There is a key to cipher the Voynich manuscript.
The key to the cipher manuscript placed in the manuscript. It is placed throughout the text. Part of the key hints is placed on the sheet 14. With her help was able to translate a few dozen words that are completely relevant to the theme sections.
The Voynich manuscript is not written with letters. It is written in signs. Characters replace the letters of the alphabet one of the ancient language. Moreover, in the text there are 2 levels of encryption. I figured out the key by which the first section could read the following words: hemp, wearing hemp; food, food (sheet 20 at the numbering on the Internet); to clean (gut), knowledge, perhaps the desire, to drink, sweet beverage (nectar), maturation (maturity), to consider, to believe (sheet 107); to drink; six; flourishing; increasing; intense; peas; sweet drink, nectar, etc. Is just the short words, 2-3 sign. To translate words with more than 2-3 characters requires knowledge of this ancient language. The fact that some symbols represent two letters. In the end, the word consisting of three characters can fit up to six letters. Three letters are superfluous. In the end, you need six characters to define the semantic word of three letters. Of course, without knowledge of this language make it very difficult even with a dictionary. And most important. In the manuscript there is information about "the Holy Grail". If you are interested in this topic, I am ready to provide detailed information.
Nikolai.
I am a amateur researcher MV for 4 years. I studied many different theories, information, decoding methods. My opinion, is that the author is Cornelius Agrippa. Many indirect details related to the activities of Agrippa, his work on magic encryption shows his possible participle or authorship of MV. If we take the fact that the last page of the MV was written by the author MV, the amateur experience of grafanalysis showed that the handwritings are very similar.
The three pools of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. are actually two seas, plus the fourth largest lake in Italy. The three larger lakes had already been shown on previous pages. This page is basically showing the west shore, the east shore, and the center of the Italian Peninsula, or the landmass that looks like a boot jutting into the Mediterranean Sea.
Notice that the west side is craggy, and the east side is more smooth, with one major prominence at the 'ankle' of the boot, and three 3 other points being visible, the 'knee', the 'calf', and one on the 'heel'.
This drawing shows mountains with streams running into the sea. The sea is the green water body, and represents the Tyrrhenian Sea. The mountains are reminiscent of those in Beatus Maps, or other similar cartography. The tube is the navigable river Arno, Pisa and Florence are to be found on it. Tube rivers are also common in the history of cartography.
If you look at the mountains a different way, they depict the peninsula itself through its two sides. The lower side has seven points, which represents the craggy nature of the west side. Between the last two points, the streams come together, this indicates a turn in the landscape, or the 'toe' of the boot. The grass line further indicates the shoreline the way it might be drawn on a nautical chart. The upper side has four dips, just like the next pool has four nymphs along the southern part of the waterbody, which would be the Adriatic Sea. All four have tubs, which stand for sheltered ports, although the third one is almost invisible as it is painted the same colour as the sea, but at least part of a tub rim is there, it covers the nymph's knee, and a dip in the shoreline is drawn as well, whereas the others do not get this treatment, this is to indicate it is a bigger feature than the others.
I believe this is an example of a deception, although it seems to have its reasons, in that to the casual observer this would keep them from recognizing the prominence, but meanwhile if one is familiar with the shore already, the prominence and dip are indeed represented and recognizable as such, and it makes sense for this tub to be lesser than the others, as the sheltering level of this port is not as high, it is sheltered only on one side, by the prominence itself, whereas the others have lagoons. This is why this one only rates a transparent half tub. But I do not believe it to be coincidence that it downplays the actual features of the prominence.
That the peninsula is drawn as two seas, each with one shoreline, is not surprising either, in that nautical charts are about shorelines, not land. Many times there may just have been rutters for one specific area. The pieces were stitched together, and the land details were filled in later.
The back side of this water body has been stripped bare, this is why it looks like a pool. The features of the blank side of this sea are included on another page of the quire. The stream that connects to the other one is not real, it simply denotes there is a water connection between the two.
The single lake is Trasimeno. It is centrally located, about where it says Italy on the map at the top. Early Ptolemy maps included just the one lake.
These Ptolemy maps came out later, and according to wiki, both of these examples were published in 1467, by the same artist. This seems like it might need looking into. However, the information regarding Ptolemy's atlas was evidently first beginning to be translated around 1406. You can see the mountains go all the way down the peninsula. In the second version below, you can see more interior items were added, more mountains, more lakes.
Trasimeno is the light green lake. It is a different type of lake than the other two, it is endorheic and according to wiki, a depression formed by geologic fractures allowed the present-day Lake Trasimeno to form.
Note the southwest aspect of the stream going off the page. What do we find when we look in this direction?
As can be seen from this north up presentation, Bolsena is actually a bit west of Trasimino, just like in our vms drawing.
If you follow the line of the two lower lakes, about southeast, it points to a city. That city is Rome.
These are the same two lakes on the other side of the page, f84v. The item at the top is a dormant volcano. Both these lakes are volcanic in origin.
Note that the streams are drawn in a southeast orientation this time. Rome would be at the bottom of the page. However i do not believe this to be the end of the quire, as marked. i think it may have been found this way, then marked as such upon binding.
