain two mountains (or a mountain and a volcano) at the bottom and certain watery or bubbling shapes (not mountains) ejecting likely fumes or mist. Birds always help to get the living water for gods and people:
an eagle and doves brought Ambrosia to Zeus helping him to win his father Cronus;
an eagle threw You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. plant to some mountain from heaven or brought it from the mountain to earth;
there are You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. about birds (eagles or doves, etc.) which brought the living water flying between two clashing rocks, as no man can do it.
As for the image of a bird (eagle, pelican, or phoenix) on a mountain in alchemy, it has no one exact meaning, since there are too many different details in alchemy which play important role in identification. For example, the white eagle means the White stone or Elixir, phoenix means achievement of successful final of the Great Work – rebirth as the Philosopher’s Stone. In general, birds in alchemy mean volatility, volatile state of the material. According to one alchemical author, «the eagle flies up to the clouds and receives the rays of the sun in his eyes.» The text of the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.says that the first Hermes built the house at the mountain of the Moon opposite the Sun to observe the level of the Nile’s waters. They say, there was five Hermeses, obviously, this implies his five incarnations. Alchemical works sometimes mention one mountain (of adepts), it can be a one- or twin-peaked mountain, but often two mountains (Sol and Luna) are mentioned. The Voynich folio You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. contains two «mountains» and two birds, possibly, eagles, one of them is sitting on the peak of the rock, another is descending from above. Descending bird almost always means the Holy Spirit. I have an impression that the left mountain here is humid or watery, ejectin moisture in opposition to the right which is, rather, of earth and accepting humidity.
![[Image: more-micrography.jpg]](https://voynichimagery.files.wordpress.com/2018/02/more-micrography.jpg)
![[Image: sgraffito-in-high-medieval-art.jpg]](https://voynichimagery.files.wordpress.com/2018/02/sgraffito-in-high-medieval-art.jpg)
![[Image: Ba%25C3%25B1o%2Bde%2BTritulus.jpg]](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Pu41qK_JKJg/WiPLa-Hg6OI/AAAAAAAACeM/wTByPFgc0B8tWJE7aey-fq9OCA54CHX1gCLcBGAs/s1600/Ba%25C3%25B1o%2Bde%2BTritulus.jpg)