I am continuing with my investigations but have decided to share this post in order to get feedback, as I think it's a very interesting observation.
I have been closely looking at Quire 13 (the balneological section) and something occured to me.
As part of the foliation task, I was examining You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and f81r. These two folios are part of the same sheet of parchment (a bifolio), but have other sheets sewn in above them. Just like a newspaper.
It You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that the bifolio was drawn as one complete page, and as such it should have been the centrepiece of the bifolio. So that when you open the quire, you see both pages together in all their glory.
I'm going to take this one step further and say:
All the bifolios in this quire have been drawn as complete entities.
In other words, each bifolio seems to have been drawn without taking into consideration that they would be sewn into a quire - each bifolio has unique graphic elements that aren't seen on other bifolios. They're independent of each other, as if each bifolio were telling a story, albeit all on the same general theme.
To see this, I printed them all off as bifolios. In fact, that's how I noticed this. So one sheet of A4 had 78v & 81r on one side, 81v and 78r on the back. Just like the real manuscript. If you don't have the printed copies to hand, use the Voynich Ninja page comparision tool You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
What you will notice when browsing is that each bifolio contain the same graphic imagery unique to that bifolio.
Remember, these bifoloios are two pages on one sheet of parchment. Just like a newspaper. You have your left hand side and your right hand side - the sheets of newspaper are laid on top of one another and stapled in the middle. So whilst one side of the sheet might have domestic news, the other side will be in a different section, say cooking.
Here's a layout of Quire 13, courtesy of ReneZ's website:
Let's take it from the bottom. After each analysis I add a brief summary of the unique features which link the individual pages of each bifolio.
f75 and f84 (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). Both folios share the same types of bathing pools. These pools have no walls or borders around them, making them visually distinct from 78-81, the only other bifolio where bathing pools appear. Furthermore, the nymps on these four pages are active, painted in different positions and facing one another. The 78-87 bifolio nymphs are all static, mainly facing in long rows and holding hands, the very antithesis to the nymphs on this bifolio. And here we have larger nymphs in these pools who seem to be some sort of central matriachal figure, unlike the 78-87 bifolio where all are the same sized. All the pools of water are connected downwards, and all four top pools have different decorations above the pools of water.
- The types of pool, the graphical imagery depicting the flow of water, the types of nymphs and their positions are unique to these four pages.
f76 and f83 (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is the only text only page. The other three folios share common graphical traits. The nymphs appear alone, always standing in the mouth of a pipe (with two exceptions, at the top of 84r), sometimes holding objects. All of these pipes have a layered inverted pyramid underneath, and there is a strong motif of water "droplets" being You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.from pipes which occurs nowhere else (the water droplets sprayed on 77v/r are draw in a different fashion as rows of dots and lines -You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). The pipes are not connected to one another. The rainbow on 83r and bulbs on 83v are unique in this section. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. does depict three nymphs putting their hands into tubs in a similar fashion to that of 82.
-Nymphs stand in pipes, sometimes holding objects. All stands have inverted layered pyramids with a strong motif of water droplets being sprayed.
f77 & f82 (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). Three of the pages are unique in having "pipes" connecting nymphs as headers. The fourth, f82r, continues with nymphs. Whilst there are pools of water on 82r/v, these are very different beasts from those on 78-87 or 75-84, in asmuch as they have no defined borders, and the nymphs are either scattered around the sides or standing on pipes. Around all four pages are individual nymphs standing not in pipes but in bowls. All individual nymphs have their hands inside pipes with one exception (82r centre right, lying down). f82 has a rip in the bottom which was originally sewn up and has since lost its thread - from the way the paint covers the rip (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) I wonder if the rip happened after the original painting was done? Further study required here.
- This bifolio has unique individual stands for the nymphs, and all (excepting one) individual nymphs have their hands in pipes. Three of the headers are of pipes connecting nymphs.
78 & 81 (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). there is a clear connection between You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and 81r - the built up swimming pool on 78v connects to the two baths on 81r. But there is an additional link - the bath on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. has a link to the bath on f81v. Note the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. which logically connects on the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. And we can connect this with the master bath on 78r - note the bottom bath has an You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.and the bath opposite has an inlet which starts in the middle of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. All six baths are linked, albeit in a reverse order to the logical reading of the page (top right to bottom left, then left to right on the reverse). All the nymphs in the baths are also unique - there is no clear matriach, and they are all linked in groups, holding hands in groups of 3,4,5,6,7. All of the baths appear to be elevated swimming pools with the exception of the two on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. which have no walls - but they do have the same stylised border running around the water which would indicate the top of wall. Maybe space limitations? (the page is very text heavy).
