I was researching a blog post about the crossbowman during the last few weeks (as you may have guessed) but it became too chaotic and the avenues too diverse, so I thought I'd just post this bit as a thread.
In comparing the VM crossbowman to other human Sagittarii, we noticed a few differences. The crossbow is one thing, and another is his pointy beard. Seemingly without a moustache, though this is hard to tell since the VM isn't too keen on facial hair - which makes it all the more remarkable.
Now if you look at the other Sagittarius crossbowmen in particular, you'll see that non of them have a beard (at least that we can see). And indeed this is the rule for human Sagittarii and many medieval archers and crossbowmen in general.
However, while researching a related aspect, I started noticing a pattern in images of the martyrdom of saint Sebastian. According to folklore, Sebastian was punished by being tied to a tree (or pillar,..) and shot at by "Mauritanian archers". Mauritania is In Northern Africa, comparable to the modern Maghreb. I have not yet been able to find out when and how exactly the Mauritanian archers part entered the story, but it makes some sense since indeed around the time of Sebastian's life, archers in the Roman army were often Mauritanians.
Now I'm not sure if Mauritania in itself is of any importance; what we see in a large portion of Sebastian imagery is that at least one of the archers is made to look "foreign", whether that be Southern or Eastern. Some examples:
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You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (North Italy?)
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15thC German
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Some versions of this (very common) scene have all bearded archers, some have none, others have one or two guys with the typical pointy beard. My point is that it's relatively easy to find archers with the VM crossbowman's facial hair style here, and it appears to be connected to the "foreignness" of the figure. Additionally, these foreign figures are more likely to be marked by a large hat unlike the other Sagttarii, who either wear no hat or a "robin hood" type. Note the headgear of the bottom right image.
And that's how far I got. So basically, is it possible that the VM Crossbowman is marked as a foreigner/Southerner from a European perspective?
I read that in (one of the first /or the first / letter) Kircher wrote that the VMS resembled Illyrian language.
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I did not find examples of the exact characters he meant, but investigation of Kircher's suggestion looks interesting.
See also
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It seems that once there was a kingdom of Illyria (regnum nostrum Ilyriae) and the term was used by the Romans for pointing at "Serbs". Also it looks that Croatian is very close, or proto-serbo-Croatian. Source You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
The Kingdom about 10 BC
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From the Illyrian language there survive only three or four unambiguously identified lexical items and some personal names and place-names. There are no full sentences or even phrases available for analysis. Illyrian language, Indo-European language spoken in pre-Roman times along the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea and in southeastern Italy. The language of the Illyrian fragments found in Italy is usually called Messapic, or Messapian. source :https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messapian_language
It looks like (consists mostly of personal names)
klohi zis thotoria marta pido vastei basta veinan aran in daranthoa vasti staboos xohedonas daxtassi vaanetos inthi trigonoxo a staboos xohetthihi dazimaihi beiliihi inthi rexxorixoa kazareihi xohetthihi toeihithi dazohonnihi inthi vastima daxtas kratheheihi inthi ardannoa poxxonnihi a imarnaihi
and
klauhi Zis Dekias Artahias Thautouri andirahho daus apistathi vinaihi -> Hear Zeus, Dekias Artahias to the infernal Thaotor set up (the rest untranslated)
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What is interesting is of course “daus”, but if I look at the structure of the transcribed text it is obviously following the standard Western language structure and it does not resemble the specific repetitive start and ending characters in the VMS. Also it seems to be written from right to left.
Some examples of the scripts can be found here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Examples of the language would have been extinct around the 1st cent. BC and merged into the Albanian language. See more on wiki.
Also, the many forgeries of the “found” inscriptions make it difficult to believe it has something to do with the VMS.
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Please note that many “Illyricum” examples of the script are just wrong or “self-invented” examples, aka forgeries or just bad research. Try google with ‘Illyricum alphabet’ and you see what I mean.
Perhaps Postel has some good examples, but I did not check.
