Posted by: R. Sale - 26-04-2016, 07:34 PM - Forum: Imagery
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I wanted to post a new tread and have as many readers as possible looking for additional examples.
In postings #30 and #31 (It's bigger.) of the thread 'Those umbrella/pinecone things', MarcoP has posted an illustration:
Vatikan, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. lat. 412, Wynandus de Stega, Adamas colluctancium aquilarum — XV Century.
This illustration has an example of an elaborated nebuly line across the middle. Now, for those who have followed this line of investigation, there are a number of good examples of elaborated nebuly lines in blue and white to represent a cloud band. And those who have examined the details of how these patterns were drawn will see a line that is generally smooth and undulating.
Now contrast this with the illustration above, where the line that is used to compose the nebuly line is very jagged. In terms of heraldic examples, this line is mostly of the engrailed / invected type, with small sections that are much like the wavy definition.
Now compare this with the detailed construction of the elaborated nebuly line in the VMs Central Rosette. The description of the line composing the nebuly line has to be that it is of the engrailed / invected type, with small wavy sections. It is the same! It is unusual. Is it unique or not? More evidence appreciated.
Wynandus de Stega, the Latinized version of Winand von Steeg, a German cleric, (1371-1453) - no difficulties there.
I have put the publisher's "blurb" for the essay on folio 86v (Beinecke foliation 85v and 86r) on academia.edu.
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This is one of nine essays to be published in the book, seven (including the essay on the map) are already in the hands of the publisher. The essay included, but expands upon what I've offered online in almost thirty detailed studies since 2011, twenty-six of those shorter articles available through voynichimagery.wordpress.com.
The essays, with index and bibliography is due to be completed by end of this year, pending permissions for the large number of illustrations required.
As always, I am concerned to properly acknowledge precedents, whether or not I consulted them, and am happy to receive emails at voynichimagery ... gmail
Discussions in the Ladies with Rings thread often connected to the imagery on f85r2 aka the Four Ages of Man folio.
So I'm starting this thread to look more in depth at the figures depicted in it, the general structure of the page, etc.
To start things off, here's an image of St Anthony holding similar attributes to the "old age" figure at the bottom of the wheel:
From Officium parvum Beatae Mariae Virginis ad usum Ecclesiae Romanae, France (Picardie?) 1450-1457 Polish National Library Rps 8004 II, f119v.
In You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. I referred to the highly interesting blog(s) of Erik Kwakkel of the university of Leiden (NL).
In case anyone is wondering if he knows about the Voynich MS, do have a look You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. .
Apart from his perhaps not so positive appraisal, the page contains a lot of most interesting stuff.
Several people have brought up this question, pointing to its importance for a variety of reasons, most recently Anton You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
To me this is an open question, so I would like to hear what others think. I'm at home in the small plants section, but have spent little time comparing them with big plants so far.
- I do remember having read in D'Imperio's book that she had a team of determined students trying to match the plants, without success.
- There are more small plants than big plants.
So what are your ideas about this? And what could the amount of matches/mismatches mean?
A while ago, I noticed that this man has six fingers:
I don't know if this was intentional or not, but I do lean towards that interpretation:
- Other figures have five fingers.
- The hand is a focal point of the figure.
- Subjectively, the hand looks more intentionally than accidentally deformed.
So if we assume that this was intentional, then what could it mean? I have no preferred dating or region for this folio, so I'm really open to all possible interpretations.
A basic search brings up You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. by Richard D. Barnett, in which various examples of polydactilism in art are studied. It can refer to a race of giants, "primordial people", indicate magical powers or be seen as a sign of good or bad fortune. Often, the background seems to be biblical, though the trait has a meaning in other cultures as well. The author's conclusion is that there is no clear pattern is visible in the examples.