If you would like to see the parallels fleshed out with more comparisons to maps i would be happy to expound on this identification as best i can.
I've been working on a thesis regarding the provenance of the VM and have been paying special attention to the New World hypothesis as I'm fortunate to live very close to one of the best New Spain/Aztec manuscript collections in the country (U.S). Although skeptical (as I am with any claimed origin), I'd like to thoroughly review the subject and have been focusing on a paleographic analysis against codecies of colonial New Spain and indigenous documents. One of the contentions made in Janick and Tucker's 2018 "Unraveling the Voynich Codex" is that the signature of their purposed author, Gaspar de Torres, can be found concealed at the top of f1v.
See here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
I was curious about this claim and have a some experience with Photoshop so I decided to do my best to reduce as much of the concealing ink as I could. I'd like to share my results with this community and gather some feedback. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
For the sake of duplication, I completed this using Gimp 2.8.16. I used the original image on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and processed it with Unsharp-Mask, followed by Despeckle and then adjusted the contrast. Although I do believe there's a word or name there, I don't believe it to be Gaspar de Torres. It appears to me that the capitalized "G" and "T" Janick and Tucker point out are simply part of the overlying ink. The word/name that I see is "D i o/g d v/y o/? t a l" followed by "G a b/l/r/ e/a s y. Interesting to note is that the second word appears to be larger and with heavier ink on the what appears to be the "G". This could simply be a result of the author re-inking their quill, or perhaps something else entirely. I'm not sure.
I'd like to know your thoughts on this. It's entirely possible that there's nothing there and that I simply rorschach tested myself into seeing something. I've also considered applying this method to other areas of the manuscript and wonder if it's worth pursuing. I've already spent hours teasing these words out of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and need to move on to other parts of my research, so I hoped others here may be interested in pursuing this further.
It's wise to be careful about VMS "translations" that rely on an assumption of "polyglot" in order to be meaningful. The reason is simple... with enough degrees of freedom even nonsense text can be made readable (or almost readable).
But... I thought it might be worth discussing this subject because some languages are inherently polyglot.
For example, I was just reading a 14th-century letter in Frisian, and it is such a weird experience because it's English, Norse, Norse, English, Norse, German, English, Norse, Norse, Norse, English, English, German... It's a blend of these languages and if you know all three, you can pretty much read it.
I did notice that the grammar leaned more toward English than Norse (which in itself is interesting because Old English and Middle English sometimes have Norse grammar mixed in, but only bits of it, here or there, not the whole thing).
So, if Frisian were enciphered and someone were looking for word or letter-frequency patterns, it might still be possible to decipher a relatively simple substitution code, but... it would be a challenge, because it mixes three languages with different spelling structures.
In some ways, English is polyglot as well. A huge proportion is French, words like chauffeur, entrepreneur, bureau, critique, beau, recipe, bourgeois, valet, hors d'oeuvre, depot, chamois, ballet, armoire, cafe, a la mode, cliche, decor, savant, fiance, etc.
The "eau" combination is common in French but not otherwise characteristic of English words. Patterns like this could throw off computational attacks because they would not be consistent or in the same frequency as in the parent language.
Following the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., I would like to compare the VMS with the Fontana's works which are, as Nickpelling says, the best matches for the Voynich. Let's say for example Bellicorum Instrumentorum Liber.
Both of them, the VMS and Bellicorum..., are contemporary and some pages have the same layout. The VMS pages have plants with a weird script and the work of Fontana also has an image with some lines of an encrypted text. For more similarity, most plants are fantastic like most of the images in the Bellicorum..
Given these evidences and observations, we can do some hipothesis or assumptions. Par example: the script of the Voynich is a cipher with an underlying language or the exotic alphabet of a natural language. This is a valid and legitimate assumption...but has not worked in many years of research. Why?
We don't know why Fontana encrypted the text. It was not to hide it because there are lines in Latin and the cipher is a simple substitution, easy to decipher. A modern theory is that it was a kind of copyright. I don't believe it. Too anachronistic.
In my opinion, in the invented script of Fontana there is a call to the supernatural forces. It's the power of magic. Fontana invokes this power so that his machines and artifacts work.
Is it the same for the VMS script? I think so. This of course is another assumption. The script is not the human language but the language of the stars. The same magic in both cases.
I'll present a statement which I believe is true, and I wonder what you think about it. Note that the statement starts with an IF clause. I don't believe the IF clause is true, but assuming this as a given, then I do believe the consequences are true.
IF Voynichese does not represent natural language, then:
- it is still intended to look as if it does
- it is intentionally deceptive
Some arguments are the following:
- High resemblance between Voynichese glyphs and scribal conventions, both in form and positioning.
- Weirdos on first page, one of which I have recently found a parallel for in an initial "V".
- Layout as left-aligned paragraphs following the images to a large extent
So in conclusion I would say that the VM text either is natural language, a real text written in a way we don't understand
OR it is intended and designed to look as such
Here is a try to make list of substantial tests which may be useful to evaluate proposed simple solutions. Distilled, extreme descriptions are given. Pros and cons of applicability are considered.
