| Welcome, Guest |
You have to register before you can post on our site.
|
| Online Users |
There are currently 603 online users.
» 13 Member(s) | 584 Guest(s)
Applebot, Baidu, Bing, Facebook, Google, Yandex, dashstofsk, eggyk, Gregor, Grove, JoeyB, ololololo, varadino
|
|
|
| Tower with ramp or external staircase |
|
Posted by: Koen G - 14-05-2018, 07:24 PM - Forum: Imagery
- Replies (19)
|
 |
ramp.jpg (Size: 8.32 KB / Downloads: 581)
I came across an image which reminded me of this tower because of one specific feature: some kind of ramp, slope or external staircase..
The tower is located in Asia. I can't read the word within it, but given the religious focus of the map I guess it could represent Jerusalem?
tower.jpg (Size: 59.66 KB / Downloads: 295)
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
MAPPA MUNDI in SALLUSTIO De bello iugurthino. Venezia, fine del sec. XIV, manoscritto, inchiostro e guazza su pergamena, 38 X 28 cm. Venezia, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Fondo Ant. Lat. Z. 432, MS. 1656, fol. 40r. (Barber 2001, p. 60)
|
|
|
| Updated PCA analysis of various languages |
|
Posted by: DonaldFisk - 12-05-2018, 10:34 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (12)
|
 |
I've updated my recent article at You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Written languages have different properties, manifesting themselves as different distributions of glyphs on a PCA plot. Here, I've plotted Hungarian, Italian, a mystery language, the Voynich Manuscript, Mandarin Chinese encoded as Pinyin, and Latin. I've also presented an argument that the cryptographic techniques available at the time of the VMS's creation wouldn't change a PCA plot significantly (but a transposition cipher would). I've explained how the plots work.
None of the plots for any language I've tried so far closely matches the Voynichese plot, but perhaps you have a language in mind you think might be worth trying. If so, I need text (preferably in an phonetic alphabetic script) and a list of glyphs. The text doesn't have to be very long -- a few pages is enough. Alternatively, if you can think of an encoding method which might go from (for example) Italian into Voynichese, I could use encoded text as input and see whether that results in a match.
This should expedite the identification/rejection of candidate plaintext languages and encryption methods. Even if the VMS text is meaningless, I would still expect the scribes to have pronounced it, and EVA is certainly pronounceable (but doesn't resemble any known language).
|
|
|
|
| Experiments with language corpora |
|
Posted by: MarcoP - 09-05-2018, 03:15 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (26)
|
 |
This is a simple experiment partly inspired byYou are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. by Hauer and Kondrak and by the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. recently mentioned by Donald Fisk.
It is something I have put together quickly, files have been processed without attempting to remove punctuation or to apply any other normalization (partly because not all samples are in the Latin alphabet). As always, I might have made errors, so double checking would be welcome.
I have used "the dataset created by Emerson et al. (2014) from the text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 380 languages", which Hauer & Kondrak used. It is available on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
For each language, I have computed conditional entropy and a custom repetition measure. I consider as repetition any exact repetition of three or more consecutive characters optionally separated by a space.
These count as repetitions:
barbarian
magis magisque
This does not (because the repetition is separated by a letter):
pellmell
I compared with three Voynich datasets:
1. the complete Zandbergen-Landini EVA transcription
2. Currier A in Takahashi's transcription and modified a-la-Neal (treating benches, benched-gallows, ee, in, iin as single characters)
3. the same as above for Currier B
The Voynich samples are plotted in green.
The purple circle corresponds to Latin - entropy:2.98, 2 repetitions in about 10.000 characters. Actually, of the two repetitions, one is coincidental (per personam).