For me the conclusion already is that Kircher really had no clue, because Illyricum is just a name used for languages they did not understand or could categorize properly.
A hot topic on the forum these days is how and why the VM script resembles Latin script, and people like JKP have done a good job of stressing the importance of this resemblance.
I've been thinking about a way to make this more tangible for people like myself who don't have that much experience yet reading various scripts. And at the same time, impose some system on the comparisons.
Let's assume for this exercise the following:
The Voynichese glyph set was composed at one point before or during the MS creation.
Voynichese glyphs were chosen, intentionally or not, resembling more or less contemporary Latin glyphs, likely including contemporary scribal habits.
This implies that certain scripts will have more in common with Voynichese than others. So my question is simple: which manuscripts have the most glyphs in common with the VM? Which writing style is most likely to have given rise to the VM glyph set? It might be useful here to focus on the standard set, i.e. ignore shapes which only appear a few times.
I've made an example from the Trinity college herbal, not because it must be the best candidate but because it is a slightly comparable script which I've studied for a while. I'll try to add psd template as an attachment as well. I'm going by purely visual similarity, not thinking too much about meaning. Not using numerals for 4, 8, 9 since those will be common to most MSS. added "iin" as one glyph to keep options open. "i" is a minim so it makes little sense to add it separately.
A new Voynich decoding was posted on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
I don't want to hijack the entire message from Nick's blog, so I'll quote only the first section from folio 1r until forumites have seen it on Nick's site in its original form. According to Hoffman, this is what it says:
fa ea re der reo et re que mure a ea at est id errat ur eam re. dat re os et ater re it ea que usu ne tex te set es et meus.der e ut uni re rate re reum unam es a etam es ed met eum der. da usa qui i re a qui ad te a a quer es e at meum aleum ales. dexter ea i et es eum em at eo eum. rem et ex ur re.
I only have time to glance through it, but as far as I can see, it's another substitution solution. I'm writing this in haste, I have to go, so please don't rely on my glance-analysis, check out the original on Nick's blog, but it looks to me like he is substituting as follows...
EVA Transliteration
------ -----------------
or at
y re/er
d m
f f
a a
s d
ch ea
etc., that is hopefully enough to give the flavor of it.
Opinions welcome (I'll keep mine to myself for now).
From You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Due: July 29, 2018
"First scientifically researched study on the Voynich Codex"
Quote:Unraveling the Voynich Codex reviews the historical, botanical, zoological, and iconographic evidence related to the Voynich Codex, one of the most enigmatic historic texts of all time.
The bizarre Voynich Codex has often been referred to as the most mysterious book in the world. Discovered in an Italian Catholic college in 1912 by a Polish book dealer Wilfrid Voynich, it was eventually bequeathed to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University. It contains symbolic language that has defied translation by eminent cryptologists. The codex is encyclopedic in scope and contains sections known as herbal, pharmaceutical, balenological (nude nymphs bathing in pools), astrological, cosmological and a final section of text that may be prescriptions but could be poetry or incantations. Because the vellum has been carbon dated to the early 15th century and the manuscript was known to be in the collection of Emperor Rudolf II of the Holy Roman Empire sometime between 1607 and 1622, current dogma had assumed it a European manuscript of the 15th century. However, based on identification of New World plants, animals, a mineral, as well as cities and volcanos of Central Mexico, the authors of this book reveal that the codex is clearly a document of colonial New Spain. Furthermore, the illustrator and author are identified as native to Mesoamerica based on a name and ligated initials in the first botanical illustration. This breakthrough in Voynich studies indicates that the failure to decipher the manuscript has been the result of a basic misinterpretation of its origin in time and place. Tentative assignment of the Voynichese symbols also provides a key to decipherment based on Mesoamerican languages. A document from this time, free from filter or censor from either Spanish or Inquisitorial authorities has major importance in our understanding of life in 16th century Mexico.
What does it mean two or three repeated words in a row in the Voynich?