It's assumed, that solution consists of the Algorithm which converts Voynichese to Text and claims that it is written in Language. The Algorithm must also have ability to convert Text and Language back to Voynichese.
Letter frequency test Letter frequencies of Text must match ones of Language.
There statistical methods to compare vectors of frequencies are needed.
+ It may be the only test which not only tests, but is also able to find solution.
+ It may cope with "null symbols" by considering relative letter frequencies.
+ Allows a lot of variations - frequency of adjacent, first, last letters, etc.
Word frequency test Word frequencies of Text must match ones of Language.
There statistical methods to compare vectors of frequencies are needed.
+ May be also useful if Voynichese word for some reason matches several Language words.
- Certain words and word forms may be ommitted due to stylistical reasons, which affects results in unknown way, so comparison methods there may be much trickier.
Word combination test Translations of the most frequent Voynichese word combinations are meaningful and common.
+ Good test for repetitive text and when at least something is known about sentence structure.
- More subjective than others.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Algorithm must distinguish meaningful and meaningless Voynichese text.
Number of test cases depends on required precision, but it should be quite high (6 originally proposed by the author are obviously not enough).
+ Ideal test for "black boxes".
- Number of false positives is unknown in advance and may be quite high.
- In some sense manuscript itself is big "Klaus' test", so for sufficiently advanced Algorithm this test is redunant.
Rene's test Text written in Language when transformed by the Algorithm to Voynichese must possess all properties of Voynichese.
Need method to determine if given text is Voynichese or not. It may not match Rene's proposal exactly, since the test requires not only convertability (which goes without saying) but also matching certain criteria.
+ Ideal test to remove pair <Algorithm, Language> from consideration.
- "Null symbols" can affect results in non-obvious way.
- Difficult to perform when Language is constructed language - no source texts.
Productivity test Each attested Voynichese word can be constructed with the Algorithm.
It's may be somewhat complicated to perform this test manually.
+ Analysis of words which do not pass this test may point to erroneous part of the Algorithm.
- Proper names, composite words, "null symbols" are substantial obstacles.
Quote:I talk about observation and not assumption.
The main difference is that an observation should be made objectively; of course when I see a tree, there are always people that say: no that is a bush. I will quickly give up then, because I can spend my time better than convincing those people.
An assumption would imply that you start somewhere, without showing exactly why you start there or have no underlying metrics.
I agree that an assumption is most of the time a scientific mistake, sometimes it leads to new paths however.
google says: Assumption - the act of taking for granted, or supposing a thing without proof;Observation - the act or the faculty of observing or taking notice; the act of seeing, or of fixing the mind upon, anything.
This is something I already had in mind to write something about.
My train of thoughts can be well described by using the example of the similarity of Voynich MS f68v3 with an illustration from Nicole d’Oresme’s Livre du ciel et du Monde (1377) as pointed out by Ellie Velinska.
Let's start with:
Evidence.
Evidence is first of all the Voynich MS itself, but there is much more. It is also the combined set of other medieval manuscripts that have come down to us, and lots of other historic material. Evidence is mostly 'objective'. However, evidence can include subjective material, for example historic letters expressing opinions. For the above example, the evidence is the Voynich MS on the one hand, and the Oresme MS on the other hand.
Observation.
An observation is something that can be made by someone. It can be a spoken or written statement. In the above example, the observation is: "the two drawings are similar". This case is clearly subjective. Similarity is an opinion, and different people may see it differently. An observation isn't necessarily either true or false, but it may be.
Hypothesis.
The hypothesis will try to explain the observation (or more directly some evidence). Here, for example: "the drawing in the Voynich MS derives from some copy of Oresme". Many different hypotheses can be derived from a single observation. A hypothesis is more likely to be either true of false, even if we may not know which of the two it is.
Making hypotheses is not a bad thing. One simply has to remember that they have to be tested, and ideally proven. One should not start taking them for granted, or as some form of evidence. (This last point may seem obvious, but it is a surprisingly common flaw).
Assumption.
An assumption is like a hypothesis, but the word implies that this hypothesis does not derive directly from anything, except, perhaps, what one might call common sense.
An assumption in the current case could be: "the Voynich MS drawing could not have been made independently by someone, who never saw any of the Oresme (or similar) drawings".
Assumptions abound, and again, they are not a bad thing, as long as one is fully aware of them, and ready to drop them if this becomes necessary.
The problem with assumptions is that one tends to make them all the time, without being too much aware of it.
Good assumptions are the ones that are clearly stated. Even if they can still be wrong.
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![[Image: Map-of-Italy-indicating-the-position-of-...igital.png]](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Giorgio_Mancinelli/publication/322083474/figure/fig1/AS:579489843630080@1515172553117/Map-of-Italy-indicating-the-position-of-Lake-Bolsena-and-Lake-Trasimeno-A-digital.png)
![[Image: Rome_Italy_SAR_IM_Orbit_45796_20040123.jpg]](https://earth.esa.int/ers/ers_action/Rome_Italy_SAR_IM_Orbit_45796_20040123.jpg)
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