ALL.JPG (Size: 60.4 KB / Downloads: 341)
If one only considers high-repetition (>1 per 1000 characters), low entropy (<2.4) languages, only 10 are selected. All these 10 texts are written in the Latin alphabet. Geographically, none of them seems like a plausible candidate, even if some might be conceivably possible:
Code: rar Rarotongan Oceania Cook Islands
qud Quechua (Unified Quichua, old Hispanic orthography) South-America Peru
hms Hmong, Southern Qiandong Asia China
cbs Cashinahua South-America Peru
prq Ashéninka Perené South-America Peru
mri Maori Oceania New Zealand
qug Quichua, Chimborazo Highland South-America Ecuador
fon Fon Africa Niger
miq Mískito Central-America Nicaragua
kmb Mbundu Africa Angola
(the prq and cbs files are identical: this must be an error in the corpus)
DETAIL.JPG (Size: 29.14 KB / Downloads: 325)
I think it could be interesting to perform more structured experiments along these lines, adding more quantitative indexes that could help measure distance between languages. Also, there are other corpora that one could try with this or similar approaches.
Both the two lowest-entropy languages (Vai and Korean) are not written in the Latin alphabet. Both alphabets appear to be syllabic.
|
|
|
|
| Studies on De Balneis Puteolanis |
|
Posted by: VViews - 03-05-2018, 09:31 AM - Forum: Imagery
- Replies (35)
|
 |
Following a discussion in another thread, I thought it would be a good idea to create a library thread to bring together all the literature regarding Pietro Da Eboli's De Balneis Puteolanis.
Here are some ressources (and links when possible).
Please feel free to add more, or to provide links to online versions of these if you find them!
Barbati, S, Lando, A, and Vajro, F: Le Terme Puteolane e Salerno nei codici miniati di Pietro da Eboli. Naples: Fausto Fiorentino, 1995.
Delcorno, G: “Il volgarizzamento antico-francese del De balneis puteolanis di Eudes Richart de Normandie,” in Lingua, rima, codici. Per una nuova edizione della poesia della Scuola siciliana. Atti della Giornatadi Studio, Bologna, 24 giugno 1997. Con altri contributi di Filologia romanza, Bologna, Pàtron, 1999, Bologna, «Quaderni di Filologia Romanza della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell’Università di Bologna», 12-13, pp. 183-287
Grévin, B: Pierre d’Éboli: Les Bains de Pouzzoles. Paris: Fondation Martin Bodmer, 2012.
Hanly, M: “An Edition of Richart Eudes’s French Translation of Pietro Da Eboli’s De Balneis Puteolanis.” Traditio 51 (1996): 225-255.
Kauffman. C. M: The Baths of Pozzuoli: A Study of the Medieval Illuminations of Peter of Eboli’s Poem. Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 1959.
Lattanzi, A: Nomina et virtutes balneorum seu de balneis Puteolorum et Baiarum, codice Angelico 1474. 2 vols., 1962.
Maddalo, S: Il De Balneis Puteolanis Di Pietro Da Eboli : Simbolo e realtà Nella Tradizione Figurata, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2003.
Maddalo, S: I bagni di Pozzuoli nel Medioevo : il De balneis Puteolanis. In Guerin-Beauvois, M. (ed), Bains curatifs et bains hygieniques de l'Antiquité au Moyen-Age, Collection de l'École française de Rome 383, 2007, p. 79-92 (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. )
Manselli, R (ed): Studi Su Pietro da Eboli, Instituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo, 1978.
Migliorini, P(ed): De balneis Puteolanis., 2 vols., (Fontes Ambrosiani, vol. 77), 1987.
|
|
|
|
| Facsimile copy arrives! |
|
Posted by: davidjackson - 28-04-2018, 05:22 PM - Forum: Voynich Talk
- Replies (4)
|
 |
My copy of the voynich, as edited by Siloe, has arrived. Dropped off personally by Pablo from Siloe this morning as he passed my front door, which was nice.
I'm going to do a video showing the real thing so that viewers can understand its dimensions and look.
Any particular questions you'd like addressed?
|
|
|
|
| Question about WW2 radio codes |
|
Posted by: DONJCH - 22-04-2018, 03:39 AM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (17)
|
|
Greetings all, my name is Don and I am new here.
I am a retired medical scientist with a background in chemistry and interest in things statistical, though not in the context of language.
There is little I can bring to the table other than an analytical mind.
Anyway I have spent a few weeks reading through most of the threads on this site and perhaps can bring a fresh perspective.
I was impressed with the Torsten auotocopy suggestion which has the potential to account for many of the observed features of the VMS including the low entropy by a plausible method available in the 15th C.