To me is the better way to see that there aren't any words at all. I'm convinced that all the manuscript is about the influence of stars on the medicinal herbs. So, for medieval mindset it is very important to identify the stars. They only know 1.022 stars, and only 346 are located in the Zodiac. The last ones according with Ptolemy have higher virtues.
I think that the repeated string of glyphs are stars in the same position in the celestial sphere, almost the same latitude and lenght, very difficult of identifying
For example, at the top of the drawing of Sagittarius we can see, in the center, two stars with the same label: oteody. It can't be a name. The two stars occupy the same position in the sky
On the other hand, in different sections of the Voynich we can see the same string of glyphs. This might mean that a star o more give its virtues to an herb; the better time for collecting herbs; the appropiate time for preparing a recipe, etc
I think that the scribe of the Voynich held in a hand a volvelle with rotary wheels of the Sun, the Moon and the stars of the Zodiac signs, and in the other hand he was writing the glyphs in the manuscript. The text was generated like that
Were missing Capricorn and Aquarius? Really? This is just a supposition, a guess. Maybe they were never drawn
Why the Zodiac starts with Pisces instead of Aries, something very odd? And why Aries and Taurus are repeated? Maybe the author of the pictures thought that the Zodiac would not be complete without twelve signs
I think that the unusual Zodiac makes sense with the message of the whole work. In chilly winter (Capricorn and Aquarius) don't grow herbs. All the Voynich is about the influence of the stars in plants. They make them germinate and give them its virtues. That don't occur in winter. Likely, Capricorn and Aquarius never were drawn
I think there is not a language in the Voynich. No letters, no alphabet, nothing phonetic. It is only a visual code, an astronomical-astrological code which indicate the location of the stars in the celestial sphere. Each star of the Zodiac provide its virtue to an herb, therefore was very important identify well the stars
Every few months, I do a quick Google search to see if there are any new proposed "solutions". I didn't see any, but I noticed this...
A new blog on the VMS.
I tried to read a few paragraphs, but much of it is initial impressions (I didn't see anything new or provocative) and it's somewhat verbose, but there may be some who would like to keep up with the various opinions that are posted, and perhaps in time (as the person gets to know the VMS) it will become more interesting, so I'll link it here:
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Disclaimer: I’m a relative newcomer and certainly haven’t discovered every theory out there regarding the VM’s imagery so if I’m just going over old ground or stating the obvious, I apologise (and please point me in the direction of a proper analysis of this theory!). I wanted to share my thoughts with you here as I haven’t come across this explanation anywhere yet, even though it jumped out to me when I looked over the manuscript as a whole. I’m a visual artist and so, while my theories may not be particularly scientific, I know imagery! I believe the bathing women could be a symbolic way of illustrating the biological functions and anatomy of plants. The big green "baths" could be leaves, the tubes / pipes are the stems through which water is carried through the plant (the green "water" in the "baths" is the same green used on the majority of leaves in the entire plant section, and the baths' shapes are leaf-like, see page f81r). I would propose that this document uses the women as an allegory to help us understand how plants function biologically. Take page f77r. At the top, there is a horizontal green stem with cut-off offshoots, showing us that water travels through them, possibly food, gasses or waste products too (see the 4th offshoot). The woman at the top left of the page is standing in what looks a lot like the roots of some of the plants on the botanical pages. Are her and the women beneath her working away collecting water/nutrients from the soil and sending them up the correct tubes to different parts of the plant? On page f78r, the two elements at the top corners of the page are inescapably flower heads or seed pods of some kind (a little bit like those on the botanical page f18v). The little "collars" all along the tubes are like sections of the outer stem, cut away to allow us to see what flows through the middle of them. The two green pools could be leaves; their fluid-like green colouring make me think of chlorophyll (I know, this wasn’t discovered until the 20thCentury, but still, we can all see leaves are green!). This would also explain why the tubes seem to be filled with blue and be letting blue water (?) into the baths/leaves, and also perhaps why the bath/leaf on page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (with the walls and windows) shows blue through the windows and green on top; the leaves are fed with water through the stems and hold it within their structure. Another way of looking at it may be that the women represent a way to communicate the notion of a substance or essence that is the life force which animates