I shall boldly put this thread in "Voynich talk", since technically it doesn't belong in "off topic".
While preparing my last blog post, I was looking for some particularly ugly/deformed nymph to illustrate a point. In fact, I was looking for the ugliest one. I soon realized that I alone was not up for the task, and I would need the help of the entire Voynich community. It's a true horror show in there.
That is why, ladies and gentlemen, I invite you all to the Blue Lion theatre for the first annual Miss Ugly Nymph Election 2016 (aka the MUNEs).
The rules are simple: candidates submit their ugliest nymph to the pageant, and in the end a poll will decide who takes the crown.
My champion will be the nymph Φρικιαστικός. She resides on f.84r and her hobbies include waving, hiding behind friends and standing in shallow water.
An exciting project is going on on the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. We are gathering all possible readings for the marginalia on this folio. The goal is to compile a table with possible glyph readings. This thread is for the discussion of this project. I think the first questions we should ask are:
are there any problems with any of the proposed readings?
are there any additional readings for glyphs that have not yet been mentioned- regardless of whether the word would still make sense or not?
I will edit this first post to reflect the discussion in the thread and add stuff from the wiki. Anton and David, feel free to edit as well! I remove all things between brackets because we are looking for possible glyph readings, not for what people wish was there not for possible abbreviations yet. Duplicates are omitted. For references and background, see wiki.
Line 0
Code:
- poxleber umen putriter
- p**labo* pinŠn pati*er
Line1
Code:
- michiton oladabas + multos + te + tccr cerc + portas + M +
- an chiton olei dabas + multas + tc + tta cere + porta8 + n +
- nuchiton ola dabas + miltos + cc + tav terc + noovca8
- anthicon ola6..ba8. + m–Lcò8 + + tar cev‡ +
- anchiton + mlco8 + + tar tere +
- ancicon
Line2
Code:
- fix + man IX + mor IX + vix + altra + matura +
- siX + j?ariX + moriX + viX + abta + ma+ria +
- sis + marix + mo*ix + + alma + mama
- ix + andiix + + abia + ma(+)na +
Line3
Code:
- pals en pbrey so nim geismich o
- val8e^, vbreY o mm gas mich
- valsen ub ren gal
- pal8ch ubven
I believe everyone here will find this very interesting. The picture at the bottom of folio 66r shows a bloated woman on her back. I believe the text that is not in voynich, but straight Norwegian reads, "Jen a great deal of Greed".
In You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. I mentioned the copy of the herbal of Hartlieb preserved in Berlin in the Staatsbibliothek:
Ms. germ. qu. 2021, from 1462.
One illustration immediately struck me, namely the one of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (dog's tongue).
While the leaves are drawn in such a basic manner that it is not possible to draw any definitive conclusions,
the similarity with Voynich MS You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is still striking in my opinion.
This is of course especially the case since the roots of the plant in the Voynich MS could by all means
represent a dog.
Just a thought, remember the ciphers of Roger Bacon, where he used to hide his name in his text?
I was fiddling with the most used characters in the VMS and there are several characters that can be seen which could represent numbers.
They are:
oiydql = oiydql
and there is the ^ but that is is not a very "active" symbol.
The possible combinations which then result in 4 numbers on
o
i
y
d
q
l
are 360 in total.
For all see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
And enter the above, and use : Generate objects into combinations of 4 and then repeats: NO
Which will produce 360 combinations. Possible numbers could be 1489 / 1498
Could this number represent and event, or the year the ms was made ?
Read also this thread about 1493: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Then the other characters used could represent a name , perhaps the author of the ms.
Last but not least, only 3 characters are needed to describe the 72 hidden names of IHS in a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Although I will observe mostly the image of the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. in this post, it doesn't mean that the matter is in this image itself. It is just one of examples, which shows the real artistic ability of the illustrator.
Yes, he tried to reflect details of dresses and headgears, material objects, hairstyles of presented time, etc.., as much as he could. If someone didn't still note, the VMs illustrator is not an artist, he didn't have an artistic talent.
Everyone who tried to draw knows that hands and arms of a human are most difficult parts to depict them correctly, all the more, for not artists.
Look at any of nymphs, you will see that exactly hands are quite problematic element for the illustrator, especially the second hand which is behind a trunk. Mostly it is depicted outstretched forward, sometimes – unnaturally twisted behind the back, in some cases it is absent at all. There are also a few feeble attempts to depict a distant hand in another position as these:
So, I think, a shooting or an aiming crossbowman is too difficult task for not an artist, therefore he goes the simplest way. Of course, he could depict a near arm bent in the correct position for shooting…, no, he couldn't, because his "crossbowman" is a right-handed person (or left-handed, really!?).
That is why I can't consider such detail as unusual position of an arm and a crossbow seriously. All this depend on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
A few different things I've read lately have reminded me that in searching for similar-looking manuscripts we generallly ignore the fairly-obvious fact that Beinecke MS 408 doesn't present in the style of a formal book of the fifteenth century.