- All the pools on this bifolio are linked, from top left to right, the to the reverse left to right. The style of the pools is unique to this bifolio, as are the positions of the nymphs.
79 & 80 (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). Again we have a unique imagery theme which links all the folios. There are individual (or small groupings) of nymphs in basins who drip water onto the basins below, until eventually the water reaches irregular pools (no attempts at depicting walls) in which nymphs and animals frolic. Most of the pools are green, but two pools include duos of nymphs touching each other (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) and the water is blue in these examples, which may be medical in nature. There are duality of nymphs interacting on all of the pages. Top right of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. there appears to be a man chasing a woman. Animals appear in one of the folios.
- The pipes and basins connecting nymphs are unique to this bifolio. There are duos of nymphs interacting in an assertive/submissive fashion and when they appear in pools the water is a unique colour of blue. There appears to be a hierarchy of flowing water.
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I think it is clear that each bifolio is to be taken as whole, instead of individual pages to be read in order. It is too early to draw any conclusions from this, but one possibility is that the scribe wanted to draw more foldout pages, but instead continued with the bifolio model.
Hi everyone,
so I was looking at some astronomy folios and noticed the uppermost/outermost band of "text" in the diagram on f70r1 is really weird.
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...lots of dots, then nine o's then what looks like EVA "lar", five more dots and what might be EVA "rara" (or "sasa"?) then more dots...
What is going on here? Is it a 'title" disguised as a ring of text?
From what I can tell from the "voynichese" website stat tool, "o" repetition doesn't occur anywhere else in the manuscript. "Olar" and "lar" do occur, rather rarely, and as for "rara" and "sasa" they don't be seem to be anywhere else either.
Can Anton's "first vord uniqueness" paradigm help to explain this? It sure looks... unique... if not downright odd.
Or is this line a remnant of partially erased text? Is this page a copy of a partially erased document? Or... what?
I do not like to post anything in which I'm not sure of, or which, in my estimation, has low degree of likelihood, and I usually abstain from such publications. This is one of the cases when I stray from this practice, mostly because of that while the readings referred to hereinafter may prove wrong, still the idea which might be built on top of them may deserve attention independently of the readings' validity.
So I warned you that the below considerations are highly speculative.
There are some words in the VMS marginalia which may be interpreted as Mediterranean geographical names.
First, as I You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. a year ago, the much disputed "anchiton vs michiton" of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. may be neither of those, but rather “Nichiton” (supposing somewhat “ornate” ascender of the leading letter). “Nichiton” was the historic name of Frangokastello, as Flaminio Cornelio suggests in his book “Creta Sacra”, - a Venetian castle (or rather fort) built in late 14th century when Crete was under Venetians' rule.
Next, "Abia" (found in the second line of the "spell" in f116v) sounds the same as the name of an ancient town on the southern coast of Greece. Now it's just a village, but on the verge of the 15th century it was also under Venetians' rule, and they built a castle named Mantineia there.
The enigmatic "mallier" of f17v, which resists interpretations as a single word not split in two, may relate to the name of Mallia, or Malia, an ancient town in Crete dating back to the Minoan era. Specifically, it may be interpreted as "the inhabitant of Mallia".
Within the course of my Voynich research I noted that first vords of folios of at least some of the VMS sections are highly unique. Thus, 66% of first vords of botanical folios are unique. 60% of first vords of balneo folios are unique.
High as the above numbers are, the vords that are not first also exhibit quite a good deal of uniqueness. Thus, 33% of second vords, 34% of third vords and 35% of last vords of botanical folios are unique.
The above figures and their significance, as applied to the research direction that I pursue, will be explained in detail in my forthcoming article. For now, it matters that I got a feeling that many vords are unique on the whole - which may be characteristical for the Voynich text on the whole. To check this feeling, I referred to Rene's website which You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.:
Quote:The number of word types that appear only once in the MS (so-called hapax legomena) is rather high (about half of all word types). A detailed comparison with plain texts in other languages should be made.