these plants, a sort of ‘vital force’ (maybe even intelligence) which gives things the spark of life and elevates them from their basic inanimate state into something which is alive. Are the green pools on this page (f78r) a zoomed-in section of something smaller than a leaf? Could they be a cross section of the stem itself, showing it is filled with water (or life), and the women are the author's way of understanding how plants contain life, or a life force, and have the agency to live and feed themselves/grow? They do remind me of cell diagrams from my gcse biology class. [Side note: I’ve just read the post titled “It’s newer than you think” (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) about the similarity of the VM cylinders to 17thCentury Spanish microscopes and, while I’m not ready to let go of the idea that the manuscript is pre 1500, I can’t shake the impression that some of the VM illustrations are very similar to microscopic cellular / biological diagrams (pages f85v1, v2, r3, r4, r5 & r6).] Page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is another where we can see what looks like buds or flowers of some kind at the top of the stems, and various women (or the plant's life force) arranged about the plant's stem. They are standing in little cup shaped lumps, very like what you see on plant stems at the points that leaves grow out from. The illustration on page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is so much like a rose hip / seed pod that I'm sure I must just be repeating (in a very garbled way) what someone else has already described far more eloquently. The manuscript may be explaining how plants reproduce, as well as how they drink, and eat. There are hints at a sexual function for some of the parts of the plant in the botanical pages: page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. has what looks a bit like two labias nestled in the root system. Then there's the snakes/worms penetrating the roots on page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (I know these are likely explained by the symbology of herbal properties/poisons as they crop up in other herbal manuscripts but they’ve also been a phallic metaphor since, well, forever). It also doesn’t seem odd that the author may have believed plant reproduction happened at the base of the plant/top of the roots; roots are leg-like and if we compare plant structure to the structure of the human body it equates perfectly. It also keeps the plant’s sexual function underground and out of sight and I’m guessing medieval thinking, especially religious thinking, would prefer it that way. Question: I’m not a medievalist or a historian of botany and my inadequate internet searches on when exactly the sexual functions of plants were beginning to be understood have proved fruitless (no pun intended). Does anyone know when and how plants’ reproduction was described in the 15thCentury and earlier? I’d love to know! It may be that the author believed that the inherent life force was actually present in water, which may be why, at the bottom of page f79v, we see what looks more like a lake, with animals coming to drink and a mermaid (?) swimming in it. Perhaps the manuscript combines this belief with a textbook-style approach to describing how said water is taken up into plants and gives them life to grow and reproduce. The use of mini people running about inside plant stems to make them work reminds me of children's biology books that explain how your immune system works using the idea of little soldiers fighting off the bad guys to keep your body safe from infections etc. Not such a bad way of explaining complicated ideas to people who have never been introduced to them before. It sort of reduces the abstract idea of an animistic or life-giving force, to a mechanical one. It reminds me that the 15thcentury was a time when ideas about science, religion, a mechanistic view of the world, animism, spirituality, biology and mysticism were all very fluid and often clashing/combining in a multitude of ways. Another point to make is that, if this text is intended as an explanation of the biological processes inside plants, it makes sense to me that not all of the plants have to necessarily be exact specimens. It may be that they are using some real plants, mixed in with others that just use generic growth patterns and forms to illustrate how the structure/biology is arranged/functions in different ‘styles’ of plant. And of course, all the people are women. If they do depict the life force that animates the plants, it makes sense that they are women, given our reproductive capabilities! Lots of the posts I’ve read on this forum, whilst looking for any mention of the idea that the women are a way of visually communicating the presence of a life-force (or more simply, how the plants survive by taking up water/nutrients through the roots and distributing it around the plant) actually fit very well with this reading. The more I read the more I’m convinced. I would love a discussion on this. Am I talking rubbish? Is this an existing theory and I just haven't come across it before? Am I just dumbing-down the conversation?! And again, apologies for my less than scientific way of looking at this. I don’t have many facts but I’m fascinated! Laura
