I was looking at Tom O'Neil's site yesterday to see how his numerology system worked, and it seems he noticed something which hasn't been discussed before (to my knowledge): there is clearly an alphabet on the first page:
ABCDEFGH ... OPQ... UV
It begins on the top right side of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and continues down vertically - here are the first 8 or 9 letters:
After that there is a blank space, but further down we get OPQ and maybe U or V (in the same handwriting as the U/V on f116v):
This could be important for at least two reasons:
1) Anyone who makes a secret code always writes their key somewhere, and the key is usually written next to a plaintext alphabet. I made my own cipher many years ago, and I always wrote the key next to the Roman alphabet, in alphabetical order. This leads to point 2:
2) It is clear that there were Voynichese symbols next to some letters. A clear <d> is seen to the right of "a", and there seems to be an <r> next to the "c". There are many other marks near Roman letters, but it looks like they were smudged out / erased (perhaps so that nobody could read the code). Just take a look at You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. for yourself:
I wonder if this column used to be a key. Imagery people (Koen, Wladimir, Diane, etc.), do you know if there is any way to locate traces of the removed letters using Photoshop?
Last thing: when I break down the VMS into my hypothetical "units", <d> always appeared where a vowel was needed - so <a> could be a perfect fit.
I've been wanting to ask the linguists this question for some time, but it always seems to come out as a criticism or challenge.
All I can say is that it's a genuine question from someone who dropped Linguistics 101 after six months.
Are statistical analyses and linguistic analyses able to isolate non-word uses for glyphs?
If you have - for argument's sake - something like [glyph meaning 'city'] + [City name, abbreviated]+ [number]+['degrees' sign/letter] [N, S, W or E]..
would a linguist be able to determine which of the glyphs was being used as a number.. or as probably a number.. and which were abbreviations and so on?
Second question: If he script is filled with numbers, abbreviations and so on, how does the statistical analysis serve a useful purpose.. again, it's a genuine question.
(27-09-2016, 05:45 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(13-09-2016, 03:33 PM)Davidsch Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.>> There were quite a few resins (some of which roughly resemble cubes) and a few minerals represented in de Materia Medica and others. There are also some specifically represented as cubes as they are crystalline in nature.
I was curious, could you please mention the namesof the chemicals or herbs or pastures that :
* have been presented before in a MS as such or as small cube * have a bright green or blue color * have a herbal or root origin
Sorry, David, I tried to look up the answers to your questions on the weekend, but I have tens of thousands of files, not all of them organized yet and cannot easily put my hands on the names of these resins and minerals, especially since the herbals are in many different languages and these items are labeled differently in each one (and some are not labeled at all, but they are recognizable by context).
Even when I can find the right document, one has to know the name of the item to find it alphabetically, or to know where it was when it's not alphabetical. In a 300-page manuscript, this means going through each page. I remember some of the resins were frankincense, myrrh, balsam, etc., but it was the minerals that were more often drawn with angular sides. Sometimes a picture of a miner with a pick-axe is shown but other times the mineral itself is shown as a small drawing without a miner (or mine) nearby to give context.
The alchemical mercury can be found with a Google search and I think I posted one of the pics (with mercury cubes in the sky) on my blog a while back.
Davidsch and JKP started this discussion in another thread.
The blue cube appears at the top of f102v2 labelled EVA:okeos okeos
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Something vaguely similar can be seen in ms Français 12322, Livre des simples médecines, France, 1520 ca, fol. 191
I think the large stone at the center could be labelled "La pierre de lazur" and the smaller one above it "azeur".
With the recent attention for large plants mnemonics, I had a look at some of them again and saw something peculiar on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. .
First of all, in the top of the plant, we see that the flowers (?) or fruits and branches there are strangely symmetrical. This isn't unique in the MS, but there was a certain balanced quality to them that gave me pause.
I recognized immediately in the centre, rather unmistakably, the shape of the lyre. That's the easy part.
Now around this "lyre", are two hardly visible, remarkably thin and empty branches. They reminded me of two laurel branches, perhaps even positioned to evoke the shape of a laurel wreath together.
Finally, the two remaining branches form two horizontal, curved lines. They look like a composite bow (in relaxed position).
The lyre, laurel and bow are the main attributes of Apollo. In the beginning I thought the composite bow was a bit anachronistic, but apparently bows of that shape have even been found in Tutanchamun's tomb, and various forms of them were known all around the world and throughout the ages. So this should be compatible with a wide range of views on the manuscript as well.