Then there is the so-called six fingered emperor of Byzantium, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.:
"Many Byzantine Emperors were holy men and are saints of the Greek Orthodox Church, like Saint Ioannis Vatatzis, the Marble Emperor with the six fingers (1222-1254)." (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)
Again, not too much about his six-fingeredness appears to be known for sure, although a book has been written about it, which can be seen here:
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(I haven't read it yet, doesn't work too well on my pc - don't know if it contains anything of interest).
Finally, there is very anecdotal evidence of people telling that six-finger related myths about royal bloodlines and promised kings are still alive today, like this one, from a Greek American who was born with six fingers:
Quote:...when I was born In Athens the Doctor who was there when I was born went Bananas running up and down the hospital yelling the king is born.I have also found out that one of the Purest Royal bloodlines in Greece and Cyprus also all there first born sons had 6 fingers.
I won't link to the source because it's extremely shameful - they also talk about aliens. If I ever get sick in Greece, I hope I don't end up in that hospital, if this is how their staff behave.
So well, for now I see no clear solution, although something related to a "promised king" does seem like an attractive option.
Any ideas?
Edit:
My original question, which can be read below in small text, was apparently full of wrong assumptions. I will rephrase it:
There are a number of people who seem to think the chance that the manuscript was copied with minimal adjustments from older, non-Latin-European sources unlikely. I wonder which concrete evidence these people see for their preferred interpretation.
((original: )Most people seem to think that the content of MS Beinecke 408 was created at the time of its writing in 15th century Europe. The images are peculiar, but this is seen as the result of an individual's quirks, rather than unexpected cultural influences.
So I would like to know why people are convinced of this, and why they seem to be very unlikely to consider any non-medieval-European sources.
I fully understand that certain elements in the nymph sections look very medieval. For eample the clothes in some of the roundels. But these are relatively rare, and often considered later additions or modifications. Either way, it was common practice for copyists to update aspects like clothing.
What I would specifically like to know is which concrete evidence there is against earlier sources.
In other words , why can't it be a lucky surviver -by medieval copy- of a lost type?)
Anton just posted an observation about my readings of the plant labels in another thread. Since I appreciate input and criticism and would like to know possible objections to what I'm doing, I thought it would be neater to move this to a new thread. This is what he wrote:
Quote:Since Koen elsewhere expressed his belief that pharma section labels represent plant names, I did some screening checks and then I found this thread in which I would like to state the following discouraging considerations as to the aforementioned proposal.
1) Many of the pharma section labels are unique words. E.g. in f88r, even if we exclude the labels that might be attributed to jars, 38% of labels are unique; in f88v, using the same principle, 50% of labels are unique.
2) Furthermore, not all non-unique labels are mentioned in the botanical folios. In f88r, 25% of non-unique labels, and in f88v, 40% of
non-unique labels, are those which are mentioned only outside of the botanical folios.
Considering 1) and 2), we can state that for the book, the opening part of which is an extensive herbal, it is strange to have so many herbs not mentioned in the descriptive subject section.
3) Some labels are re-used through the pharma section. Like, otoldy is used in f89r1, then in f89r2 (but here it can be attributed to the jar), but also in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. where it labels two roots of entirely different appearance.
4) Here and there there are more labels than plants, even if we provide for the jars. Like in the third row of f99r: tha jar has its own label inside, so to the right of it we have 8 labels for only 7 objects. In the third row of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. we have 7 labels for 5 objects.
Point 4) is not decisive, because there could be plants which names are encoded with multiple vords arranged in an uncareful fashion.
Taken together, all these points, I am afraid, waive the possibility that the pharma section labels are plant names.
Anton, I understand your objections, but there are some factors that could explain your findings:
- The first label in a row is always attributed to a jar. I think these are geographical names related to trading (like ports or local trade centres), which may not be repeated elsewhere, but I have only a number of proposed readings, which I haven't published yet. The interpretation is very tentative, but they do belong to the jars. The more ornate jars just don't have their label written on them because that would ruin their appearance and make the label hard to read.