What occurs to me is that the distribution of vord frequency count would speak about the type of the underlying message rather than of the underlying language. If analyzed and compared with other sources, it would possibly tell us two things:
1) What is the range of matching text categories? Is it Bible, or herbal, or so on?
2) What is the range of matching text styles? Is it narrative, or reference book, or telegraph-style conspect ("a good glass in the bishop's hostel..."). Is it abbreviated in the medieval-style or not abbreviated?
The analysis of the vord frequency count distribution can be further supported (and the results thus narrowed down) by the vord entropy comparative analysis. As I know, word entropy is text-category-dependent.
Are there any results obtained upon the above aspects? If not, would anyone please undertake at least building a vord frequency histogram?
Should we bring forth this research activity as a Voynich task? What do you think?
Second one on f43v, rotated 90°. First it looks like a snake, but if you consider the paint, it seems to have more of a bird's beak. Perhaps something like a swan?
So here I am minding my own business, casually looking at some Voynich roots, when suddenly I enter You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. .
It's one of those folios with marginalia, and somehow I've always thought the first word resembles Latin for woman, mulier. Compare Spanish mujer, Portuguese mulher, Old Spanish mugier...
Ok so now think "woman" and look at that plant's root. I'm not going to say what it looks like, because I already created the "Voynich phallus" thread and I'm starting to make a name for myself.
The excellent You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. tool developed by Job suffers from a number of limitations.
First, it does not include the Rosettes folio and, I believe, a couple of farmaceutical folios. This affects the reported frequency counts. Don't know if it's possible to add those folios, and why they are absent.
Second, some vords are rendered incorrectly, which affects frequency counts. In some places the readings are ambiguous, but in some places a typo is certain. In the past, I have been silently accounting for the ambigous and incorrect VQP readings for my personal research purposes. It occured to me now, that it would be better to report incorrect renderings, so that they might be corrected. I will do so from now on, on a case-by-case basis.
***
f75r1: the beginning should be kchedykary, not kchedy.kary. No space discernable.
f76r: the first vord should be potchokor.
f80v: the first vord should be pchedy.
f84r: the first vord should be kol.
f95r1: the last vord should be chckal.
f105r: the first vord of the second paragraph should be par.
This was posted by David in a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.:
(22-03-2016, 09:46 PM)david Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I had a vague theory somewhere that this page represents female purity and how accepting divine will improves your lot.
The top woman receives blessed water from heaven directly (note the cross staff she is holding* - she isn't holding it, it is coming into her hand. Compare with the ring below), which also falls straight down onto the next woman, who may represent nobility (note Crown/Ring?). But she is on her back. The water falls onto her face to symbolise purity and her whole body is in the water
This goes down to the next level of commoner who is not purified by the water but is allowed to touch it.
And finally it goes down to the beasts of the field (whores?), one of whom escapes from her bestial form by touching the water (note how she is leaving the fish) whilst her companions stay.
The hair styles of the women become progressively plainer towards the bottom.
It's just the gist of a theory... a previous one of mine was that the women represent different phases of pregnancy (note belly - the penultimate belly has been retouched to make it more prominent).
*This cross-staff, of course, may simply be a stick she is pointing at the top of row of women on the next page, showing a connection between the two sets of illustrations.
I would like to add that a detail on the following page (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) is somehow reminiscent of a baptism scene. The attached image is from an You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., 1268.
From You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.:
A possible additional use of the verb baptizein to relate to ritual washing is suggested by Peter Leithart (2007) who suggests that Paul's phrase "Else what shall they do who are baptized for the dead?" relates to Jewish ritual washing. In Jewish Greek the verb baptizein "baptized" has a wider reference than just "baptism" and in Jewish context primarily applies to the masculine nounbaptismos "ritual washing". The verb baptizein occurs four times in the Septuagint in the context of ritual washing, baptismos; Judith cleansing herself from menstrual impurity, Naaman washing seven times to be cleansed from leprosy, etc. Additionally, in the New Testament only, the verb baptizein can also relate to the neuter noun baptisma "baptism" which is a neologism unknown in the Septuagint and other pre-Christian Jewish texts. This broadness in the meaning of baptizein is reflected in English Bibles rendering "wash", where Jewish ritual washing is meant: for example Mark 7:4 states that the Pharisees "except they wash (Greek "baptize"), they do not eat", and "baptize" where baptisma, the new Christian rite, is intended.
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