To the point though, as somebody else observed, this does not exclude the possibility of actual real content buried in the manuscript. As an analogy I am thinking of the WW2 radio practice of sending coded message phrases buried among a whole bunch of similar nonsense phrases.
As an aside, there was a famous instance in the battle of Leyte Gulf where the message sent was "Where is 5th Fleet?"
and instead the message received by the admiral was "Where is 5th Fleet? The world wonders!"
The accidentally added nonsense phrase amounted to gross insubordination in the context!
I do not know the technical term for this procedure but it strikes me that something similar could easily be going on in the VMS.
It seems also that there are many instances where sections seem to have been inserted in the text as a second pass.
We could ring the changes on the corrollaries of this, such as what upper limit on real content is placed by the entropy stats? Is the message spread throughout the text in small pieces or in less frequent larger chunks? If so such chunks may still be amenable to a statistical approach and in any case Torsten's software could be used to model some scenarios.
Apologies if all this has been suggested before, I am sure it has but maybe not recently in the context given.
I am only an egg compared to most of you.
|
|
|
|
| f57v Summation of sequences |
|
Posted by: R. Sale - 10-04-2018, 10:51 PM - Forum: Voynich Talk
- Replies (2)
|
|
VMs f 57v Summation of sequences
As discussed previously, in the 4 x 17 symbol sequence, the symbol in position five (EVA = ‘v’) has several different potential interpretations. The actual glyph is written as an inverted “V” and therefore is more similar to the Greek letter ‘lambda’ in upper case or to the medieval form of the numeral seven as seen in various places such as Typus Arithmetica. A third interpretation is that it is an inverted representation of the Roman numeral ‘V’ or five, given that it sits in the fifth position. In other words, this is an interpretation that is confirmed (to some extent) by placement or location, not wholly by appearance.
Positional confirmation can also be demonstrated for the first two examples. In the Greek interpretation of lambda in position five, there is also omicron in positions one, which is correctly spaced at the same distance as in the Greek alphabet. Likewise in the system of medieval numerals, the interpretation as the number ‘7’ is the proper distance from the second symbol which is a clear representation of a medieval numeral ‘four.’ Once again visual interpretation / appearance confirmed by positional relationships when compared with known traditions.
These are three well-know sequences of symbols, and it is possible to overlay each of those systems unambiguously onto the VMs sequence with the information presented above. The Roman and medieval sequences are numerical. The Greek alphabet is actually alpha-numeric. (And it has a few quirks to accommodate. The one most relevant here is the insertion of a non-alphabetical symbol, digamma, in the sixth position.)
So, in the Greek numerical sequence, lambda equals thirty. While in the Roman sequence the value of this symbol is five. And the medieval value is seven. And if we go back to omicron, at the beginning, the Greek value is seventy, the Roman value is one and the medieval value is three.
Values in each sequence: (Roman value = symbol position)
Greek 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 < >
Roman 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
Medieval 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
Sum: 74 66 58 50 42 34 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36
Now if we subject each sum to numerological reduction:
7 + 4 = 11; 1 + 1 =2
6 + 6 = 12; 1 + 2 = 3
5 + 8 = 13; 1 + 3 = 4
5 + 0 = 5
4 + 2 = 6
3 + 4 = 7
2 + 6 = 8
2 + 7 = 9
2 + 8 = 10; 1 + 0 = 1
2+ 9 = 11; 1 + 1 = 2
3 + 0 = 3
3 + 1 = 4
ETC.
And this continues till we get to the Greek alpha equals one, which (if we include the digamma in position six) gives us a symbol sequence consisting of sixteen symbols where the VMs sequence has seventeen symbols.
When we look at the values for the seventeen symbol, the Roman value is 17, the medieval value is nineteen. The total of these two is thirty-six, and 3 + 6 = 9. Nine is the proper sequential value, so the Greek value can not make any numerical contribution - if the pattern holds true.
The final numerological sequence is simple: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 1, 2 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,
What could this be? Does it have a meaning or some use?
If we consider the choice sequences and their arrangement in relation to each other - doesn't this have to be an intentional construction?
|
|
|
|
|