- A core part of my interpretation is that the labels are the local names for the plants, i.e. the names that were foreign to the reader. They may be repeated in other sections, but don't need to. It's like if you had a book in English about French plants, with first a botanical description of the plant, and then a list of the French names. The first part can mention the French name, but doesn't need to since its focus is not linguistic.
- I read the gallows as "ornate" forms of sounds that can also be expressed in ligatures (like the "bench"). I don't understand this well enough yet to describe how it works entirely. In the root and leaf section, ornate glyphs are used to stress certain sounds. So it's possible that the same plant name appears in two different forms, in which case I would expect the less ornate form in the "large plant" section. I have found one example of this, which I will gladly explain if so desired.
- It cannot be denied that there are plants that appear in both the "large plants" as the "small plants" section, but there is definitely no one-to-one correspondence. Many plants from either section can't be found in the other one. I'd be more worried if you found more corresponding words. I'm rather comfortable with the numbers you mention.
- The "more labels than plants" problem is easily explained, usually in the way that you suggested already. The labels often refer to products rather than the actual plant, which may result in a label that reads "wood (of) teak", like in my post about You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. I'm rather happy with the label reading there (although it is a bad example of how the plant name is similar to the mythological mnemonic name, but that part is less relevant in this discussion). Similarly, I have recently found out that the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. plant's label refers to the juice of the fruit, rather than the plant's name, so it reads "juice (of) ???". The first word of that label I read as "Ros", which still appears in many Indo-Iranian languages as "ros" or "ras" meaning sap or fruit, just like it did in Sanskrit. At the time of posting, I hadn't discovered this yet, so this isn't reflected in the post. So this would refer to a fruit of which the juice was economically interesting or used as provisions for a ship's crew.
- About some labels being re-used, that is to be expected. We're dealing with foreign plant names, and those names often got borrowed to name different plants, or got assigned to different plants in different places over time. Given the fact that Voynich roots are especially mnemonic, i.e. modified, we can expect roots that look different to bear the same, or a similar name. Also, since we're dealing with a transcription of these names for Greek speakers, some phonological differences in the original languages won't be reflected. For example, to a Dutch speaker who's not used to English, the words "thorn" and "torn" will sound the same, just like "bet" and "bed".
My search for the exact location of the root-and-leaf section mnemonic makers goes South, and we have a look around in Greco-Roman Alexandria (Northern Egypt).
On one single folio, we see things as: Isis-Tyche, protective deity of Alexandria. It's the Voynich, so she's disguised as a plant.
The famous Lighthouse of Alexandria:
And a snake wearing the crown of the pharaoh:
Lots of images again, so I'll refer to my post, where serious arguments can be found as well:
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Essential argument in justification of that manuscript - fake, are inserting rows (perhaps paragraphs), and the writing of these lines from the bottom up.
EXAMPLE 1 Order of writing lines "c", "b", "a". If the string "a" written earlier it would have been flat, and the text at the end of the lines would not rise up.
Example 2. The procedure of writing lines "g", "f", "e".
Perhaps simply insert string "f", But then the in the line "e" was not originally the word "rol".
Example 3. Sequence writing lines - "j", "i", "h".
Example 4. If the string "k" would be the first, you do not need a rung would be, and would not need to do a big gap, to circumvent drawing.
Example 5. The sequence of writing lines - "o", "n", "m".
![[Image: capture-d_c3a9cran-73.png]](https://voynichviews.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/capture-d_c3a9cran-73.png)
![[Image: isis-snake.jpg?w=720]](https://herculeaf.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/isis-snake.jpg?w=720)
![[Image: lighthouse.jpg?w=720]](https://herculeaf.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/lighthouse.jpg?w=720)
![[Image: pharos2006.jpg?w=424&h=472]](https://herculeaf.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/pharos2006.jpg?w=424&h=472)
![[Image: snake-and-vulture.jpg?w=396&h=218]](https://herculeaf.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/snake-and-vulture.jpg?w=396&h=218)