Another symbol of Apollo was the raven, though I'm not sure if and how that is present in the plant. The berries that look like eyes? I'll pass on that one.
Apart from that, I have no idea which plant this could be. Might the brownish color of the leaves indicate that they are used in a dried condition? Laurel itself does not have serrated edges like that. All ideas and suggestions are welcome
[font=arial, sans-serif]I have been working on a project for the Voynich Manuscript based on the well-known 'interlinear' file. I have built a RESTful API on top of the interlinear and am presenting it here: [/font] [font=arial, sans-serif]You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[/font]
[font=arial, sans-serif]Essentially it is an online, public version of the Voynich Transcription Tool that gets mentioned from time to time. There is documentation for how to use the API plus a set of examples showing what sort of applications can be built on top of API queries. I've implemented some classic examples e.g. word length distribution and Sukhotin's vowel identification algorithm. I don't think these examples are of great value, but they are interesting in terms of showing a transparent methodology with clear data-set and a repeatable methodology (i.e. source code available).[/font]
[font=arial, sans-serif]An example API query could be:[/font]
[font=arial, sans-serif]You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[/font]
[font=arial, sans-serif]Which would translate as 'fetch me page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Takahashi transcription, without interlinear comments with columns for pageId, currierHand, illustrationType, unitCode, lineNumber and using a morpheme groupings of cfh, ckh, cph, cth, eee, iii, ch, ee, ii, qo, sh'.[/font]
[font=arial, sans-serif][font=tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif]There are two main methods (routes) - 'tokens' and 'morphemes'. 'Tokens' gets the effectively raw transcription from the interlinear and 'morphemes' does the same things but applies a grouping algorithm that identifies e.g. 'qo', 'sh' and 'eee' etc. The morpheme groups are user configurable. I took some feedback on this (thanks, Nick Pelling) and decided that it is an open question as to whether we should see 'qo' as a single morpheme, or actually see 'qot' and 'qok' separately from 'qo' etc. There are many similar questions in this topic of word morphology that would be better served, in my opinion, by clearer data.[/font][/font]
[font=arial, sans-serif]My intention in sharing this is to enable transparency, repeat-ability and share-ability of experiments that people conduct on the text. [/font]
Quote: I have it on Rene's authority that the dimensions of the Vms are as made; that there's no sign of later trimming.
This must have been long ago, as I can't actually remember this, but the point is sufficiently interesting to start a dedicated topic.
Manuscripts are occasionally trimmed when rebound, but any significant trimming of the Voynich MS can be excluded, because of the foldouts. These would have been cut.
One can also see that the edges are irregular, and pages are of somewhat different sizes.
On the other hard, there are numerous cases where at least the bottom edge of a page has been partially trimmed.
I believe that onYou are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. the drawing at the bottom was clipped.
Here, one also sees a feature in the scan that was mentioned years ago, by Dana Scott, namely that some edges of the parchment are much lighter in colour. In this case, this seems to indicate a more recent cut. We don't know when it was done, of course.
With respect to the dimensions of the Voynich MS, in 2010 I did the exercise of comparing it with various known herbal manuscripts. I put it next to 22 other MSs in a powerpoint file, all at the scale 1:10.
I include the figure here:
A = Med.Gr.1, ONB, Vienna B = Voss.Lat. Q.9, Leiden C = Graecus 1, Napoli D = MS Grec 2179, BN Paris E = MS Plut. 73.41, Bibl. MediceaLaurenziana, Florence F = CLM 337, Munich G = Ms M 652, Pierpont Morgan library H = MS Bodley 130 J = MS Harley 1585 K = Cod. Vind. 93, ONB, Vienna L = MS or. Arabe 4947, BN Paris M = MS Plut. 73.16, Bibl. MediceaLaurenziana, Florence N = Egerton 747 O = MS Lat. 6823, BN Paris P = Ms.Canon Misc.408, Bodleian, Oxford Q = MS 459, Bibl. Casanatense, Roma R = MS Aldini 211, Pavia S = Egerton 2020 T = Chigi F. VII 159, BA Vaticana U = MS 106, Bibl. Dip. Di Botanica dell'Universita, Florence V = MS Lat 17844, BN Paris W = MS Hebr. 1199, BN Paris Z = Voynich MS.
While the Voynich MS is relatively small, there are still smaller MSs.
Also, MSs "R" and "U" are almost exactly the same size as the Voynich MS, and both are 'alchemical herbals'.
![[Image: tmap.jpg?w=840]](https://voynichnumerology.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/tmap.jpg?w=840)