Re-reading d'Imperio's comment on the Friedmans' being refused a university grant to study this manuscript, two things were very noticeable - first, how little they knew about the manuscript fifty years ago, when Elegant Enigma was written and secondly - that the university scholars who dismissed the book as trivial were making a valid point. It doesn't look like a formal medieval book at all.
Then, listening to Efraim Lev's discussion of the Cairo geniza documents, I noted that he constantly distinguishes between "a book" which is properly set out, all written in one language and so on, and other sorts of documents including hand-made notebooks, letter, medical prescriptions and many others. The second group which are 'trivial' in that sense are very often written in a mixture of languages and scripts.
This recalls that idea of 'multiple' and 'overlapping' types of text (which some see as multiple ciphers), as well as the Currier A and B which are usually called "languages" in quote marks.
As far as palaeography goes, and especially orthography, it is as well to remember that while the "real book" was produced in an environment where spelling was more-or-less standardized, other people wrote as they heard the words, and if they spoke dialect, that's the sound they wrote.
I should like to see more solid reasons for believing that the plant-pictures in the Vms are intended to form a 'herbal'; I should also like to see some effort made to look outside the narrow limits of European herbals of the formal sort, and I should also like to know whether the usual techniques for decrypting a cipher presume standard and consistent orthography.
This isn't my area, but I'm fascinated by the form of non-orthodox scripts, so I'll find a few and write a post. A short one.
The voynich code is extremely difficult to piece together. I decoded the 1st paragraph in English, Old English, Little German and Little Latin. I believe that is a bird glyph below in the uploaded image. I'm still piecing together a cipher.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
A comment by Diane You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.:
Quote:Ask "who most often pictured crossbowmen in calendars after 1440" and the answer will surely come back "Germany". However, if you ask "Does anyone have an idea of why the crossbow in the Voynich manuscript looks as if it's made of wood, and why the archer's hand might be pictured in that position?" then the answer comes back (as it did thanks to a former colleague) - because it's a rare form of crossbow only known from a couple of late archaeological finds - of Spanish bows specifically meant for maritime use.
(emphasis mine)
made me put together these ideas in response. Rather than hi-jack the thread I thought I'd ask her some questions in this thread.
-
I don't think we can infer much from the way the chap is holding the crossbow - his right hand isn't even on it, but floating off in the air above it, as if to indicate that he's not going to fire the (cocked and loaded) crossbow.
It's far more productive to concentrate on the general shape of the crossbow, and the dress of the archer.
I'm intrigued by your Spanish maritime use comment. The crossbow depicted in the VM is quite clearly a stirrup one, which was used by the Spanish forces (and other Christian nations across Europe), but maritime use required longer distances so I understand they tended to incorporate the slower winding mechanism to get a stronger pull.
French soldier c. 1415 with a winding stirrup crossbow
But the VM archer doesn't have a winding mechanism, suggesting it was a less powerful manual pull stirrup firing crossbow.
The Spanish were using by the 14th century a cranequín, a metal crossbow with a top winding mechanishm (rather than the side winding mechanism):
The dress, of course, especially the capote hat, does not indicate a Spaniard.
As you may or may not know, I have devoted much attention to various plants on the 89v foldout in the small plants section. I would like to know what you think about a specific plant, because at the moment I'm stuck. It's the one in the middle on this picture:
In my You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. I explore the symbolical imagery hidden in this plant. I also argue that the label indicates that this plant or its fruit was valued for its juice, but of course you needn't take that into account if you find the arguments unconvincing.
However, since I believe the image is high in symbolical content, I am having a hard time pinning down a botanical identification. It is especially the structure pictured below that looks rather strange and perhaps even biologically impossible. My hypothesis is that a fruit (white) and the leaf (green) have been imposed on each other in order to create the symbolical image. Another possibility is that the green part is not a leaf at all but rather the juice emerging from the opened fruit.
Any ideas to which plant or plant parts this drawing might refer to?
![[Image: line0.jpg?w=616]](https://herculeaf.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/line0.jpg?w=616)
![[Image: line1.jpg?w=616]](https://herculeaf.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/line1.jpg?w=616)
![[Image: line2.jpg?w=616]](https://herculeaf.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/line2.jpg?w=616)
![[Image: line3.jpg?w=616]](https://herculeaf.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/line3.jpg?w=616)
![[Image: 14212021_10208791363173208_4951981115639...e=583F0AAD]](https://scontent-lax3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/14212021_10208791363173208_4951981115639348652_n.jpg?oh=5dc8f536520d90659220211643c30e37&oe=583F0AAD)
![[Image: Cq7OCxqUkAAYukg.jpg:large]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cq7OCxqUkAAYukg.jpg:large)
![[Image: Equipement.arbaletrier.2.png]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/Equipement.arbaletrier.2.png)
![[Image: cranequin.jpg]](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-G5bTxWbii-M/UlCfXhFJfEI/AAAAAAAACtA/xcZqbIeM_U8/s1600/cranequin.jpg)
![[Image: trio.jpg?w=800]](https://herculeaf.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/trio.jpg?w=800)
![[Image: fruit.jpg?w=616]](https://herculeaf.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/fruit.jpg?w=616)